USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Northampton > The Northampton book; chapters from 300 years in the life of a New England town, 1654-1954 > Part 13
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Through the last 50 years the place has shared the radical change in aspect that has come to practically every large town, vividly and violently symbolic of a new and tough world. Though of slow growth, with its industries generally located away from the center, the record of development from decade to decade has disappeared at a pace so accelerated over the last few years that it can be no more than a short while before the town's individu- ality of appearance will be so completely neutralized that its spe- cial character built up through the years will be entirely absent.
17TH CENTURY
The men who first began this wilderness settlement, in their first rude shelters perhaps drew upon what they had learned from the Indians who lived with Nature as they found it, rather than upon any old-world craft. But it was an English outpost of civili- zation and Nature's subjugation began as promptly as the settlers could intrench themselves and the housewrights and joiners who followed could put up the first structures of permanent intention. The builders had been apprenticed to their trade from their youth,
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as had their fathers and grandfathers before them. The early migration came most heavily from the rural districts where age- old Saxon tradition still held in the crafts, however much it might be in process of change among the aristocracy.
The Parson Solomon Stoddard's Manse that had been put up in those opening years of the town, was a translation of a dwelling that would have appeared quite at home among its kind in Kent or Suffolk or Devonshire.
As the forest fell back and the meadows were tilled, a mediaeval town unfolded on the higher land above them. There were simple and primitive structures with thatched roofs along with the grand home of the minister. A few houses, perhaps that of Joseph Par- sons, would have rived shingles on the roofs, oak casement sash with leaded quarries of thick glass from across the sea and Gothic pendants below a projecting upper story.
18TH CENTURY
One Northampton domicile embodies within it in some event, almost the entire sequence of American architectural vagaries and is used in this sketch as a symbol. That the Stoddard home at 54 Prospect Street has been known as the Manse since anyone can remember, stems from the legend that within its framework were incorporated the bones of that early structure of 1684. More than one generation added to the place until another Solomon com- pleted the present main body of the house at some time before the Revolution. Solomon was a man of affairs come to prosperity in the river trade. From his frequent visits to Boston he must have become familiar with the fine houses then lining Cornhill and the adjacent lanes which were lived in by people of wealth and cul- ture.
Squire Stoddard perhaps could find local talent equal to pro- viding him with a house appropriate to one of his worldly posi- tion. This extended structure was set out in extraordinary length and breadth, and was almost three stories tall by reason of its great curbed roof. That it belonged unmistakably to an age now well removed from that of the original home on the site, was sym- bolized in all its self-conscious dignity and in its mannerisms that had come down through 200 years, first from Italy to England and after becoming Anglicized, then to America, there to be Americanized.
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While the pioneer Manse was English and mediaeval, no coun- terpart of this new one could be found in the old world. The front doorway, opening into a wide central hall, with its staircase orna- mented with turned newels and balusters, was a far cry from the early entry against the chimney with steep stairs not far removed from a ladder.
The new Italian manners wrought revolutionary changes in the arts of Elizabeth's time and by 1700 the colonies were sharing their influence. The frame of the house remained essentially the same but there was a new consciousness about the propriety of revealing the bare facts of its skeleton. These colonial rooms were panelled on the chimney walls, all openings were enframed by decorative architraves and perhaps set within deep embrasures, and fireplace openings were emphasized by boldly moulded sur- rounds.
As a Georgian town Northampton must have given appearance of solid prosperity. Numbers of substantial dwellings lasting well down into the last quarter of the last century lined the streets spreading out from the village center. Along Bridge and South Streets were the comfortable farmhouses with their barns and outbuildings and their lands extending back into the meadows. By the time of Independence some of them were new and others had been more or less made over for the ever-increasing families, and some were still merely the answer to gaunt necessity.
With the well-to-do the gambrel roof-that peculiar construc- tion by which almost another full story was made of the attic- enjoyed favor, until after the Revolution it became epidemic for homes of size and pretension. Dr. Holmes, the Autocrat, revived the term in the 1870's, explaining its origin from the gambrel joint of a horse's hind leg.
