rmed. The architectural treatment of the hall sets the keynote of the entire home interior, so to speak. Its doorways and open arches frame vistas of the

n goes, and happily the recognized utilitarian features of the typical Colonia

There the lord and family retainers, servants and visitors were accommodated, and all the common life of the household was carried on.154 In early times there were, besides the hall, only a few sleeping ro

for a time more conspicuous than staircases, which were frequently located in any convenient secluded place. However, as builders came to appreciate more fully the attractiveness of this utilitarian structure, when embellished with suitable ornament, the s

the period they were155 the scene of dancing and banqueting on special occasions, and for that reason were of spacious size, often running entirely through the building from front to back with the staircase located in a smaller side hall adjoining. Where space or expense were considerations, or where spacious parlors and drawi

assageways notable chiefly for their well-designed staircases, which consisted for the most part of a long straight run along one side with a single turn near the top to the second-floor passageway directly above that to the rear of the house on the floor below. In a few of the earlier country houses there are, however, h

of the earliest eighteenth-century country houses. This great brick-paved room wainscoted to the ceiling, with a fireplace across the right-hand corner, reflects the hall of the English

t Door, Whitby Hall; Pallad

by H

ness. Through the high arched opening in the rear, with its narrow double doors, is seen the winding staircase in a smaller stair hall beyond. In this hallway stands an iron chest to hold the family silver, the157 cumbrous old lock having fourteen tumblers. Above there are wooden pegs in the wall on which to hang hats. The broad staircase with its plain rectangular box stair ends is one of unusually simple stateliness, yet typical of the sturdy

il, Parlor, Whitby Hall;

by H

back, as happened to be most convenient with respect to the desired floor plan. Where a small door at the rear opened into a secluded garden, the staircase was located at the rear of the main hall with the door under the staircase. In either case the staircase took the form of a broken flight, with a straight run along one wall rising about two-thirds of the158 total height to a broad lan

n wing, the main entrance being on the flag-paved piazza of the south front. On the north front there is a tower-like projection in which the staircase ascends with a broad landing across the rear wall and

f the newels on the floor above tying into it very pleasingly over the stairs. A molded surbase and skirting, with a broad expanse of plastered wall between, provides an effective dado all around the hall. Where it follows up the stairs, it corresponds to the handrail of the balustrade opposite. The molding is the same; there is the same upward sweep of the ramped rail, and it is also capped with dark wood. On the landing dainty little fluted pilasters support the surbase, their fine scale lending much grace and refinement. One notices there also the beautiful beveled paneling of the window embrasures, the paneled soffit of the Palladia

il, Solitude; Cornice and

g erected by Colonel Coultas. The walls of the entire present house all around are of nicely squared and dressed native gray stone, and to afford extra protection against prevailing winds a penthouse with coved cornice runs along the northern and western ends at the second-floor level. The gables of the west wing face north and south with quaint oval windows to light the attic. A flag

rge boats could be taken above the falls. In 1748 he was a captain of the Associates, a battery for the defense of Philadelphia against French insolence, and in 1756 during the Indian uprisings he became lieutenant-colonel of the county regiment. He was repeatedly justice of the peace, high sheriff of the county from 1755 to 1758, and in 1765 was appointed judge of the Orphans' Court, Quarter Sessions

e Hall, Independence Sq

e, Martha Ibbetson Gray, and later passed by inheritance to her great-gr

cipal rooms and are notable for their beautifully molded architrave casings and nicely worked pedimental doorheads. In fact, the woodwork here, as well as that throughout the house, is heavier and richer in elaboration of detail than usual in Georgian houses of the North, the classic details of the fluted pilasters and heavy, intricately carved complete entablature being pure mutulary Doric and more ornate than the Ionic detail

umns. In this smaller hall a simple, though only a molded cornice in harmony with that of the main hall suffices. Unlike the plain dado of the main hall, however, elaborated only by a molded surbase and skirting, a handsome paneled wainscot runs around the staircase hall and up the stairs. The spacing and workmanship displayed in this heavily beveled and molded paneling could hardly be better. At the foot of the flight, on the landing and at the head of the stairs, the ramped surbase with i

ng bedchambers. In furtherance of this thought, only the cornice with its jig-sawed modillions was employed at the ceiling and the flat dado was paneled off by the application of moldings to give it a lighter scale. The complete entablature was used only over the archwa

pendence Hall, Ch

e of scale, while the architectural treatment of the frames adds to the charm of the interior woodwork quite as materially as to the exterior fa?ade. In working out the scheme, the entire Ionic order is utilized on a small scale. Both the casings and the mullions take the form of fluted square co

e Hall, Stairway; Liberty

and the direction of the run reverses. The architecture is as pure Doric as at Mount Pleasant, but of the denticulated rather than the mutulary order, and altogether more satisfactory for interior trim in wood. The cornice only is carried around the room at the ceiling, and in the staircase hall only the cymatium and corona of the cornice; but over the archway, supported by a colonnade of four fluted round columns, a complete entablature with

ong the wall opposite. Little pilasters likewise support this rail, but they are paneled rather than fluted. There are similar scroll-pattern stair ends and paneling under the stairs. In this instance

urved portion of the run instead of a landing. The breadth and length of the hall made landings possible and desirable, but instead of one wide midway landing between the upper and lower runs of the flight, there were two square landings separated by three steps, the stair stringers, balustrade and wainscot swinging upward in broad-sweeping167 curves. The wainscot consists of a charmingly varied paneling, while the balustrade is lighter in treatment than was usually the case. A simple dark wood handrail, slender,

as balusters of unique contour standing not on the stair treads but on the cased-up stair stringer. The staircase in the Gowen house, Mount Airy, has a balustrade with three slender, but more or less conventional, balusters on each step, the tr

sts great refinement and has excellent proportion. In contrast with these lighter designs for domestic architecture, it is interesting to examine the stair-end treatment in Indep