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
Continued from previous page

Sadly, the original Dutch doors, casement windows and shutters, and the staircase in the principal room were removed long before the museum acquired the house. Ample evidence was discovered on the wood used for the framing of the precise locations and sizes of doors, windows, and shutters, and the missing staircase. However, given the

almost total absence of original house parts incorporated in later additions, a certain amount of license was necessary in reproducing the missing elements. The abiding principle that guided the selection of replacement parts was that they had to be based on extant originals in eighteenth-century Dutch style buildings located as close to the Winne house as possible. The divided Dutch door at the main entry and the casement windows are based on surviving examples in the Tuenise Slingerland house of about 1762, which is in the town of Feura Bush in Albany County, several miles west of the Winne house site. The shutters are copied from a surviving example in the New York State Museum in Albany that is from a house of about 1740 in Defreestville in nearby Rensselaer County. The bold baroque mantel cornice, very similar in scale and profile to those on eighteenth-century kasten, is a replica of one found in the Mabee House of about 1725 at Rotterdam Junction in Schenectady County.

Pl. X

The staircase has not been duplicated. The scraps of evidence of the original stairs have proved inconclusive when compared to extant period staircases. They consist of a short run of stair treads that led from a landing to the second floor; a single board with a molded edge that was once part of the box that enclosed the open space beneath the stairs, and a charred piece of board that may have been a stringer cap. They were recovered in later additions to the house.
Despite the considerable losses over the years, the Winne house had good bones: an expressive framework of smoothly planed anchor beams, corbels, and ceilings--all with the undisturbed patina deposited by more than 250 years of exposure to light, air, and wood smoke. These elements are what make the restored interior of the Winne house so attractive and redolent of New York Dutch design.

According to the architectural historian Clifford W. Zink, exposed anchor beams and their handsomely curved corbels expressed a tradition-bound "structural logic" that was valued by the new world Dutch in their houses for a hundred years after the takeover of New Netherland by the English in 1664.²⁰ This "logic" is apparent in the previously mentioned 1646 contract that required the carpenter Reynier Dominicus to deliver" all the square timber for the house...well hewed and planed." In the well-ordered world of the seventeenth-century Dutch, anything less may have been an affront to the senses and a blot on the character of the household. Theirs was elegantly simple and direct style expressive of the care and orderliness of the minds that conceived the buildings and the carpenters who raised them.²¹

The new installation will include an exhibit mounted just outside the main entrance to the room explaining the distinctive character of New York Dutch timber-framed houses, and an interpretive program that will focus on the interrelationship between the Winnes and the Van Rensselaers over the course of seven generations, given that rooms from both the manor house and the home of one of their tenants are now in the American Wing. Visitors will have the opportunity to compare New York Dutch style buildings to the box-framed houses of New England by touring two adjacent and superb examples of the latter--the Thomas Hart (1611-1674) Room of about 1634 to 1674 from Ipswich, Massachusetts, and the John Wentworth (1671-1730) Room of 1695-1700 from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The planned architectural display will include a deconstructed section of an actual post, beam, and corbel from the Winne house, as well as hand-wrought iron wall ties, shutter dogs, and other architectural metalwork from Hudson Valley Dutch houses (see Pl. XI).

Pl. VII

The history of the Winne family at Rensselaerswyck has been richly detailed in reports prepared by Peter Christoph of the New York Historical Manuscripts Project, as well as in an article by Christoph, his wife Florence A. Christoph, and Floyd R. Brewer, an archaeologist.²² Their research revealed that Pieter Winne the Fleming from Ghent married Tanneke Adams, from Leeuwarden in the province of Friesland in the Neterhlands, in Rensselaerswyck about 1653, and that they had twelve children. This alliance of Flemish and Dutch represents precisely the blend of Low Country people that comprised a high percentage of the original settlers in New Netherland and today go under the rubric of the New York Dutch, according to the historian David Steven Cohen.²³

Pieter the Fleming was energetic, honest, and able, which no doubht made him a favored tenant of the Van Rensselaers. At rensselaerswyck he was a farmer, a fur trader, a sawmill owner, and possible a carpenter.²⁴ His public service included a stint on the "rattle watch" at Beverwyck in 1659 looking out for fires or suspicious activities from ten in the evening until four in the morning, and five two-year terms as a magistrate at Rensselaerswyck between 1672 and 1690, appointed by various New York colonial governors.²⁵ Of Pieter the Fleming, Christoph writes:

Numerically, there were few who stood higher in society (and none, save the occasional governor, who were absolutely separated by class), and many (including small farmers, common laborers and peddlers) who stood lower.²⁶

Daniel Winne was descended from Pieter the Fleming's youngest son, Daniel Pietersz Winne (c. 1675-1757), who was still a minor when his father died, and thus his interest in the estate was overseen by his "tutor," Kiliaen Van Rensselaer.²⁷ This early relationship with the patroon served him well throughout his lifetime. By the terms of Pieter the Fleming's will Daniel Pietersz inherited the sawmill on Vloman Kill and the nearby farmstead at Bethlehem on the west bank of the Hudson River. Later, in 1711, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer granted him additional land along the stream.28 Upon his death, Daniel Pietersz left the sawmill and farmstead (see Pl. IX) to his second youngest son, Adam, whose portrait is shown in Plate VII. Prior to his death he also provided hsi eldest son, Peter Daniel, with some of the land along the stream that had been granted to him by Kiliaen Van Renssealer. Here Peter Daniel built his house about 1725 (Pl. X), five years after his marriage to Rachel Van Alen (baptized 1700). Like his father, he settled his eldest son, Daniel Peter, on farmland along the Vloman Kill about a half mile more to the west. Daniel Peter followed a similar pattern and built his house, in many ways a carbon copy of his father's, about six years after his marriage to Jannetje de Forest in 1744. Their descendants lived at the farmstead until 1954, when it was sold out of the family.