Seven houses are recorded to have been already painted white by 1786; Northampton householders were keeping abreast of the times. The prevailing colors had been mineral red and ochre when the luxury of painting was indulged in at all. Interiors made use of greens, reds, yellows. After 1800 came the fashion for white which would never entirely go out of favor.
The Ferry house, 180 South Street, is the remaining example from several on South Street alone of the "hewn" overhang of sec- ond story over first, that followed the wider 17th century over- hang. It had no practical purpose, but seems to have been due to
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Anglo-Saxon tenacity to habit. The house at 262 Bridge Street, mostly new on the exterior, displays also the same conceit.
The Noah Parsons house, 48 Old South Street, is the lean-to type, now popularly known as salt-box, where the two-story house is extended-usually a later addition-to provide a kitchen, bedroom, and buttery in the first story and an open attic above, with the roof merely the continuation of the rear pitch. At 283 South Street is another lean-to example of the mid-century with no essential change except the removal of the front stairs.
The inhabitants of a New England settlement invariably has- tened with a speed born of objective piety to provide a house for worship almost before they had domestic quarters for their own survival. Two structures of the simplest sort in Northampton preceded that of 1737 which appears to have conformed to the type in earlier towns, and no doubt the South Church in Boston served as model for many others in the province. The Puritan, eager to deny in every possible way the usages of the Anglican Church, had evolved his own plan where the preacher's pulpit replaced the central position of the liturgical altar. This logically faced the congregation parallel to the narrower dimension of the room, with the minister against the long wall-a truly functional arrangement which assured the flock the benefit of better audi- bility under fire of those three-hour-long sermons continued-in- the-afternoon.
1790-1825
At the turn of the century the Stoddard descendants, keeping abreast of the times, and the more efficient warming of houses, took some steps to modernize the Manse. The old fireplaces were rebuilt with drastic reduction in width and depth and in waste of warmed air up the chimney, and stoves were coming in.
The fireplace opening at once offered occasion for the use of revived ancient architectural treatment in the mantel, a device which now embarked on a long and varied life of its own. If im- provements in domestic heating were prophetic of the develop- ment of science as the paramount interest of our time, the deli- cately wrought mantel was one result of a science that, in a sense, occupied an analogous position of attention in the late 18th century. This was the science of archaeology, that began with the discovery of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and
JENNY LIND.
She called Northampton the "Paradise of America"
m
The Red Castle, King Street (1814)
1
Bodman House, Elm Street and Round Hill ( 1861)
The Round House, 32 Conz Street (1829)
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Stabia that had lain buried by the eruption of Vesuvius since the year 79. By this means Roman life became very human and alive after 1750. A whole world of form and color was unearthed to be studied and exploited and the effect on the arts was both profound and widespread.
All this came to America through such widely circulated books as those of the Paines whose "fancy cornices" and other details were often ingeniously modified from many sources, notably those of the furniture-makers. Asher Benjamin's first building book came out in Greenfield in 1793. Through such wood- and steel-engraved exemplars came the side-lights and fan-lights of doorways, the modillioned cornices, attenuated columns and pilasters, meticulously articulated front porches, finely moulded casings and mantels with slim colonnettes decorated with delicate urns and draped maidens, that gave a new look to every com- munity.
In the first quarter of the 19th century three houses of the Shepherd family were erected on Round Hill. They were places of some elegance and fronted on their terraced gardens that reached down the slope to the line of present State Street. One of these, much extended, its garden front of soapstone from the Middlefield quarry, is Rogers Hall of the Clarke School. When it was put to the new use it was surmounted by the French roof which added space and at the same time rejuvenated its fashion. The northernmost of the trio became Dudley Hall of Clarke School, huddled with later additions. It retains the general shape of the three-story hip-roofed dwelling that became a common type and reached its final expression in the prosperous seaport towns of Salem and Portsmouth.
