J.M. Kelley Ltd. - A New York Dutch interior for the American Wing

Articles
A New York Dutch interior for the American Wing
By Peter M. Kenny
for The Magazine Antiques
January 2006
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A possible seventeenth-century design source for the overhanging gable may be village houses in the Zaan region of the province of North Holland, just north of Amsterdam. The Dutch architectural historian Jaa Schipper has published several views of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wooden houses with overhanging gables covered with vertical weatherboards in the villages of Jisp and Assenfieldt.¹² A

house described in a 1659 contract at Beverwyck (Albany) for a timber-framed house "built up [partially faced] with brick" having a "gable of matched boards" may also describe a similar structure.¹³ Vertically oriented, overlapping, riven-oak boards are used on the back of the late seventeenth- or early eighteenth -century painted kast of simple board construction shown in Plate VI (see also Pl. VIa). It is probably the work of a carpenter and may offer a visual reference to a type of clapboards used on some of the earliest houses in New Netherland.

Pl. VIa

Veneered with bricks secured to the frame with iron wall ties elegantly wrought in the shape of fleurs-de-lis (see Pls. X, XI), or covered with clapboards, shingles, or a combination of both, New York Dutch timber-framed houses relied on one essential building component--the H-shaped anchor bent. Each anchor bent was comprised of two vertical posts, a heavy crossbeam and, where applicable, two corbels or corner braces (see Fig. 3). This method of building timber frames was very different from that used in England, or New England for that matter, which entailed more parts and joints as well as a multitude of neighbors and friends to help raise large sections of wall that

were assembled flat on the ground.¹⁴ Dutch style anchor-bent house frames were much simpler in concept and easier to erect, with only three or four carpenters required to set them up on the foundation. The total number of bents and their spacing determined the length of the house, while the overall length of the anchor beams determined the width. A house with four or five anchor bents would usually be composed of one room with a garret above, while an eight to ten anchor-bent house would have at least two rooms and a correspondingly larger garret. The Daniel Peter Winne house has eight bents, and is twenty-two-and-one-half feet wide by just under thirty-three feet long.

Pl. VII

Descriptions of this type of construction are recorded in seventeenth-century house contracts in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) and Beverwyck. One contract of 1646 for a house to be built in or around New Amsterdam describes a six-bent house in which the carpenter

Reynier Dominicus agrees to build and erect at his own expense for Cornelis van Tienhoven a house, 30 feet long on the inside, 20 feet wide on the inside, having on one side an aisle 8 feet wide, right through; the story in the fore part of the house to be 9 1/2 feet high and in the rear part of the house 12 feet high, consisting of five bents with

corbels and one without; purlins and posts as required for the building; strong split rafters for the entire roof frame of the house and the roof frame to be tied with collar beams; the framework belonging to the chimney; in the fore part of the house a door casing with two lights and a door; a casement window with two blinds; in the partition a door frame and a door; in the rear a door frame with two lights, a bedstead in the aisle; the beams 10 inches high and seven inches thick. Reynier Dominicus to deliver all the square timber needed for the house and everything being well hewed and planed must erect it where required.¹⁵

A contract between Juriaen Hendricksen and his client Adriaen Dircksen Coen in 1649 describes an eight-bent structure in the vicinity of New Amsterdam

forty feet in length and twenty feet in width, with one side an extension, six feet wide as long as the house is; six beams with corbels and two without corbels; six cellar beams; the posts as required, twelve feet long; four window frames with intersecting transom and mullion, two door frames and one suitable cellar door; the front room eleven feet high and the upper room nine feet, and the roof to be properly covered with tiles or reed.¹⁶

Pl. VIII

Except for the addition of side aisles, these agreements were worded much as they would have been between Daniel Peter Winne and the unknown carpenter who built his house, which was constructed more than a hundred years later in the spring or summer of 1751.¹⁷

The traditional Dutch architectural features that were originally part of the Daniel Peter Winne house included: tall single and double casement windows; a jambless fireplace with a large smoke hood; and two-part entry doors, commonly called Dutch doors, in both the front and back rooms. The exterior frame of the door into the principal room has a handsome cornice consisting of a large cyma reversa over two flat fillets molded directly on the thick horizontal framing member below the transom lights (Pl. II).

