Domestic Architecture Of The American Colonies And Of The Early Republic Scholars Choice Edition PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...It does not itself extend beyond the plane of the building, but has a great projecting portico in the centre of the river front. A "grand salone" on the axis, of circular form, was first employed by John McComb in a drawing which seems to belong to the series of studies he made for the Government House in New York in 1789 (figure 117). It is the most elaborate of the group, fully commensurate with the purpose of the house as a residence of the President. Identity in many elements leaves no doubt that the design, with the saloon, was derived from plates 52-53 (figure 118) of John Crunden's "Convenient and Ornamental Architecture" (1785). The other studies,1 progressively less pretentious as they approach the character of the building as executed, lack the circular saloon, although two of them retain a projecting bay, octagonal on the exterior, in the middle of the garden front. Like Crunden's plan, most of the studies of McComb have one or more interior rooms dependent on top light. The earliest American examples of the scheme with an elliptical saloon on axis were James Hoban's winning competitive design for the President's house in Washington (figure 119) and Charles Bulfinch's for the house of Joseph Barrell in Charlestown (figure 120), both in 1792. Hoban, an Irishman by birth, had some training as a youth in the architectural school of the Dublin Society, and had been working for the past few years in South Carolina.2 His design for the President's house was derived in the main, as we have shown elsewhere,3 from Gibbs's "Book of Architecture," plates 52 and 53. From Gibbs's plan Hoban retained on the interior only the arrangement of the vestibule and adjoining stairs. In the centre of the garden front, ...