Polly Pomeroy's house of 1802 was probably designed by Asher Benjamin, as was the Kirkland place on Pleasant Street. These two were perhaps as fine as any homes in the region, with Adam finesse carried out in general proportions and an attempt at faithful adherence to literal reproduction. The porch arrived in this era full blown and the delicately detailed Pomeroy porch has a somewhat reduced counterpart at 58 Hawley Street.
White paint now came into its own and with reason. White delineates form and surface pattern, and concise form and sensi- tively modeled surfaces were the essence of the Adam manner.
Isaac Damons was one of many builders of the time who, ap-
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prenticed in the building trade, were brought up in the traditions of the craft and worked with the builders' handbooks as their grammars. He was an outstanding figure whose activities were by no means confined to this immediate region. To his credit was the construction of many bridges, from New England to the Ohio River, beside many other buildings. Working in a simple idiom, Damons is representative of many craftsmen who possessed in- herent taste and in their provincial translations from such as the Benjamin books, became more than amateurs.
Damons, 29 years old when he came from Weymouth to con- struct the new church, built also his own home, now 46 Bridge Street. It is an elemental, rectangular form disposed with careful relations between wall space and openings and a cornice simply detailed and in perfect proportion. The central entrance porch still retains its modest but decorative railing and even without the slender roof balustrade seen in a photograph taken in the '50's above the cornice, the house has grace and suavity.
The Red Castle, with its three stories of brick and delicately detailed woodwork, was built by Dr. Frink, a Southerner. It was the fashion, perhaps as protection against moisture, to paint brick walls with red mineral paint. Over the years the aging coating gave the surfaces a subtle cherry tint such as is still to be seen on Deerfield church. With the enthusiasm for decorative detail ar- rived the fan-light and side-lights-a feature that became a habit.
The Red Castle looked like Charleston, with the bel étage, the principal story, above a lower ground story. In the '30's a splendid new entrance was installed at the upper level, and a new two-story porch with Greek columns incorporated two circular staircases, flanking the entrance and winding up to the front door. It was as characterful a property in this town, where business has destroyed practically all characterful properties, as the "Three Bricks" in Nantucket, where it is excellent business to preserve them. Its demolition removed the last of those distinguished early 19th century evidences of the town's era of elegance and presented the ironic situation of organizations being founded to promote West- ern New England's attractions for tourists as a commercial asset, while at the same time wreckers made rubble of one of the town's most notable exhibits.
Thomas Pratt came in 1812 and was a prominent builder of the old school. His house at 83 North Street contains a room of Adam
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form-a symmetrical plan of octagonal shape, the four short lengths of diagonal wall containing Roman niches. The four- square hip roof permitted the cornice to continue on all four sides of the building. Other examples are at 75 Bridge Street with a Gothic trellis over the front door, and at the corner of Fort Hill Terrace and South Street.
Asher Benjamin of Boston designed and Peleg Kingsley of Brattleboro began the construction of the meeting-house that, after the Unitarian Church was built in 1825, was known as the Old Church. By the time the roof was in place Isaac Damons took over and completed the contract. At the time it was reputedly the largest meeting-house in the state west of Boston and seated 1400 people at its dedication.
1825-1840
At some time not far from 1830 the Stoddard Italianate en- trance to the Manse was succeeded by a quite different frontis- piece. Something new had been brewing in American taste that rapidly altered the physiognomy of every community from Maine to South Carolina and west to Michigan. If one could not change the entire face of his house, at least he could do the archi- tecturally right thing by replacing a prominent feature in the current manner. This new portal of the Manse was flanked by sash with glass divided in rectangular pattern. Fan-light and cur- vaceous lines gave way to crisp rectangles. It was spoken of as being Greek, though no citizen of Pericles' city would have recognized it as such.
To understand this new appearance, we must recall that the master-builders while changing form and detail from one genera- tion to another drew on classical sources transmitted through English and then American books. Construction methods were advancing with ever greater demands on the builders. Such in- fluential handbooks as Asher Benjamin's American Builder's Com- panion and others gave evidence that the archaeological rage had moved on to new fields, focussing attention on the older and subtler classical Greek forms. By the time the generation of 1800 had arrived at maturity, this new Greek style was ousting the Roman.
