The first of four articles on the history of vernacular architecture in New Jersey by...

Janet W. FosterDomestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 December 2009

Although a relatively small state, NewJersey in the colonial period was at thecenter of the shifting balance of power

among European countries. The Swedes, theDutch, and the English all claimed some portionof modern New Jersey at some period in the 17th

century. Although Germany was not yet unitedinto the country we now know, people from itsprovinces and city-states emigrated to the NewWorld, including New Jersey in the 18th century.The boundaries of the state and its officiallanguage were set in 1664 when New Jersey’sland was fully claimed bythe Duke of York in thesettlement marking theDutch surrender of NewNetherlands, but themultiple heritages of itsearliest European settlerswould leave an indeliblemark for another century-and-a-half.

Architecture—the art ofcreating habitable space—was carried out in the 17th

and 18th centuries bycraftsmen-builders whoentered an apprenticeshipas young men, and retiredas masters with apprenticesof their own. What wasknown about the performance of materials, thestructural requirements of live loading and theinternal reinforcements necessary to allow abuilding to weather a strong nor’easter gale, hadall been learned by trial and error, overcenturies. The transmitted knowledge was solid,reliable, and largely resistant to innovation.

Vernacular, or populist, architecture waslocal—it reflected climactic conditions, materialavailability, and culture. It influenced ideas ofappropriate ways to build, and inside, thedisposition of space. Whether one entered ahouse directly into a kitchen, or directly into ahallway, reflected community traditions andculture. Whether roofs were tile, slate or thatchreflected local familiarity with the handling ofsuch materials; learning to handle the materialswas part of a particular culture. Because of its

local nature, traditional builders and their clientsshared mental blueprints of what a house—orchurch, or store—should look like. The onlything open to discussion was its location andrelative size.

The vernacular building traditions ofEnglishmen from different parts of Great Britain,and of the Swedes, the Dutch, the Germans, allwere re-created to some extent in New Jersey inthe 17th century. When people establishedthemselves well enough to build a permanenthouse, they of course reached to the traditions

they knew. Although in asense frontier settlers, thesepeoples of England andSweden and Holland andGermany also thought ofthemselves—at first, atleast—as very much a part ofa community that extendedto the other side of theAtlantic. They intentionallycreated “New” Jersey, filledwith communities named forthe Old World—Newark,Hanover, Middlesex—with aneye to improving, but alsorecalling, the old version ofthe place.

The Lenni Lenape hadcreated perfectly serviceable

vernacular dwellings of their own, includinglong-houses that ably used the abundant localtrees as a material. But the European settlerswho encountered them had their own buildingtradition in wood, and deemed their ownmethod superior. The de-forestation of Europeduring the medieval period is well known, aspeople chopped down trees for fuel, housing,and agricultural pursuits. Thus, although theirbuilding traditions relied on wood, it hadbecome rather a luxury by the time the firstsettlers were reaching America in the 17th

century. Presented with all the timber that couldbe harvested, wood was used for all buildingframes and trimwork, as had been the norm inEurope. Because of the abundance of woodand the lack of brick and tile manufacturingfacilities, wood was adopted for roofing and

A reconstruction of a Lenape hut—the firstNew Jersey vernacular architecture.

From http://www.lenapeprograms.info/

sheathing of almost all buildings, giving thecolonial settlements right from the start adistinctive, “American” look.

The Swedes established forts and settlementsalong the Delaware River and Delaware Bay, inan attempt to establish an agricultural colonythat would help support the motherland. FortNya Elfsborg was located near today’s Salem,New Jersey, and guarded the nearby farmersand woodsmen who settled there beginning in1639. The Swedish colonists, brought with themthe far-northern European tradition of buildingwith tree trunks roughly squared and the laidone on top of the other—what we now call a“log cabin.” Although European versions coulddemonstrate quite sophisticated carpentry, theform also lent itself to a simplicity that did notneed much in the ways of tools or buildingskills. Log cabins were held together by thecorner notching; nails were useless with the bigtimbers that could be cut from the virgin forests,and nails were a scarce and expensive importeditem anyway in the earliest days of settlement.

The Swedish colony was small and producedrelatively few log buildings in New Jersey. TheSwedes themselves officially surrendered theirforts and settlements to the Dutch in 1655, whoin turn gave them over to the English in 1664.But the sturdy log buildings along the Delawarewere seen by many later immigrants cominginto Philadelphia from all over Europe, and theidea of the log building was thus successfullytransmitted to the New World. The log house,first seen in the New World in settlements inNew Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvaniabecame an American archetype, linked with theopening of the West for its ease in constructionand the way it utilized the most abundantmaterial seen on the eastern half of the country.

