![]() ![]() Cities left behind during the booms of the 19th century today treasure their rare, remaining Georgian houses. The Colonial towns that became big cities after the Revolutionary War long ago lost much of their early architecture. ![]() Strict symmetry, hipped roof, prominent chimneys, articulated corners, and door surround all point to Georgian style in a 1769 Massachusetts house. Doorways, especially, are decoratively framed, but elaborate plaster and wood trim was also used around windows, on ceilings, and in fireplace surrounds and overmantel treatments. Entire rooms might be paneled, floor to ceiling, most often with painted pine. Federal interiors (after 1785 or later) are light and delicate, whereas Georgian rooms retain a Baroque feel, with heavy woodwork and carving. If it is sometimes hard, from outside, to tell a particular Georgian house from a similar Federal one, the same cannot be said on the interior. Of the many variants of Georgian, almost all are classically symmetrical and built around a center hall.īlockier and more assertive than the attenuated Federal style that followed, Georgian houses are, in general, robust. The doorway might be extended to form an entry portico dormers and corner quoins became common two-storey pilasters and pedimented center gables were introduced. Colors and the English paper are authentic.ĭuring the later Georgian period, houses throughout the Colonies were more embellished. The elaborate Lady Pepperrell House (1760) at Kittery Point, Maine, was a favorite study piece for architects of the Colonial Revival. Grand examples-of wood rather than brick as in Virginia-became more common in the North only after 1750. The first high-style examples are in the South, built usually by affluent tobacco planters. Georgian architecture (often referred to here as “Colonial”) shows up in northern and southern Colonies during the first quarter of the 18th century. The Georgian vocabulary derives from Renaissance classicism, born in Italy and flourishing in England from about 1650. ![]() Named for the 18th-century English Kings George (1714 to 1830), the style was embraced by Colonists who gave an American twist to variants built from Maine to Georgia during those historic decades of Colonial prosperity and revolution. Rarely does an architectural style last a century, but that is the case with Georgian design. Georgian design-symmetrical, well-proportioned, simple yet substantial and vigorously detailed-is timeless and uplifting. Our 18th-century originals are confined to the thirteen Colonies, but Georgian style flourished again, more widely, during the height of the Colonial Revival. Drawing after a late Georgian- period house in Taunton, Massachusetts. ![]()
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