Domestic architecture of the American colonies and of the early republic . r-nices of extreme thinness may be seen in McCombs designs about 1800 (figures125 and 163), and, still more, in Latrobes for the Van Ness house (figure 130),1813, and others (figure 189). This lightness was, in origin, merely a consequenceof Adam and Soane influence, but Benjamin rationalized it in The AmericanBuilders Companion (1806), by a rather specious train of reasoning, in which hemaintained that the height of cornices could be decreased considerably without sub-stantially affecting their appearance, provided the
Domestic architecture of the American colonies and of the early republic . r-nices of extreme thinness may be seen in McCombs designs about 1800 (figures125 and 163), and, still more, in Latrobes for the Van Ness house (figure 130),1813, and others (figure 189). This lightness was, in origin, merely a consequenceof Adam and Soane influence, but Benjamin rationalized it in The AmericanBuilders Companion (1806), by a rather specious train of reasoning, in which hemaintained that the height of cornices could be decreased considerably without sub-stantially affecting their appearance, provided the projection remained the same. The profiles of cornices remained of ordinary academic character until 1800,and beyond that date in the work of such designers as Bulfinch and Mclntire, to 230 HOUSES OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC say nothing of Jefferson. The only essentially novel feature at first was the use, inminor cornices, of dentils split at the top, giving a fret-like effect. This detail, com-mon in England at the time, appears here as early as 1787 in the door-cornice of. From a photograph by Frank C Figure 191. Porch of the Joseph Peabodv house, Salem the John Reynolds house in Philadelphia. With the turn of the century other de-signers adopted modifications, sometimes of a fanciful character. In the OctagonThornton used vertical consoles rising from the frieze into the cornice; at Home-wood the brackets in the cornice itself are of fantastic outline. In the William 231 AMERICAN DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE Gray house, Salem, begun in 1801, there are very flat modillions, a row of trumpet-shaped guttae in place of dentils, and a line of little spheres strung on a rod (figure190). Benjamin, in the American Builders Companion, besides giving his in-dividual mouldings greater projection for their height, employed many of theseelements. His profiles were followed by many New England craftsmen after its
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectarchite, bookyear1922