Dutch New Netherlands centered on thetrading port of New Amsterdam, later NewYork, which had an urban center from themoment of its founding. In the city, Dutchmerchants re-created the brick buildings withnarrow facades topped by front-facing gablesfamiliar from Amsterdam and Leiden as soon asthey could. But New Netherlands was a water-borne empire, and it stretched far up theHudson, River, inland to the Delaware River,

and all along the lands of Staten Island, LongIsland, and New Jersey where there was directwater contact with New York Harbor. In thesefar flung, rural places, the Dutch settlers usedmodels of farm buildings from the Netherlandsas their guide to building. In most cases, theyfound wood to be the best available material forbuilding, and so transformed the traditionalbrick farmhouses of Holland into frame housesin America.

One-and-a half-stories tall, with steeplypitched gable roofs, the boxy-looking housesare identifiable by a number of features mostlyrelating to their internal arrangements. Mostcharacteristically, the Dutch used a distinctiveheavy timber frame that is composed of a seriesof parallel “bents” running the length of thebuilding.

The bents are spaced about four feet apartand tied together with sills and roof plates at thebottom and top. The framing design means thata Dutch house can easily be extended byadding more bents in a row—thus making thehouse longer, but it is rare and difficult to tie theframing in to additions that extend the houseeither upward or to the rear.

Inside, another distinctive feature of earlyDutch houses in New Jersey would have beenthe fireplace. The cooking fireplace of Dutchtradition, urban or rural, was one of an open

No 17th century Swedish log cabins are known tosurvive in New Jersey. The example here is

probably 18th century, but its simple form cannotbe too far distant from its predecessors in nearby

locations in South Jersey.

hearth on an end wall, vented by a broad chimney above. There were no walls on thesides of the hearth to enclose the fireplace. Inthe Netherlands, where trees had always been alimited commodity, cooking was done over apeat fire, which burns without generating a lotof smoke. In the New World, the Dutch foundlittle peat, and lots of hardwood, and so burnedthat in their fireplaces. They quickly discoveredthat without side walls—or jambs—to theirfireplaces, the hardwood smoke did not justfloat upward toward the chimney, but tended tofill the room instead. In very short order, theDutch vernacular building tradition of jamblessfireplaces was given up, and replaced withEnglish style fireplaces, with sides, or jambs,that were designed to pull smoke up and outthe chimney. See illustration above.

In New Jersey, settlers of different nationalitiestended to encounter each other frequently.Although individual neighborhoods orcommunities might be more-or-lesshomogenous, people of different backgrounds,ethnicities, religions, and building traditionsmixed together in the marketplace and in civilsociety. The skills of a trained builder weremuch in demand, as one of the definingcharacteristics of colonial America as a more-or-less constant labor shortage, particularly amongspecialty skills like carpentry. Thus it is nosurprise that for the Dutch “problem” of afireplace design incompatible with local fuel,

there was a ready answer in the home of anEnglish neighbor or inn-keeper.

The English also had a heavy-timber traditionof framing buildings, but it relied onconstruction of a series of interlocking boxes. Itmay be helpful to conceptualize the English

Dutch

(Above) Wyckoff-Garretson House, SomersetCounty, NJ. Center door and right-hand side

built about 1730; left side extension of the houseand remodeling ca. 1800. The house has recently

been restored and is open to the public on alimited basis. (Below) Inside the Dutch framing

system is clearly evident.

Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 December 2009

framing model as one that created the outline ofa cube for each part of the house, and joinedthese cubes together to form a building. The“cubes” could be stacked, for full two andoccasionally even three-story height; they couldbe added in any direction for projecting wingsto any side of the building; they could beadjusted in size. This provided somewhat morearchitectural flexibility, but it used more timberand was even more complicated to constructthan the Dutch system.

The hybridization of Anglo-Dutch buildingtechniques was as inevitable as theintermarriage that took place each time thelaughing daughter of a Dutch farmer caught theeye of a handsome English boy. In time,carpentry and building reflected a new,American sort of vernacular architecture thataccounted for the abundance of wood, theclimate that was both hot and cold in season,the versatility of the English frame, and thesimplicity and sturdiness of the Dutch frame.This hybrid form, developed from about 1730on, has been called the “East Jersey Cottage,” inrecognition of its location primarily in theProvince of East Jersey, which included theeastern and northern parts of the state; land thathad once been part of New Netherlands. TheEast Jersey Cottage appears with frequency inwhat is today Essex, Union, and MorrisCounties, and examples are also among the

early houses in today’s New York City andwestern Long Island. It is almost unknown insouthern New Jersey where the Dutch neverestablished settlement; and East Jersey cottagesare rare in more northerly parts of New Jersey,like Bergen County, where the Dutch settlementwas denser and more homogenous.

