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Colonial Folkways: A Chronicle of American Life in the Reign of the Georges
Colonial Folkways A Chronicle of American Life in the Reign of the Georges Author:Charles McLean Andrews Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III COLONIAL HOUSES It is well worth while for us at this point to look more in detail at the colonial towns to see the houses in which our anc... more »estors dwelt and to note the architecture of their public edifices, for these men had a distinctive style of building as characteristic of their age as skyscrapers and apartment houses are of the present century. The household furnishings have also a charm of their own and in many cases, by their combination of utility and good taste, have provided models for the craftsmen of a later day. A brief survey of colonial houses, inside and out, will serve to give us a much clearer idea of the environment in which the people lived during the colonial era. The materials used by the colonists for building were wood, brick, and more rarely stone. At first practically all houses were of wood, as was natural in a country where this material lay ready to every man's hand and where the means for making brick or cutting stone were not readily accessible. Clay, though early used for chimneys, was not substantial enough for housebuilding, and lime for mortar and plaster was not easy to obtain. Though lime stone was discovered in New England in 1697, it was not known at all in the tidewater section of the South, where lime continued to the end of the era to be made from calcined oyster shells. Theeven- j teesth century was the period of wooden houses/ f wooden churches, and wooden public buildings; was the eighteenth century which saw the erectie of brick buildings in America. Up to the time of the Revolution bricks were brought from England and Holland, and are found entered in cargo lists as late as 1770, though they probably served often only as ballast. But most of the bricks used in colonial buildings were molded and burnt in...« less