American Colonial Architecture: Rural Homes and Homesteads of Hudson Valley in the Mid-Seventeenth to Late-Eighteenth Century
By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: February 28, 2022
Submitted to: Dr. Samuel Smith – Liberty University
Course: HIUS 510 American Colonial History
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “American Colonial Architecture: Rural Homes and Homesteads of Hudson Valley in the Mid-Seventeenth to Late-Eighteenth Century.” Historical Interpretations. Jonathan Wanzer, February 28, 2022. http://wanzer.org/american-colonial-architecture/.
Introduction
There are three primary cultural divisions of distinct colonial building practices and architecture represented in the New World of the seventeenth century; Anglo-American, French, and Spanish. The Anglo-American colonies of the North American continent are divided into four geographical areas; Southern Colonial, New England, the Middle Colonies, and New York. The New Netherland (1624-1664) area, which became known as New York in 1664, was also known as the Dutch Colonies[1] for much of the seventeenth century.
The Colonial period for architecture ends with the transition to the Georgian period around the beginning of the eighteenth century for all of the colonies with the exception of the Dutch Colonies. The transition began with the Atlantic coastal cities, towns, and villages then slowly migrated to the inland areas. Originating in Holland and Flanders the “…distinctive style of great tenacity,” the Dutch Colonial style, persisted in many areas, including some of the Atlantic coastal areas into the Hudson Valley “until well after the Revolution.”[2]
The scope of this paper is narrowed to a period beginning around 1630 to the mid-1770s and the rough geographical area of the Dutch colonies in and around the area of the Hudson Valley. A limitation to this project is a lack of detailed published archeological studies of the structures themselves regarding materials and methods used in construction. Another limitation is the physical distance from the sites referenced. Some sites are still standing and accessible which presents opportunities for future research to detail the construction methods and materials specifically. The author draws, in part from a considerable personal knowledge of primitive construction techniques and their execution in practice, tools available in the period, and the processing of available materials. This presents the possibility of some bias and conjecture, particularly in tool choices and usage because this area is rarely covered in the existing texts. Lastly, the short available time to conduct a deeper investigation in these areas limits the depth of research.
Early Dwellings
Like most seventeenth-century pioneer colonists, the first dwellings were primitive dug-out pit shelters[3] or simple huts depending on the climate. The Reverend Jonas Michaelius describes these primitive shelters in 1628; “They (the settlers) are therefore beginning to build new houses in place of the hovels and holes in which heretofore they huddled rather than dwelt.”[4] The primary materials used in the Hudson Valley were wood, stone, and brick, in some instances all three have been found in some structures. The first pit shelters were earthen dugouts lined with rough-cut saplings, small trees, and bark with simple floors and ceilings, usually of sod. In 1650 Cornelis Van Tienhoven, secretary of New Netherland, writes:
…[they] dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper; case the earth all round the wall with timber, which they line with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving-in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling; raise a roof spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three or four years, it being understood that partitions are run through these cellars, which are adapted to the size of the family.[5]
Tienhoven’s report also included a recommendation for potential colonists as to the timing of their voyage across the Atlantic and a proposed plan of action once they arrived in the New World. He recommends that the colonists depart from Europe in the winter timing their arrival in New Netherlands sometime in March or April allowing them to clear enough land, gather material to build a cottage the next year, and have enough time to plant basic subsistence gardens with maize and beans in the summer. They were encouraged to spend the following winter cutting additional timber and clearing more land in preparation to accommodate livestock in the second summer, usually cattle, though horses and pigs were also common livestock. Having enough land for the shelter, a garden, and livestock, they would have the lumber to build a permanent house and barn from both winter clearings.[6]
This process is not unlike the initial settling of Plymouth colony where the colonists were advised that shelter was the primary issue they would need to solve on their own as soon as they arrived. They were told they would need carpentry skills, woodworking tools, and hardware including nails,[7] the details of which will be covered in a later section. “Governor Winslow further advised that the colonists first ‘cabins’ should be ‘as open as you can,’ and they should ‘bring paper and linseed oil for your windows.’”[8] Conditions, however, were considerably less brutal for the Dutch colony’s settlers weather-wise giving them the advantage in early settlement and establishing their communities.