The East Jersey Cottage was a story-and-a-halfin height, with a gable roof over a three-bayfaçade, The front entry was located at one ofthe side bays; the door leads into a hallwaycontaining a staircase and accessing two rooms,

A 17th century engraving shows thejambless fireplaces used in the

Netherlands, and initially, in Dutchsettlements in New Jersey. It was

almost universally replaced during the18th century with the more efficientEnglish-style fireplace with sides or

jambs. From http://www.dutchbarns.org

English

Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 December 2009

one front and one back.Additions are typically made to the side, as in

the Dutch fashion. At their simplest, theaddition is merely a lean-to shed on the side.Some additions, particularly in the post-Revolutionary era, were made so that theoriginal front door became the center of abalanced, symmetrical composition. Mosttypically for the East Jersey Cottage, however, isthe arrangement of a side-hall house and astepped-down kitchen wing to the side.

Compare that to the “saltbox” or “Cape Cod”forms of New England, where wooden housesalso were constructed using English framingsystems. There, the form evolved to conserve asmuch heat in the house during long winters,and so typically low-ceilinged rooms revolved

around a central chimney. In warmer climatesin Virginia and farther south, out-buildings andkitchens were arrayed in linear fashion beyondthe main house, so that heat-generatingactivities like cooking were kept well awayfrom the main living areas. The middlingclimate of New Jersey required both efficientheating and cooling, and the East Jersey cottageachieved this through an integral fireplacewhich helped warm adjacent rooms in winter,but it also developed taller ceilings and aseparate kitchen wing with useful outdoorspace on the porch for the summer.

The framing of the East Jersey Cottage used

the “cube” concept of the English frame, butextended the vertical supports beyond theheight of the first floor as in the Dutch system.The result was a second story with a little bit(usually two to three feet) of vertical wall on the

outer edge of the room, and then a slopedceiling reflecting the roof pitch above. It createsa cozy, but definitely more useful second floorspace under the eaves of the house than theentirely slope-ceiling space that would bewithin the English “Cape Cod” house.

The high wall between the tops of the firstfloor windows and door, and the eave line ofthe roof gives a distinctive appearance to thisregional vernacular architecture. This broadspace was at first treated simply as wall, butlater examples in the 19th century may haveplaced windows on this level, at least on thefaçade, giving rise to the “kneewall window,”or, as they are sometimes descriptively called, a“lie-on-your-stomach” window, for that is howyou would need to position yourself to see outof them from within those second floor rooms.Dressed up within wide entablature boards, theproportions of the East Jersey cottage madethem particularly amenable to updates in theGreek Revival style, popular in the 1830s to1850s, and so the old colonial house formremained in use into the 19th century.

Beyond the East Coast settlements of theEnglish and Dutch, New Jersey was also settled

A classic form of the East Jersey Cottage, withits high wall above the openings on and mainfacade, and a stepped-down kitchen wing with

porch to the side. This house is located betweenBasking Ridge and Green Village, at the

Somerset-Morris border.

The Timothy Mills House (ca. 1740) in Morristownrepresents the East Jersey cottage's expandedform, with center hall and rooms arranged on

each side of the hall. The lean-to shed on the fargable end protected the bake oven and originallyprovided a sheltered place to store firewood and

other things next to the house.

Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 December 2009

along the Delaware River from an early date bypeople who left a distinct architectural imprint.Philadelphia’s establishment in 1681 as a centerof religious tolerance brought both “non-conformist” English like the Quakers and

German Protestants of several sects. The“Quakers,” or The Religious Society of Friends,was founded in the 1650s in England and by the1680s had become enough of a nuisancepolitically and socially that King Charles II couldbe persuaded to give an enormous tract of landin the New World to leader William Penn forresettlement of Quakers and other dissidents.

The Quakers who came to Philadelphia andwestern New Jersey in the late 17th and early 18th

centuries were, in the broadest generalization, amore sophisticated crowd than the EnglishPuritans and Pilgrims who had settled NewEngland. Better educated, and often from moreurban places in England, the Quakers were notadverse to creating cities, and did so consciousof the collective good. They recognized thatdense urban living in the age of the fireplacecould be hazardous, and so supported theestablishment of brickyards early on. Brickbuildings were preferred over wooden ones bythe English Quakers in Philadelphia and WestJersey. William Penn had his own house built in

brick in 1682 on the Pennsylvania side of theDelaware; across the river in what is nowBurlington, English Quakers under the directionof Francis Collings constructed a hexagonal-plan meeting house of brick between 1683 and1687.

