The Cottage Central Dormer and Frontispiece Style
Sooner or later the centre dormer, lined up with the centre door, would make its appearance. It was not a new invention, but a very old feature adapted by the pioneers to bring light into the dark upstairs hall of the house in the wilderness. So why am I celebrating it at this time?
This graphic may appear to some as outrageous and far fetched. How could a cottage on the Norway Road, in a remote part of Lot 1 in Prince County, ever have anything to do with a perfect example of a Roman temple on its base, or the similarly-inspired portico of our Province House? The reaction of a friend in Tignish, Dryden Buote, trained in the classical tradition, was to the point. “The words that immediately came to mind,” he said, “were continuity, nobility, consistency – modest yet grand.”
The dormer on the cottage on the Norway Road, yes, provided the central part of the upstairs with much needed light, even perhaps a comfortable nook for sewing, but its placement on the house, in the centre, above the door, was determined by the thinking of the carpenter who built it. That man, perhaps without ever knowing or uttering the word classical, nonetheless knew by the example of other builders, that this is how it should be done. Those other builders, rising in knowledge and awareness of style the closer their presence was related to the Island colony, passed on the essence of Georgian domestic architecture – continuity, consistency and nobility.
The Takeover of the Dormer and Frontispiece
When this little central chimney house – extremely elegant in its Plaw/Smith Greek Revival cladding – was built on Sydney Street and given enormous architectural muscle by its huge central chimney, the occupants still groped about the dark convoluted upstairs hall, perhaps with the help of a candle, to reach their bedrooms under the eaves, each lit with a small window.
222 Sydney Street, Charlottetown – Circa 1830-33
https://regporter.com/pei/2022/04/27/the-central-chimney-braced-frame-house-part-3/
This practice of building houses without any light at the top of the stairs in the central hall continued even after the central chimney was divided into two lateral structures on a scale that could accommodate iron stoves.
Look at this elegant post-Revolution Yorkshire Settler early Nineteenth Century house on the Etter Ridge Road, parallel to the highway at Aulac, New Brunswick. Its transom and sidelights positively flood the entrance hall with light, but go up the stairs, and you will find your way around only with light seeping through the doors to the end bedrooms that were left ajar. Why was there not a centre dormer to complete the design and functional elements of this extremely elegant house?
Dunvegan House, Trueman estate, Etter Ridge Road, Aulac N.B., c. 1820-30
On the Island, in a quite similar house built by Loyalists in Bedeque at the beginning of the century there is a solution to the dark upstairs hall in the form in a window placed in the wall up to the height of the rising gable roof. It makes an enormous difference.
Nathaniel Wright House, Bedeque – 1807
At what time and following the influence of what persons was the centre dormer introduced? Feel the miracle of light and warmth that floods into this slightly later upstairs hall lit by a centre dormer. Its like an epiphany.
Frogmore House, Trueman estate, Point de Bute, N.B., c. 1870
Brooks House – Murray Harbour, c 1840-50
The house now known as the Brooks house in Murray Harbour introduces the appearance of the centre dormer into cottages of quality that began to be built in the 1830s in ever increasing numbers.
A generously wide dormer has been placed above the elegant Palladian front door with its sidelights and transom filled with small panes. Its proportions reflect the width of the upstairs hall, and we have a clear idea of the space available, not only as the prime source of light, but also a working space added to what was once complete obscurity. Note especially that the dormer erupts from the roof, and a section of the classical eaves passes under it. This appears to be how the centre dormer was introduced to Island houses.
This house has an extremely imposing capping to its front door – a full pediment! This unusual feature, which I present here as part of the Brooks story and because of the clarity of the illustration, seems to have first appeared at the Guernsey Cove settlement, to be discussed below, that appeared in the early Nineteenth Century. This subject will be discussed further later on in this post.
This property was built near a creek leading into the Murray River, and in earlier times there must have been a view of astonishing beauty, looking across the river to the emerging agricultural landscape on the far shore. Although our property is just off this aerial view at the left edge, you obtain a euphoric vision of this beautiful part of Eastern Prince Edward Island.
On a smaller scale here is a more intimate view of the farm itself. Starting in the 1950s, pilots perhaps trained in the war, began to fly over parts of the Island taking pictures of peoples’ homes – mostly farms – from the air. These were black and white pictures which were tinted by hand, a process that goes back to the origins of photography. This is a fine example of such a photo, packed full of information about the house in its topography.