After these earlier initial structures had been completed colonists would begin building permanent structures in their second or third spring. The pit shelters would often serve later as a detached cellar and were occasionally incorporated into later structural additions. There have been several surveys of these later, permanent structures that were still standing in the 20th century by researchers in the region. Reynolds surveys for her book Dutch Houses were conducted in the 1920s and included houses that were in existence in the seventeenth century in the areas of “Beverwyck (Albany), 1652; Wiltwyck (Kingston), 1653; Schenectady, 1662; Nieuw Dorp (Hurley), 1662; and New Paltz, 1677.”[9] Morrison, in the 1950s, included many of the same locations and structures in his surveys for his book Early American Architecture.
In the houses of Wiltwyck (Kingston) from 1653-1664 the construction methods were simple and rough, though there were examples of ongoing refinement taking place, “(houses) were log or board cabins of one story, with a loft or garret. Sometimes a fire was built on the floor and an opening in the roof to let out the smoke. Sometimes there was a wooden chimney. Finally, there were chimneys of stone or brick. Roofs were made of thatch until, in 1669, the parsonage was referred to as covered with tiles.”[10]
Most of the early houses were either of stone construction or wood-framed, usually on a stone foundation, sometimes including a full-sized cellar, usually stone-walled, and occasionally with stone piles or pillars for structural support on later larger houses. Wood-framed houses were often similar to the New England style in that they were predominantly of timber frame construction with infill between the large posts often of “…smaller studs and a framework of laths holding a filling of clay bound by chopped straw or horsehair”[11] which is similar to the English waddle and daub construction method replacing the typical thin willow branches with woven lattices of thin split lumber.[12] On some larger structures, multiple layers of lattice with 1 to 2 inches of spacing between being added after the daub mixture is added creating a thick, strong wall between the large posts and beams.
The timber frame and infill are only one part of the structure, arguably, the roof is the most important part of the house. It provides the greater portion of the shelter of a structure. A lean-to, one of the most basic shelters and often used in the woods certainly would have been the first structure built by the colonial settlers to protect them from wind and rain before they dig the pit shelters. Once dug, the roof over the pit provided protection from the rain and snow. Once a more permanent structure was built it too required a roof that would protect from the rain, wind, and snow. “Nearly all the buildings in the village had thatched roofs of reeds or straw.” Thatched roofs can be found on structures hundreds of years old standing today all over Europe. Though they are rarely seen in America today, they were common in the colonial period. The thatched roof does have a large drawback, “the people were in the habit of burning straw and other refuse in the streets, thus exposing the buildings to damage or destruction by fire. On October 16, 1662, it was enacted that no person should set fire to any refuse within the village.”[13]
The thatched roof is more suited to the rural environment where it still thrives in England. In more populous areas thatching gave way to shingles, and eventually tiles. This was true in England and in the colonies.[14]
As the homesteads were becoming established the many inhabitants shifted to stone foundations or structures made entirely stone as the colonists replaced their temporary structures. Stone was probably used before brick because it was already on site, and brick had to be imported or manufactured and delivered. In the seventeenth century, and for most of the eighteenth the use of stone was general in all the river counties.[15]
Stone structures often used a clay, straw, and horsehair mixture as a mortar and gap filler or chinking like the mixture used for plastering and infill in timber-framed structures.[16] There are many methods of building with stone, two main categories are rough stone and faced stone. Early stone houses tended to the rough stone dry-stacked, meaning no mortar was used to hold the stones in place. The builder matched stones to fit tightly together with a cross-section of three layers, outer, middle, and inner. There was space between the inner and outer that would be filled with small rubble. Spaced throughout the wall would be larger, usually flat stones that would span all three sections connecting the inner to outer. The rubble center allowed for drainage of accumulated moisture. The outer might have a chinking mix pushed into the gaps from the outside to keep out rain and wind while the inside of the wall would have the same chinking between stones leveling it to some degree and then plastered over with the mixture.[17] Later structures would use a similar method known as double-faced where the stones were worked more by chiseling them to flatter faces. The outer chinking material would need to be repaired on a regular basis as it was not waterproof. When water did get inside the walls a freeze-thaw cycle could cause movement and cracks on the inside so over time replastering at least the surface would be necessary.