Fifty years after their Revolution, Americans were ready and eager to hail a national art to match their achievements in litera-
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ture. The Greek manner had its case opportunely built up as something derived, not from unpopular England, but from an original source, to be made into something our very own. Ro- mantic Lord Byron and his championship of the Greek war for independence made a poignant appeal and Greek architecture, by association, came to be a symbol for freedom. This movement coincided with a great furore of building throughout the country. It was the last time that, as a nation, we were to be in agreement on architectural language, or that a Main Street or village green in Ohio would be practically a counterpart of the center of a New England town.
Greek architecture meant temples, almost the only Hellenic type time had spared. Entrance to a temple was at its pediment- its gable-end. The amusing first and immediate reaction here was that houses suddenly made a quarter-turn and faced their gable- ends instead of their eaves to the street.
At 2 10 Elm Street and 49 Lyman Road this transition was made in simple, unporticoed structures, but the carpenter held to the older detail, running the members of cornice and doorway with the hand-planes his father had used.
The Henry G. Bowers mansion, where now is Prospect Apart- ments, was finished in 1827. Ithiel Town of New Haven, just establishing himself in New York, was the architect. Captain Isaac Damons perhaps constructed it, for Damons was then using Town's patented truss in his bridge work. The Bowers house was a two-story templar form with the eastern portico in full Ionic order, looking out over the terraced gardens that extended down to the lane, now State Street, where the canal would soon be, and embracing the wide panorama to the Pelham hills.
There were two-storied wings with colonnades of square piers, and across the west front a two-storied portico. The walls were brick, surfaced with smooth plaster. The curved stair that soared up from the wide hall was a "magic stair," a delight of the time, its means of support an utter mystery. High-ceilinged rooms were crowned with moulded cornices and the door and window finish heavily wrought, with plaster-of-Paris rosettes in the panelled corner-blocks. No one ever again built so elegant a residence in this region.
January 18, 1828, the Hampshire Gazette noted that "The frame of the dwelling house erecting for Charles A. Dewey, Esq.
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in this town, ... was raised a short time since with the greatest facility, without using ardent spirits."
Yankee sense could see no call, in wood construction, for six expensive fluted columns with carved capitals, across the front, so they reduced it to a colonnade of four. Temples were of marble and marble was gleaming white, so while clapboards might do for other walls, the portico could simulate marble by using smooth boards fitted closely together and the whole painted white.
Judge Howe's residence, once the law school conducted by Mr. Howe and George Bancroft, the historian, now Capen House on Prospect Street, is a less sophisticated version of templar de- sign. Greek pediments were left rigorously plain and the windows inserted in the gable here, as at Dewey House, are later conces- sions to attic ventilation.
By 1840 very massive effects were commonly in vogue in ex- terior patterns, such as the deep cornices and wide corners that adorn 187 Elm Street.
One of the most intriguing of all creations the era produced anywhere was the house Edward Clark, a Boston merchant, built on Round Hill for a summer home. It was U-shaped in plan and opened on the street; its two-storied center pavilion and side wings formed a forecourt surrounded by a Doric colonnade. Above it, across the central portion, was a balcony with a concave roof and latticed supports, reminiscent of perhaps the Chinese vogue in London. The living area was on the east, commanding the prospect of the Valley and mountains. It was destroyed by Clarke School.
Of business buildings, the only important one seems to have been the old Granite Block on Main Street. Granite, the most en- during of structural stone and the favorite masonry material of the time, gave way to stones more easily worked, as the ideal of permanence and integrity deteriorated. The upper part of this front, capped by some later cornice, still peers out on the street from above the mask of utter chaos in signs.
