The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840--1900

2. Domestic Architecture and the Protestant Spirit

[2J Domestic Architecture and the Protestant Spirit The development of an ideology of domestic architecture accompanied the economic, social, and religious changes of the early Victorian period. By examining the architectural philosophy and building designs of mid-nineteenth-century housing reformers, we can see how a particular moral and spiritual order was literally "built," if not with wood, then with words. Architectural critics, of course, held no official position in the Protestant church, yet they functioned as important arbitrators of social values and promoters of an evolving Protestant perspective. As a "secular" body they were crucial in asserting the equation of Protestantism with Christianity, Christianity with civilization, and civilization with America. These architectural critics, along with popular ministers and women novelists, came to create the domestic spirit which all Americans, irrespective of ethnicity or religion , would have to acknowledge. The Ideology ofDomestic Architecture Before the 1840s, literature on domestic architecture by American authors was confined to building manuals, such as Asher Benjamin's The Country Builder's Assistant, published in 1797. Building manuals focused on the bare essentials of house construction, geared primarily for carpenters. Between 1800 and 1840, 20 such pattern books were published in the United States, mostly reprints of European editions. Unlike Europe, America had no developed architectural profession, and only the wealthy could afford to have their homes specially designed.1 20 Domestic Architecture and the Protestant Spirit 21 In the late 1840S a new type of architectural design book was born and immediately became popular. Their number increased rapidly, 60 being published between 1840 and 1860. The new pattern books departed from the purely mechanical and functional by presenting the public with a domestic philosophy and aesthetic. Along with floor plans, house models, and interior designs, the writers included the theories behind their patterns.2 These books were not written by men we might now consider architects-those who derive their primary source of income from designing and overseeing the construction of buildings-but by men of mixed background and artistic training. Andrew Jackson Downing began as a horticulturalist, Orson Fowler was a phrenologist, and even the influential John Ruskin never oversaw the realization of one of his drawings. In general, pattern-book writers and critics like Ruskin were more interested in housing design and advice than in the details of actual building. Although men almost exclusively wrote the pattern books, both men and women read them. Andrew Jackson Downing in The Architecture a/Country Houses apologized to his "fair readers" for "the seeming intrusion" on their domain of interior decorating as he tried to "point out the shoals" on which some women have foundered because of lack of "native perception" of fashion and taste. In 1847 the influential Godey's Lady's Book and Lady's Magazine began to publish patterns of "model cottages" for its female readership. It published 450 house designs between 1847 and 1892, many designed specifically for the magazine. Other women's magazines also published house plans, but only Godey's consistently attempted to familiarize women with the details of domestic architecture.3 American architects brought to the public the general theories of European architects, tempered with current views on domesticity. Of these Europeans, perhaps John Ruskin was the most influential. He believed that "all architecture proposes an effect on the human mind, not merely a service to the human frame," and that "right states" and "moral feelings" produced good architecture. Architecture, for Ruskin , had an important role in the creation of a moral and productive society.4 The dialectic that good architecture produced good people and good people produced good architecture was readily adopted by American architects. "There is so intimate a connection between taste and morals, aesthetics and Christianity," William Ranlett wrote in 1847, "that they, in each instance, mutually modify each other." Oliver Smith went so far as to say that "nothing has more to do with the 22 The Christian Home in Victorian America The original caption for this engraving reads: "Poverty, Squalor, Intemperance and Crime. The neighborhood here shown is a representation and true type of hundreds of localities which exist all over the face of this fair land. The scene tells its own story a tale of brutal passion, poverty, base desires, wretchedness and crime." Engraving (1873), reprinted in John Maass, The Victorian Home in America (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc. 1972), p. 15. morals, the civilization, and refinement of a nation...