Brick was a popular material in the Hudson Valley, but because brick needed to be manufactured and delivered it was a more expensive option. As bricks were either imported or made near urban centers, they were far more common in and near urban areas. When bricks were used in home construction in the Hudson Valley, they often used the Flemish or Dutch Cross pattern, or bond, for the layout which used two sizes of bricks, full-length and half-length. The two common types of bricks were “English” bricks, about 2.5 inches thick and closely approximated what we know today as red building bricks, and Flemish bricks, which were about 1.5 inches thick.[18]
With stone and brick houses being built the outer coating needed to be more robust than the clay mud with cellulose fiber binders. Lime plaster was not a new technology, but it needed to be manufactured which took time to establish. An early resource for shell-lime was the Atlantic oyster-beds. Later, the limestone ridges in the Hudson Valley were discovered and exploited. As an example, the “Firehole” at Barnegat in Poughkeepsie earned its name in the 18th century from the flames billowing out of the dozens of limestone kilns.[19] Having the limestone manufacturing close at hand made it less expensive and readily available. The addition of lime to the chinking and plaster made them more robust and water-resistant decreasing the time and effort in upkeep and frequency of repairs of the structure.
The use of stone in housebuilding declined toward the end of the eighteenth century in all the river counties except Ulster where it continued into the nineteenth century.[20] While there was no one Dutch style, there were two primary influences in style, Holland which was predominant in New Amsterdam and the Hudson Valley, and the Flanders which was primarily in New Jersey and parts of Long Island. Moving into the eighteenth century, many rural houses in the Hudson Valley had a cellar, often the size of the whole house. As families grew, so did the houses, as the colonists began refining their houses, and expanding them, they began to divide the mostly open floor plan into a divided floorplan of separate rooms. In 1687 Governor Dongan made a report, “In the country the houses are mostly newly built, having two or three rooms on a floor.”[21] This also indicates that second floors were becoming more common.
With the second story came changes in rooflines. Single-pitch rooves having dormers, and multi-pitch, gambrel rooves becoming more common. The New England shallow top pitch and lower steeper pitch of about 60 degrees with an even break, the Dutch has a higher break shallow top of around 22 degrees and lower pitch of around 45 degrees, and the Swedish very shallow top pitch of around 15 degrees and very steep lower pitch around 75 degrees.[22] By this point, the outer roofing materials were almost exclusively split shingles.
Though not always the case, some houses, particularly in rural farmlands, their evolution can be seen, from the first original pit shelter, expanded above to a larger cabin, later grafting a larger house onto the cabin. Not wasting any space or effort, the old pit being used as a cellar, with the cabin becoming the kitchen, the latest house providing living space and bedrooms. Further expansions often adding larger fireplaces and chimneys and replacing wood chimneys with stone ones. [23] The mix of materials and building styles can show how the house has grown and changed over the years. This can also be seen in the mix of outbuildings and their evolutions.
While very few of these houses remain, some do still stand, one such house is noted in Reynolds Dutch Hoses in the Hudson River Valley Before 1776, in the section on houses in Ulster County, the House of Jacobus Bruyn. Jacobus was a Norwegian who founded Ulster County, possibly one of the reasons his house still stands. “Jacobus… fixed his home before 1700 on the Shawangunk Kill at the eastern base of the Shawangunk range of hills.”[24] “During the 1930s, the house was photo-documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). Designated ‘HABS NY56-WAWARS, 2’ and assigned the name ‘Bruin House,’” and the photos of the survey are reportedly available on the Library of Congress website [25] according to Harris.
“The volunteer who visited the house in 1976 as part of the Town of Wawarsing Historic Building Survey noted the house retained ‘…many original features’ and described these on the field report sheet, including the flooring, ceiling beams, original glass panes, Dutch doors, and hardware.”[26] The house was surveyed again in 2008 by Greg Huber. It was also included in the 2015 Harris survey. The Bruyn House has been noted in several documented surveys over the last 90 years. Unfortunately, these surveys contain very little information about the building materials and construction techniques used to build them.
