In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz

Author:James Deetz [Deetz, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-87438-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

Such a house was obviously a substantial structure, and it is probably no coincidence that it describes a house very like the one excavated at Flowerdew Hundred, dating to the second half of the seventeenth century, and associated with the domestic production of iron.

In the area that once was Massachusetts Bay Colony there are only a scant dozen houses which predate the middle of the seventeenth century. These all appear to represent yet another type of house, with strong ties to East Anglia. All are substantial structures, characterized by central chimney placement, flanked by the standard hall-and-parlor arrangement, with entry through a small interior porch in front of the chimney. Of these houses, the Jonathan Fairbanks house in Dedham has the distinction of being the oldest timber-framed structure in the New World, dated by tree rings and documents to the year 1637.

The Fairbanks house shows its East Anglian derivation not only in the arrangement of rooms, but in a close parallel with details of framing, including curved wind braces, as well. The house is also an excellent example of the pattern of growth of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century vernacular American houses. Organic in the extreme, the houses of this early time grew according to need, and in their expansion reflected the development of the families that inhabited them. It is in this seemingly random but truly adaptive kind of accretion that such houses most strongly contrast with the academic structures that come to influence and ultimately replace them. Hugh Morrison makes the comparison succinctly:

A Gothic building evolved out of the plan, which was controlled by needs, and out of the varied materials employed, which were developed into decorative forms almost adventitiously by the many craftsmen who worked with them. It was not planned, so to speak—it just grew. The great difference between Gothic and Renaissance architecture is not merely a matter of stylistic details, but an essential difference in basic methods and philosophies of building. The one is expressional, the other geometric; Gothic architecture was evolutionary, Renaissance architecture was created.5

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