The Swedish naturalist Peter Kalm (1716-1779) offered the following comment on the fireplaces he had seen in houses north of Albany in 1749-1750: "The fireplaces among the Dutch were always built in, so that nothing projected out, and it looked as though they made a fire against the wall itself."¹⁸ In the Winne house a brick wall divided the structure in two and served as the back wall of the fireplace, precisely as described by Kalm.¹⁹ A cast-iron fireback propped against it would have radiated heat back into the room and protected its plastered and whitewashed surface from being scorched. Like nearby all jambless fireplaces, it allowed as much heat as smoke to escape up the chimney and was later replaced with a more efficient English style fireplace with a smaller firebox and hearth. The replacement was made in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, but when the house was disassembled it was removed, revealing fragments of some of the original eight-inch-square red earthenware tiles, as well as a shard of an original blue-and-white imported Dutch tile with a biblical scene (see Pl. IV). These two features as well as a smoke hood and cornice have been reproduced in the new installation and provide an accurate image of the original fireplace (Pl I).

Pl. IX Fig. 2 Fig. 3

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Pl. VIa	Veneered with bricks secured to the frame with iron wall ties elegantly wrought in the shape of fleurs-de-lis (see Pls. X, XI), or covered with clapboards, shingles, or a combination of both, New York Dutch timber-framed houses relied on one essential building component--the H-shaped anchor bent. Each anchor bent was comprised of two vertical posts, a heavy crossbeam and, where applicable, two corbels or corner braces (see Fig. 3). This method of building timber frames was very different from that used in England, or New England for that matter, which entailed more parts and joints as well as a multitude of neighbors and friends to help raise large sections of wall that
were assembled flat on the ground.¹⁴ Dutch style anchor-bent house frames were much simpler in concept and easier to erect, with only three or four carpenters required to set them up on the foundation. The total number of bents and their spacing determined the length of the house, while the overall length of the anchor beams determined the width. A house with four or five anchor bents would usually be composed of one room with a garret above, while an eight to ten anchor-bent house would have at least two rooms and a correspondingly larger garret. The Daniel Peter Winne house has eight bents, and is twenty-two-and-one-half feet wide by just under thirty-three feet long.
Pl. VII	Descriptions of this type of construction are recorded in seventeenth-century house contracts in New Amsterdam (Manhattan) and Beverwyck. One contract of 1646 for a house to be built in or around New Amsterdam describes a six-bent house in which the carpenter Reynier Dominicus agrees to build and erect at his own expense for Cornelis van Tienhoven a house, 30 feet long on the inside, 20 feet wide on the inside, having on one side an aisle 8 feet wide, right through; the story in the fore part of the house to be 9 1/2 feet high and in the rear part of the house 12 feet high, consisting of five bents with
corbels and one without; purlins and posts as required for the building; strong split rafters for the entire roof frame of the house and the roof frame to be tied with collar beams; the framework belonging to the chimney; in the fore part of the house a door casing with two lights and a door; a casement window with two blinds; in the partition a door frame and a door; in the rear a door frame with two lights, a bedstead in the aisle; the beams 10 inches high and seven inches thick. Reynier Dominicus to deliver all the square timber needed for the house and everything being well hewed and planed must erect it where required.¹⁵

A contract between Juriaen Hendricksen and his client Adriaen Dircksen Coen in 1649 describes an eight-bent structure in the vicinity of New Amsterdam forty feet in length and twenty feet in width, with one side an extension, six feet wide as long as the house is; six beams with corbels and two without corbels; six cellar beams; the posts as required, twelve feet long; four window frames with intersecting transom and mullion, two door frames and one suitable cellar door; the front room eleven feet high and the upper room nine feet, and the roof to be properly covered with tiles or reed.¹⁶