Tools and Hardware
The minimum in tools required to build a long-term shelter is the felling ax, the German felling ax was flat-topped with a drop point and a heavy-duty shoulder with the blade edge parallel to the handle. One could build a hewn shelter or a cabin with just the felling ax, though it would take considerably longer than it would with a few more tools. A better result would come from the addition of an offset hewing ax, flat to the “handed side” and a broader blade, though somewhat thinner, for debarking and squaring timbers,[27] a pair of 8 to 10-inch wedges for splitting timbers into smaller beams or boards and will make felling easier. A froe for making shingles and small boards can also double as a flat draw knife in a pinch. A small hatchet or hand ax for smaller woodworking projects like making replacement ax handles, frames for saws, tool fixtures, and rough furniture was, and still is the minimum tool for a woodsman of any sort. Adding a 30-inch frame saw or larger pit saw would facilitate the cutting of good board lumber. Mallets, benches, and supporting tools would all be made in the field with the hand ax. Other very beneficial tools would be a two-handed crosscut saw, auger, brace and bits, 18-inch drawknife, spokeshave, and an assortment of planes.[28]
Sometimes, because of the awkward shapes, and the limited space onboard ships, the “irons” would be shipped without handles, frames, and boxes that could be made with wood once the colonists reached their new colonies. The irons were heavy but took up considerably less space without their wood components. One cask could fit all the iron for the tools listed above with room to spare. Long saw blades were sometimes shipped in large rolls of canvas or duck.[29] While rope could be made from a variety of plants available in the New World, birch bark being an excellent source of fibers, having a couple of hundred feet of “finger thick” (3/8”) rope already at hand could speed up the process as making rope by harvesting fibers, separating them, and hand twisting them takes a lot of time that could be better spent elsewhere.
In some of the sources, they mention that colonists should bring nails and hardware. A good list of hardware suggested was not available, though a few things likely would be hinges, latches, and wheels. These would likely be wrapped and put in the “tool iron” cask along with nails and irons for things like block and tackle sets. All of this could be held in a 10-gallon cask that would weigh anywhere from 100 to 170 pounds.
This collection of tools would be sufficient to build a modest to nice, even fancy house of the period as well as all the furnishings to fill it. What it does not consider is the forge work that would be needed to do the smithing of new tools and repairing old, damaged ones. Another cask of smith’s tools would round out what would be needed to build a thriving community in New World. Basic smith’s tools include hammers, files, and tongs. These would be enough to get started. The remaining issue would be to find raw iron for new projects.
The education process for both mechanics and smiths includes building most of the tools they use on a regular basis from raw materials, more so for the smith, so one with the minimum of tools they would be able to build out what they need as they establish themselves.
Conclusion
We have examples of structures from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries still in existence and many of them have been studied, at least cursory surveys over the last two centuries. To give us a truly clear understanding of the structures and how they were built, deeper investigations of their construction need to be done. Examples like the Bruyn house with the outward architectural appearance of today and in photographs over the last 90 years only gives us a surface look at the period. There is so much evidence still present in this and other historic structures. Even if only a portion of the original structures remain, even just a single wall encased within centuries of remodeling, it can provide a great deal of information on the materials and methods used to construct the colonial homes of the Hudson River Valley.
Bibliography
Primary
Harper, Ross K. “The ca. 1638 Waterman Site, Marshfield, Massachusetts: The Anatomy of a Pilgrim House.” Historical archaeology. 55, no. 2 (2021): 188–218.
Isham, Norman M. Early American Houses and a Glossary of Colonial Architectural Terms. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. 1967.
Oakley, Imogen B. Six Historic Homesteads. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1935.
Secondary
Cramb, Ian. The Art of the Stonemason. Chambersburg, PA: Alan C. Hood and Company, 1992.
Harris, Wendy E. and Arnold Pickman. “Historic Stone Houses in the Town of Wawarsing Ulster County, New York.” (Ulster County, NY: Joint Historic Preservation Commission of the Town of Wawarsing and the Village of Ellenville, 2015). https://cragsmoorconsultants.com/Stonehouse.pdf
Kelly, Fredrick J. Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 2007.
Morrison, Hugh. Early American Architecture: From the first Colonial Settlements to the National Period. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. 1952.
Mercer, Henry C. Ancient Carpenters’ Tools. Doylestown, PA: Bucks County Historical Society. 1929
Reynolds, Helen W. Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley Before 1776. Mineola, NY: Dover. 1965.