In the 1930s there was, very close to this farm, a large starch factory, most traces of which have now disappeared.
Brooks farm and a starch factory, c. 1930. Donna Johnston Collings Collection.
The earliest owner of this property that I am aware of was a man called John Cowan who appears on the 1863 Lake map. Because of the obscurity of the map detail I will not insert it here. By the time of the Meacham 1880 ATLAS the property, now owned by a man called Cowen Brooks was too small to be included in the Lot 63-64 map
By the Twentieth Century and the 1927 Cummings ATLAS we see that the Brooks fortunes have improved spectacularly, and David Brooks now owns 250 contiguous acres!
Detail of Lot 64, Cummings ATLAS, p. 111.
It is not often, in a project such as this one, to obtain even the briefest of history of a particular property. It is good to have a list, no matter how sketchy, of the various owners going back to pioneer days.
When I visited this property with my friend Donna Johnston Collings in the 1990s I was overwhelmed by its beauty, and the little valley that constituted its farmyard. The property was overgrown and cared for by an elderly unmarried man, John Brooks, whose old-fashioned courtesy enhanced the magic of this secret rustic paradise.
Aerial Photos and Rural Context
Seldom can we appreciate these urban or rustic cottages in their original context. They were not meant to stand alone, but would have had a well house, a wood shed and a whole variety of barns and sheds for animals, feed and equipment. As seen in the Brooks house above, post-war aerial photos, which were taken in great numbers and sold to the owners on spec, were popular.
After this post was completed Ben MacLeod sent me this photo of the centre dormer house he grew up in. It is one of those aerial shots discussed above, difficult to date, but probably from the 1950-60 period. The House is located on the corner of Routes 167 and 132 in Northam, known as MacLeod’s Corner. It is fascinating to move around the small farm property as it was in those days and notice not only the house, but the gardens and landscaping that had evolved in since the house had been built. Not of the original generation of such houses, it is a slightly later repetition of a very comfortable and practical form. I had to insert it because of the valuable dimension this view gave to the house in its topography. Everything is in its place and the viewer can easily speculate on the various activities that took place to keep the property running, but also an insight into a more aesthetic side of things such as the placement of the garden, flower beds and garden furniture and the great shade trees flanking the more formal entrance to the home.
The MacLeod House, MacLeod’s Corner, Northam
Photo courtesy of Ben MacLeod.
The Leard House, Souris – 1851
In Souris is another of the early centre dormer houses, this time built and decorated for an urban setting. The Palladian window with a rounded head announces the social importance and prominence of this home overlooking the bay.
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=22555&pid=0
The building known as the Leard house in Souris has always been considered the architectural gem of the town, and greatly respected as the home of the highly respected local historian, the late Waldron Leard.
The house was built by Donald Beaton in 1851, a very notable person involved in both government and the fisheries. After his death it was sold to Caleb Carleton Sr., who ran a lobster canning establishment and who was also American Consul in Souris. This extraordinary arrangement was to provide representation for the huge American mackerel fleets that docked in Souris harbour. At Carleton’s death the property, and diplomatic post, passed on to his son also called Caleb. In the early 1950s the property came into the possession of Raymond Leard who was a merchant with strong interests in history.
This detail shows to what lengths the builder went to give a most elaborate classical flavour to his window frames. Each window is a temple entrance! Not only do the pilasters meet up with an architrave, but the heavy eave decoration of the Tuscan Doric derived capital runs across to the other, forming a cornice.
We do not know how the corner pilasters joined the eave arrangement because the capital or termination of the corner board has been removed so that a plastic soffit could be installed.
The Guernsey Cove Dormer Style – c. 1850-60
The first British settlers of Lot 64 were Loyalists who came around 1798. They were augmented when in May of 1815 a ship carrying 73 members of eight families from the Channel Islands docked in Charlottetown, and after refusing unsuitable acres in Pisquid, offered by Lady Fanning, sailed to Lot 64 where they disembarked at a small anchorage which they called Guernsey Cove, after the home they had left behind.