The Lathrop house at 65 Bridge Street, built late in the '40's for a New England boy who had prospered in business in Savan- nah, is Southern in flavor. It probably introduced the almost flat, metal-covered roof and wide projecting cornice to Northampton and shows on all sides the elegant smooth wood surface of the
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Greek Revival. The entrance is Greek and the tall rooms are finished in the massive Greek manner of the '40's.
There were round churches in Philadelphia and Charleston and an occasional round school building in New England, but a round house must have been a novelty when Seth Strong set out his own dwelling on a circular plan in 1829. He based his un- orthodox design on a more sensible relation of windows to the sun's rays and the winds. The tower of the winds at Athens had eight sides, one for each wind. But if Strong eliminated angles on the outside, he gained some queer shapes for rooms on the inside. The brick walls were covered with stucco and the front entrance was in the new Greek style, without a porch. This house is at 32 Conz Street.
1840-1860
Around 1840 a strange architectural innovation attached itself to the doorway of the Manse. That it was no kin of the old house or any part of it was evident at a glance. But any misgivings as to its propriety there must have been soon dispelled by other and similar Gothic fabrics applied to the front entrances of the Shep- herd's and the Cook's on Bridge Street. This trellis was a great- great grandchild of old mediaeval form in a line of descent through dalliance with the Picturesque of the late 18th century, by way of the Romantic poets and story-writers of England. And through the '30's the American imagination was fascinated by the novels of Scott who wrote his Gothic romances in his mediaeval house at Abbotsford, and by the tales of Irving who had made over Sunnyside into a Tudor castle.
The Romantic Spirit is always present, in terms peculiar to its time, and while we moderns look amusedly askance on what little is left of Victorian remains, our own generation is scrambling after its lure more desperately than ever.
Late 18th century England had found a new interest in an- tiquity in the neglected relics of the mediaeval past about its own countryside. Little that was factual and prosaic was known about those churches and monastic establishments and their venerable and abundant ruins were a fertile field for exercise of the imagina- tion. The study of mediaeval architecture began then. By 1840 the new taste had shaped a cottage or two in Northampton and 40
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years later the First Congregational and St. Mary's churches were late descendants in a still very much alive architectural current.
The books of Alexander Jackson Downing, published from 1 842 to the '70's, had much to do with the new trend in communi- ties, not only in their houses, but in their grounds and planting. These were a compendium of building for Everyman, from brief lessons in the philosophy of architecture to advice on warming the house and the benefits of moving the plumbing from the breezy northwest corner of the woodshed into the very house it- self.
Downing restored the realistic approach, and his basic prin- ciples were sound for any time and his precepts essentially mod- ern. A house should look like a house and the kind of house one built should be determined first of all by its use, then by climate and site, and he laughed at the white temples that sacrificed groups of windows, shady verandas, and flexibility of the interior plan. The sun, the winds, and the view should help determine how rooms were to be placed. He divided his domestic models into Cottages, Farmhouses and Villas or Country Houses.
The present Childs Park was formerly enclosed by hedges and planted with elms and exotic shrubbery with the Watson villa at the end of the winding drive. The house was Gothic, with steep gables edged with verge-boards cut in scalloped patterns and the pointed-arched portal was below a projecting oriel. There were Tudor windows, and clustered chimney stacks, and like most Romantic dwellings it was of wood and painted maroon.
The Moody brown cottage at Round Hill Road has experi- enced promiscuous alteration and addition by Clarke School but the hired-man's cottage, next beyond, appropriately vine-clad, retains much character in spite of the prevailing indiscriminate urge to be conspicuous in white.
The colorists of the time felt strongly about color. From Sir Joshua Reynolds down, they inveighed against white in the land- scape and recommended those colors which Nature "offers to the eye-those of the soil, rocks, wood and the bark of trees."
The brick house at 23 Round Hill Road followed the Tudor manner. The Gaylord-Bassett villa at 58 Pomeroy Terrace, in wood, derives from several Victorian sources of domestic charm. Pomeroy Terrace offered a wide prospect over the meadows to the Holyoke mountains and the gardens were laid out to take
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