Sobon, Jack and Roger Schroder. Timber Frame Construction: All About Post-and-Beam Building. North Adams, MAL Store Publishing, 1984.
Van Buren, Augustus H. A History of Ulster County Under Dominion of the Dutch. Kingston, NY: J.C. & A.L. Fawcett, 1923.
[1] Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture: From the first Colonial Settlements to the National Period, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1952. 3-5
[2] Ibid 5 quotes
[3] Helen W. Reynolds, Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley Before 1776, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1965 16; Morrison, Early American Architecture 9
[4] Reynolds, Dutch Houses 16
[5] ibid
[6] Reynolds, Dutch Houses 16-17
[7] Ross K. Harper, “The ca. 1638 Waterman Site, Marshfield, Massachusetts: The Anatomy of a Pilgrim House,” Historical archaeology, 55, no. 2 (2021), 193.
[8] Ibid, quotes from Dwight B. Heath ed., Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Bedford, MA: Applewood, 1963. 86
[9] Reynolds, Dutch Houses. 17
[10] Ibid quoting Augustus H. Van Buren, A History of Ulster County Under Dominion of the Dutch, Kingston, NY: J.C. & A.L. Fawcett, 1923. A page reference is not provided.
[11] Morrison, Early American Architecture. 102
[12] Jack Sobon and Roger Schroeder, Timber Frame Construction: All About Post-and-Beam Building, North Adams, MA: Store Publishing, 1984. 153, 160
[13] Van Buren, A History of Ulster County. 55
[14] The author deduces that the decline in thatching in the colonies was twofold, first, the unsuitability of the medium in the urban environments, and secondly the threat of Indian attacks in the rural areas made the highly flammable roof material a poor choice of building material by the mid to late seventeenth century as mentions of thatched roof declines dramatically before 1700 in primary and secondary sources. With little call for a thatcher, it is likely that the trade died off in the colonies early on, making a revival impossible without importing tradesmen from Europe. In the early colonial period, a substitute for thatching was sod rooves over pit shelters and cabins. The use of sod for roofs of smaller shelters and outbuildings continued in inland areas and the central plains continued into the twentieth century and is seeing a revival in the green-building movement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
[15] Reynolds, Dutch Houses. 18
[16] Morrison, Early American Architecture. 102
[17] Ian Cramb, The Art of the Stonemason, Chambersburg, PA: Alan C. Hood and Company, 1992. 13-30
[18] Morrison, Early American Architecture. 103 The look of the Flemish bricks was incorporated into later styles like the American Craftsman of the 1940-1960, frequently used by Frank Lloyd Write, and again is some later 1960s modern designs.
[19] Reynolds, Dutch Houses. 18-19
[20] Ibid 19
[21] Ibid 18
[22] Morrison, Early American Architecture. 123
[23] Ibid 126-129
[24] Reynolds, Dutch Houses. 187
[25] Wendy E. Harris and Arnold Pickman, “Historic Stone Houses in the Town of Wawarsing Ulster County, New York.” (Ulster County, NY: Joint Historic Preservation Commission of the Town of Wawarsing and the Village of Ellenville, 2015). https://cragsmoorconsultants.com/Stonehouse.pdf 4
[26] Harris and Pickman, “Historic Stone Houses Ulster County” 4
[27] With a little practice a 12” by 12” 20 footlong beam can be hewn and ready for joinery in 3 to 4 hours. Most sources describing the skills of the early colonists do not indicate there being a lot of woodworkers, or mechanics as they were known. If a colonist lived long enough to get to building their permanent house, or helped several others, they would likely develop the skillset, but at least one mechanic would be needed in the community who understood the joinery of timber framing to direct building. It can be learned by most people, but it is a complex skill that needs a mentor.
[28] Henry C. Mercer, Ancient Carpenters’ Tools, Doylestown, PA: Bucks County Historical Society, 1929. The list of tools is spread throughout the book in categories. These are common tools that have been around for centuries, most long before the seventeenth century.
[29] The author has a ships manifest with several entries like “1 csk mechanic’s irons” and “1 csk smith’s irons” the manifest was not available for reference.