Detail from Lots 63 and 64, Meacham’s ATLAS, p. 132,
Their story is told in Robert Tuck’s Island Magazine article listed below. The community was very isolated, and what remains of it today is also isolated. There is room for a considerable amount of scholarship to be done with the surviving images of the Guernsey Cove houses over the two or so generations of their construction. The FORMS are typical central plan neoclassical cottage, but the ornamentation applied to all these community buildings over time – massive pediments and impressive mouldings – is unique to that part of the Island and has never been explained. Where does it come from? The Channel Islands, obviously? Or was it developed from influence by a particular builder who settled among the Lot 64 pioneers?
House built by William Beck, c. 1835-45, Guernsey Cove
The large, fully-proportioned pediments found over the central door and on top of the dormer spread to other communities. Some are found in Murray Harbour, as in the Brooks house (above) and also the centre gable Stewart house in Belle River, which I will discuss in another post. It suggests that in the 1835-60 period this style, never going farther west than Lot 62, had its origins in carpenters and builders who travelled out from Guernsey Cove.
The Frontispiece is created
The Gable Front slides down the Façade
At some point yet undetermined builders decided to cut away the eaves that were the foundation on which the dormer rested and ran a vertical wall from the gable top to the ground, creating new drama in the centre dormer house. It was not a new idea because its inspiration came directly from the temple front. Many two-storey buildings had already been constructed across the Island where a double level temple front had been constructed primarily as a design feature. This was called a frontispiece. It was used to add dignity to the front of a building rather than add architectural support.
A very fine example of an early frontispiece can be found in Egmont Bay in a house built as a presbytery for a Roman Catholic church. It was built in 1834 by Fr Sylvain Poirier (or Perrey) who was in charge of the missions in the Acadian region.
Presbytery for St. Phillipe & St. Jacques Church, 1834.
Photo from the internet. Circa 1900?
It is a simple three bay centre dormer house with no Palladian extensions to the front door or window. Nevertheless, both the porch, which is probably original, and the dormer windows have a significantly large pediment. The porch, which seems to have a side door against the prevailing wind also has a pedimented top. Its very elaborate. The width of the dormer itself accommodates the upstairs hall and the upward thrust of the centre wall – the frontispiece – is full of energy. One can see why this simple architectural modification – the removal of the eaves – became popular to add dignity and a greater presence to the house.
The corners have very wide pilasters which seem to be topped with a sort of Tuscan Doric capital which is probably an extension of the eave mouldings.
The way the house was constructed is very interesting and gives us an insight on what may be Acadian practices carried on into the British Colonial period. In an (undated) article in a local newspaper, probably the Summerside Journal, the story is told of the new owner of the house, Bernie Gallant, who, during extensive stabilisation of the house, discovered that the small kitchen wing was in horizontal squared log construction with the rafters and other elements held together with mortice and tenon joints. That is not so surprising, but his description of the outer walls of the main house is intriguing. The house, of course, is the braced frame used at the time. First the frame was covered with a layer of heavy boards, and this was covered with a layer of birchbark. So far, this is the usual practice at that time. But Mr. Gallant found that the entire process had been repeated with the addition of another covering of heavy boards and yet more birchbark. It was only then that the handmade cedar shakes, with four inches to the wind were added. Mr. Gallant did not feel it necessary to have the house insulated.
The house survives to this day, placed on a cement foundation. It has lost its porch pediment – in fact the whole porch looks like a replacement – and the corner boards of both the house itself and the corners of the dormer.
The Frontispiece Comes Alive
In grander buildings that we have seen built on the Island in the first half of the Nineteenth Century we have noticed the presence of the frontispiece in varying degrees of articulation. Government House, built in 1834, not only has a hint of frontispiece, it has a full Ionic temple front attached to responding pilasters flanking the front entrance. Province House, converted into a Palladian mansion in its last years of construction has a full Ionic portico built on top of a massive podium base in the style of Roman temples. The enigmatic Ringwood built at Rocky Point, probably in the 1840s, has a beautifully articulated façade with four massive pilasters enclosing the corners and framing the front entrance. These pilasters project significantly from the surface of the building.
Ringwood House, Port la Joye, Rocky Point.
It is not surprising therefore that efforts would be made to give storey and a half cottages a more dramatic frontispiece by extending the reach of the dormer beyond the wall line and having a fully projecting frontispiece into which the door and dormer window would be inserted.
