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Seventeenth-century houses in colonial North America were simple structures that were primarily functional, carrying over traditional designs that went back to the Middle Ages. During the first half of the eighteenth century, however, houses began to show a new elegance. As wealth increased, more and more colonists built fine houses.
Since architecture was not yet a specialized profession in the colonies, the design of buildings was life either to amateur designers or to carpenters who undertook to interpret architectural manuals imported from England. Inventories of colonial libraries show an astonishing number of these handbooks for builders, and the houses erected during the eighteenth century show their influence. Nevertheless, most domestic architecture of the first threequarters of the eighteenth century displays a wide divergence of taste and freedom of application of the rules laid down in these books.
Increasing wealth and growing sophisticat
