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The interest in buildings of classic style gained momentum after the Revolution. By 1820 it had culminated in an entirely new type of smaller house in what we call the Greek Revival style. In these houses design was no longer simply a matter of proportion and decoration. Even the floor plan was changed and variable, and the ideal exterior was that of a Greek temple complete with columns and architraves, friezes and cornices - the complete entablature decorated with running frets, anthemions, acanthus leaves and paterae.
The time, incidentally, was ripe for such a change. Not only were the former colonists anxious to develop a style of architecture that was not borrowed from the mother country, but the Georgian architecture had lost much of its virility. A change of some sort was needed and the architects and builders of the new Republic seized upon the ancient classic designs of that other early Republic, Greece.
Within a few decades the classic concept had been run into the ground, particularly by the builders of small houses who changed proportions and mixed styles to suit their own uneducated ideas. Meanwhile, however, some charming small houses in the Greek Revival style had been built, and many remain to grace the American landscape to this day.
The two major types of Greek Revival houses of small size were developed. In one, the gable became the main front of the house (fig. 1). This was the simplest way of crowning the facade with a classic pediment. Since the gable, for the same reason, could only be a little more than one room wide, the main entrance had to be one side of the facade. The floor plan then consisted of two rooms with a wide hall alongside them, running from front to back. In this hall were located the stairs, and behind the stairs was the kitchen - long and narrow.
With the other type of floor plan, a pedimented gable again dominated the facade but did not incorporate the main entrance. Set slightly back from this front line was a side extension of the house whose principal feature was a recessed porch. This porch was spanned by an architrave supported, usually by two columns, with a pilaster at each end.
From the center of this porch, the main doorway opened into a living room that extended the depth of the house. Sometimes there was another recessed porch at the back, or even on the side. A second door opened from the end into a parlor in the gabled portion. Two other small rooms behind the parlor, a dining room and kitchen on the other side of the living room, and sometimes another small room at the front completed the first-floor plan. Between the living room and the parlor were the stairs to the second floor and the cellar.
These floor plans seem infinitely variable, and the exteriors differed just as widely. Houses of other types were often altered to give them a classical air, and usually were spoiled in the process. Some of the characteristic features of the Greek Revival house not already mentioned were massive pilasters and architrave framing the front door; tall windows with carved trim; “eyebrow” windows with decorative gratings; and heavy overhanging eaves. Two-story pilaster -usually four in number- divided the windows and doors of the gable facade; eaves were supported on decorative friezes; the doors had deeply recessed panels, and square porticos guarded the main entrance.
Somewhere between 1800 and 1840 there were built a great many small one and a half story houses on the Early American, central-chimney plan, with modified classical features (fig. 2). These might be called “farm house” Greek Revivals. They had the plain corner pilasters and flat, undecorated architraves around doors and windows; they had overhanging eaves and a broad, plain frieze into which was let a series of “eyebrow” windows, innocent of any grating. These windows were hinged with butts at the top and swung inward for ventilation almost at floor level. Occasionally you will find a two and one-half-story house on the same pattern, with “eyebrow” windows not only front and back but also in the gables!
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