In 1991 a student of mine, Walter Clark, wrote a comprehensive essay on houses that had been built by the Clark family in the region of Hamilton, in Lot 18, not far from the town and royalty of Princetown.
The area had first been taken over by William Wallace in the late Eighteenth Century, after the expulsion of the Acadians and Mi’kmaq from those lands. He was a carpenter by trade and soon established a sawmill in the Shipyard River that crossed a corner of his property. Unhappy there he moved to Charlottetown and sold his land to John Clark of Cape Traverse. Clark divided this property into three smaller parcels which he gave to his son Abraham, his grandson John Montague Clark and another person called Richard W. Morson.
In the early part of the Nineteenth Century houses were built on this tract of land, highlighted on the detail of the Meacham map of Lot 18 below, and these were the object of Walter Clark’s essay. I believe that he was writing about his family.
John Clark House, Cape Traverse – 1830s.
John Clark House, the Journal Pioneer, 21 July 1978.
He found picture of the former house of John Clark (1788-1872) in a series of articles published in 1978 in the Journal Pioneer by Jean MacFadyen. John Clark built a storey and a half five bay house, probably in the 1830s, and conscious of the new trend built a significant frontispiece which contained a Palladian door and dormer window. The effect is noble, and you have a sense of being reached out to not only for welcome but also to be made to recognise the identity and importance of the owner.
Detail of Lot 18, Meacham’s ATLAS, p 85
This kind of property became very popular in the 1830-45 period and examples were to be found all over the Island.
Sometimes the frontispiece took on a life of its own and would not stop projecting. This seems to be the case of the Rogers house at Scales Pond.
1841 – Rogers’s house – Scales Pond
https://peiheritagebuildings.blogspot.com/2012/06/scales-pond.html
The frontis perhaps projects too far, and instead of a polite advance upon the guest it is an aggressive rush at the persons arriving at this formal door. Maybe it says too much.
The Ultimate Sweet Memory
Of all the modest houses constructed in the first half of the Nineteenth Century the frontispiece house is my favourite. First of all it appeals to my classical training and those miles walked through the Greek Countryside seeking remains of pedimented temples. It brings back memories of the chaos of Rome and those precious gems discovered in back streets near the Tiber River. Most powerfully, perhaps, it reminds me that our Western Civilisation is based on the Renaissance rebirth of these ancient styles, and their incorporation into noble – and ordinary – architecture.
As I rhapsodized on and on in a previous post, this farm cottage at Marshfield, the object of weekly short fieldtrips from Charlottetown in the 18 years I lived there, was my ideal.
https://regporter.com/pei/2022/11/26/the-georgian-origins-of-island-domestic-architecture/
Look at the happy order of this farmhouse still sitting in its ancestral acres. See with what delicacy and brilliance the country builder pushed forward the new bright upstairs hall and, more considerate to guests, pushed back the beautiful fanlight front door just enough to create a protective welcoming nook from the weather.
It is the experiences enjoyed in front of houses like this that led me to let fly and indulge my lifelong passion for Island domestic architecture!
Postscript
The Centre Gable Appears – The Architecture of Confederation
In architecture, and art in general, nothing ever stands still. In a subsequent post I will describe how the frontispiece house, which required special efforts in framing, was abandoned and the dormer, once scarcely a rare ray of sunlight tucked shyly into the roof above the front door, now, swollen with megalomania, begins to spread and spread, in the tracks of the ambitions and dreams that led to Confederation, and in time takes over all four sides of the house!
1860s – Mutch House at Eldon (now demolished).
SPECIAL THANKS
Donna Johnston Collings provided me with a great deal of assistance with various details of the Brooks property at Murray Harbour. She provided names and dates, maps and photographs, for which I am most grateful.
I also wish to thank Ben MacLeod of Northam for sending me a rare post-war aerial shot of his family home that permits an interpretation of the house in its topographical environment.
PATRONS
Kind persons have provided support for the expenses incurred in producing this blog. I wish to express my deep gratitude to these individuals who have helped me cover the costs of archival scans, photographs, learned journals, books and professional services, and to those who have shared photographs and documents in their collections.
Marcel Carpenter
Scott Davidson
Trevor Gillingwater
Henry Kliner
Earle Lockerby
Dr. Edward and Sheila MacDonald
Robert L. Scobie
Dr. Douglas Sobey
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