Expanding on this multigenerational story of the Winnes at Rensselaerswyck will be a major thrust of the educational and interpretive programs centered on the new installation.

I Would like to acknowledge Michael Kelley of J.M. Kelley Limited, Historic Architecture and Interiors, and his associates as well as Marijn Manuels and Rian Deurenberg of the objects conservation department at the Metropolitan Museum for their excellent work on this installation of the Winne house interior.

Fig. 4

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Pl. X	The staircase has not been duplicated. The scraps of evidence of the original stairs have proved inconclusive when compared to extant period staircases. They consist of a short run of stair treads that led from a landing to the second floor; a single board with a molded edge that was once part of the box that enclosed the open space beneath the stairs, and a charred piece of board that may have been a stringer cap. They were recovered in later additions to the house. Despite the considerable losses over the years, the Winne house had good bones: an expressive framework of smoothly planed anchor beams, corbels, and ceilings--all with the undisturbed patina deposited by more than 250 years of exposure to light, air, and wood smoke. These elements are what make the restored interior of the Winne house so attractive and redolent of New York Dutch design.
According to the architectural historian Clifford W. Zink, exposed anchor beams and their handsomely curved corbels expressed a tradition-bound "structural logic" that was valued by the new world Dutch in their houses for a hundred years after the takeover of New Netherland by the English in 1664.²⁰ This "logic" is apparent in the previously mentioned 1646 contract that required the carpenter Reynier Dominicus to deliver" all the square timber for the house...well hewed and planed." In the well-ordered world of the seventeenth-century Dutch, anything less may have been an affront to the senses and a blot on the character of the household. Theirs was elegantly simple and direct style expressive of the care and orderliness of the minds that conceived the buildings and the carpenters who raised them.²¹ The new installation will include an exhibit mounted just outside the main entrance to the room explaining the distinctive character of New York Dutch timber-framed houses, and an interpretive program that will focus on the interrelationship between the Winnes and the Van Rensselaers over the course of seven generations, given that rooms from both the manor house and the home of one of their tenants are now in the American Wing. Visitors will have the opportunity to compare New York Dutch style buildings to the box-framed houses of New England by touring two adjacent and superb examples of the latter--the Thomas Hart (1611-1674) Room of about 1634 to 1674 from Ipswich, Massachusetts, and the John Wentworth (1671-1730) Room of 1695-1700 from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The planned architectural display will include a deconstructed section of an actual post, beam, and corbel from the Winne house, as well as hand-wrought iron wall ties, shutter dogs, and other architectural metalwork from Hudson Valley Dutch houses (see Pl. XI).
Pl. VII	The history of the Winne family at Rensselaerswyck has been richly detailed in reports prepared by Peter Christoph of the New York Historical Manuscripts Project, as well as in an article by Christoph, his wife Florence A. Christoph, and Floyd R. Brewer, an archaeologist.²² Their research revealed that Pieter Winne the Fleming from Ghent married Tanneke Adams, from Leeuwarden in the province of Friesland in the Neterhlands, in Rensselaerswyck about 1653, and that they had twelve children. This alliance of Flemish and Dutch represents precisely the blend of Low Country people that comprised a high percentage of the original settlers in New Netherland and today go under the rubric of the New York Dutch, according to the historian David Steven Cohen.²³
Pieter the Fleming was energetic, honest, and able, which no doubht made him a favored tenant of the Van Rensselaers. At rensselaerswyck he was a farmer, a fur trader, a sawmill owner, and possible a carpenter.²⁴ His public service included a stint on the "rattle watch" at Beverwyck in 1659 looking out for fires or suspicious activities from ten in the evening until four in the morning, and five two-year terms as a magistrate at Rensselaerswyck between 1672 and 1690, appointed by various New York colonial governors.²⁵ Of Pieter the Fleming, Christoph writes: Numerically, there were few who stood higher in society (and none, save the occasional governor, who were absolutely separated by class), and many (including small farmers, common laborers and peddlers) who stood lower.²⁶ Daniel Winne was descended from Pieter the Fleming's youngest son, Daniel Pietersz Winne (c. 1675-1757), who was still a minor when his father died, and thus his interest in the estate was overseen by his "tutor," Kiliaen Van Rensselaer.²⁷ This early relationship with the patroon served him well throughout his lifetime. By the terms of Pieter the Fleming's will Daniel Pietersz inherited the sawmill on Vloman Kill and the nearby farmstead at Bethlehem on the west bank of the Hudson River. Later, in 1711, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer granted him additional land along the stream.28 Upon his death, Daniel Pietersz left the sawmill and farmstead (see Pl. IX) to his second youngest son, Adam, whose portrait is shown in Plate VII. Prior to his death he also provided hsi eldest son, Peter Daniel, with some of the land along the stream that had been granted to him by Kiliaen Van Renssealer. Here Peter Daniel built his house about 1725 (Pl. X), five years after his marriage to Rachel Van Alen (baptized 1700). Like his father, he settled his eldest son, Daniel Peter, on farmland along the Vloman Kill about a half mile more to the west. Daniel Peter followed a similar pattern and built his house, in many ways a carbon copy of his father's, about six years after his marriage to Jannetje de Forest in 1744. Their descendants lived at the farmstead until 1954, when it was sold out of the family.

Expanding on this multigenerational story of the Winnes at Rensselaerswyck will be a major thrust of the educational and interpretive programs centered on the new installation. I Would like to acknowledge Michael Kelley of J.M. Kelley Limited, Historic Architecture and Interiors, and his associates as well as Marijn Manuels and Rian Deurenberg of the objects conservation department at the Metropolitan Museum for their excellent work on this installation of the Winne house interior.