Stillness and Light: The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture

4. Equality: Shared Light

equality•Shared light 4 Transom over Dining Room Doors Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts 78 tr ansoM WindoW Transom windows, frequently placed by Shakers above inner as well as outer doors, provide a means to increase the light shared between neighboring rooms, and maintain this flow even when doors are fully closed. Interior transoms are typically set over doors connecting dark corridors and well-lit perimeter rooms, and take shapes ranging from multi-paned rectangles to arched or semicircular fanlights. Left. Fanlight between Kitchen and Dining Room Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky Facing. Arched Transom over Infirmary Door Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky 80 The stretching of light, and the open feeling, afforded by an interior window are especially impressive when able to transform an utterly mundane space, such as a back stair or closet. An ingenious device to siphon daylight deeply into a building, this glazed opening serves also to share illumination between rooms demanding acoustic separation, so as to spread light in a peaceful way, free of disrupting noise. Facing. Window between Kitchen Stair and Dining Room Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts Left. Dining Room Window onto Kitchen Stair Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts interior WindoW Window onto Landing of Stair Spin Shop Canterbury, New Hampshire Closet Window Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky 84 By guiding a portion of daylight directly across an intervening space, the double window illuminates two different rooms at once, ordinarily a perimeter stair and a room further inside. Surprising views to the outside, as well as into the stair between, are thus opened through a normally closed dividing wall. Facing. Double Window over Ministry Stair, with Elders’ Room at Left Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky Left. Elders’ Room with View over Staircase Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky douBle WindoW 86 The continuous channels of light and view carved through the mass of a Shaker building depend upon a precise alignment of corridors and doors with exterior windows. Like X-rays piercing solid matter, these lines of energy intersect one another to form a grid of routes for flowing light. Left. Transverse Passage across Central Hall Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky Facing. Central Hallway Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts enFilade oF oPenings 88 Second-Floor Hall Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky 89 Ministry Rooms with Six Consecutive Openings Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky 90 Vertical and horizontal streams of energy interflow in the vicinity of stairs, where differently colored intensities of light, from skylights and windows, are shared and mixed after arriving from many directions. Below. Second-Floor Corridor Sisters’ Dairy and Weave Shop (1795, remodeled 1820) Hancock, Massachusetts Facing. Second-Floor Hall and Twin Stairs Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky Lower Attic Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts lattiCe oF light ...