not only influenced,
but determined by absolute necessities, many of the constructive
peculiarities which we note in their domestic buildings.

In the English colonies of North America we find, between the first
settlement and the opening of the Revolution, three distinct periods or
types of domestic building following each other in regular and
clearly-defined sequence, from rude and massive structures of stone and
timber to carefully-constructed and artistically-designed mansions.

The first period of colonial architecture embraces the greater part of
the seventeenth century. Numerous edifices of this period may still be
seen in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, as well as in the western
portions of the State. In Newport County I may instance the Governor
Henry Bull house, built in 1639, the Sueton Grant house, built about
1650, the Governor Coddington house, erected in 1647, and the "Captain
Kid" house, so called, on Conanicut Island. These houses show all the
peculiarities of the constructive science of their day, which aimed
simply to attain solidity and protection from the elements. The chimneys
and end-walls were generally built of stone, laid up as random rubble,
with mortar composed of shell lime, sand, and gravel, and flakes of
broken slate pounded fine. The sides of these buildings, and the ends
above the line of roof-plate, were of frame construction, made of heavy
oak timber, rudely squared, put together with treenails and boarded
with oak, usually at an angle of forty-five degrees, thus making of
every board a separate brace. This boarding was sometimes covered with
coarse stucco, as on the Bull house, or with split shingles, as on the
Governor Coddington house, put on with wrought nails.

"Whitehall," the home of Bishop Berkeley, and a group of old houses on
Thames Street at Newport, may be said to represent the second period of
our colonial architecture,--_i.e._, the first quarter of the eighteenth
century. They are entirely of frame construction, covered over the
boarding with thick clap-boards, with beaded edges, put on with wrought
nails, and the roofs covered with split shingles of a better class than
those previously used. In houses of this period brick began to take the
place of stone for chimneys, and the gambrel roof--a form of
construction whose history so far has eluded the researches of the
student--seems to have originated in the colonies: it continued in favor
for a hundred years or mor