Being more urban in origin than the Pilgrims,the Quakers favored tall, narrow two-storyhouses, perfect for urban lots. Rather amusingly,the same form can also be found as farmhouseswhere there is plenty of room to spread out.Such is the power of vernacular architectureand the communal sense of what is “correct.”

The vernacular traditions of the EnglishQuakers included a memory of the medievalcity of London, and the decorative use of brickto create patterns on walls. In Henry VII’sHampton Court Palace, the red brick walls wereaccented by black bricks forming a diamondpattern on the walls. The more architecturallyproper description of this is a “diaper” pattern.Over two hundred years later, in the 1720s,prosperous Quakers in colonial New Jerseyreturned to this technique in decorating theirown houses. The patterned-end house of SouthJersey is a geographically unique expression ofa building material and decoration that wentfrom nobility to commoner, and from continentto continent.

The best examples of the patterned end brickhouses remain in Salem County. The gable endwall was left windowless, the better to show thebrick patterning; frequently the original ownerincluded initials of himself and his wife, and thedate of construction in the pattern. Such apublic and visible assertion of ownership,family, and longevity might actually seem to beboasting from the otherwise humble Quakers.

New Jersey’s colonial architecture of theDelaware Valley also includes the stone housesof the German settlers. Like the Quakers,German religious dissidents were welcomed inPhiladelphia. Many went west from there,forming the strong German, or “PennsylvaniaDutch” communities of Berks and LancasterCounties. But some traveled up the Delawareand settled on the eastern bank, imbuingGerman traditions, language and architectureinto communities from the river, like

The Bruen House in Madison is another versionof the East Jersey cottage. The dotted lines on

the façade indicate the later addition of windowson the façade.

Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 December 2009

Reigelsville, to places as far northeast asGerman Valley (today’s Long Valley).

The Germans were most familiar withbuilding in stone, and found plenty of it in theDelaware River Valley and along its tributaries.The sandstones and shales of the area wereused most often as “fieldstones,” the rocksbeing picked up as they were are used in theirrough state. Some stone was roughly shapedand dressed, particularly for use on creatingcorners, or quoins, and for shaping windowand door lintels and sills. The solid stonehouses with thick walls typically rose two fullstories. They often had a four-bay façade, and aplan comprised of two good-sized rooms sideby side. The Germanic tradition gave directoutdoor access to all principle rooms of thehouse, and so it is not unusual to see houseswith side-by-side front doors in German settledareas. These were not built as duplexes but asa single family homestead, with a door from thefront leading into the parlor or “best” room, andanother leading into the adjacent kitchen.

The colony of New Jersey was remarked uponby Benjamin Franklin to be “a barrel bunged

upon both ends,” for even in the 18th century,the state was a busy crossroads between thecities of Philadelphia and New York. Althoughsome claimed with left the state without its ownidentity, in truth, from colonial times, it has hada distinctive identify made up by theaccumulation of many peoples and cultures.The vernacular architecture of the colonial era isone manifestation of that phenomenon. Infuture articles, we will explore how the locationbetween two major urban centers made NewJersey the early center for development ofdistinctive “American” architecture after theRevolution.

ABOUT THE AUTHORJanet W. Foster is Associate Director for both the Historic Preservationand Urban Planning Programs at Graduate School of Architecture,Planning and Preservation. She studied historic preservation at theColumbia University program, and worked in the field for nearly 20years before returning to the university. Ms. Foster's own researchwork is focused on American vernacular architecture and particularlythe role of pattern books and periodicals in the transmission ofarchitectural ideas in the nineteenth century. She has two booksrelated to the topic, Building By the Book: Patternbook Architecture inNew Jersey, co-authored with Robert Guter, and The Queen AnneHouse.

Janet Foster is also interested in traditional paints and their use inAmerican architecture. She has done paint analysis for many historichouses, museums, and private clients throughout the New Jersey andNew York region. Her preservation consulting practice has allowed herto work on Historic Structures Reports, National Register nominations,and Tax Credit applications for buildings as disparate as a vernacularDutch-American farmhouse and an early 20th century concrete factorybuilding built by Thomas Edison. Current projects include developmentof preservation guidelines for a community in New Jersey and paintanalysis for a perfect Downingesque cottage.

The 18th century Hancock House in SalemCounty shows the "checkerboard" effect of thepatterned brickwork on the façade of the house.The two-story form, with central door and pent

roof across the façade was typical of thevernacular architecture of the English settlers of

south, or West Jersey.

A stone house in the German-Americanvernacular tradition in the Finesville-SeigletownHistoric District, Hunterdon County, New Jersey

Domestic Architecture in Colonial New Jersey Janet W. Foster GardenStateLegacy.com Issue 6 December 2009

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