Reg Porter's Heritage Blog

In the past four or so posts I have been discussing the appearance of Georgian architecture – specifically the central plan house – on the Island, and how styles in the capital Charlottetown differed from those outside the sphere of influence of the Plaw/Smith Greek Revival style. In some detail, again and again, I described how Plaw’s pilaster and eave bracket on his 1811 Courthouse invented a new Greek Revival style that, in Charlottetown at least, completely eclipsed that which was popular on the Mainland and in New England. I touched briefly on other styles that appeared in town and across the harbour, and in isolated Springhill where we saw…

If you would like to contact me, please send an email to reg@regporter.com.   The Central Plan House –The Doric and Ionic Styles begin to dominate Domestic and Civic Architecture. Resuming our discussion of the early Georgian central plan house as it appeared in the first six decades of the Nineteenth Century, we leave the Greek Revival style and examine the use of two Classical Orders – Doric and Ionic – as they appear on Island houses, interpreted by the hands of the builders.     The Ionic Order appears in the Georgian World. The Ionic Order is the second of the classical orders to appear after Doric. Its most dramatic…

If you would like to contact me, please send an email to reg@regporter.com.   The Central Plan House – continued … For me this post is most exciting because it introduces the description and discussion of the Classical Orders – Doric, Ionic and Corinthian – as they appear on Island houses, interpreted and manipulated by the hands of the builders who employed them. The classical orders were introduced into European architecture through new study and interpretation during the Renaissance, especially through the works of architects like Andrea Palladio’s Four Books on Architecture in 1570, and those of Alberti, Serlio and others. They all wrote books on architecture illustrated with huge, engraved…

If you would like to contact me, please send an email to reg@regporter.com. The Central Plan House – Part 2 We resume here our discussion of the early Georgian central plan house as it appeared on the Island in the first six decades of the Nineteenth Century. As we advance with our survey, once again we begin with a very grand house set in picturesque grounds away from the city in green acres, yet within minutes of the centre of town.   Ravenwood House, 1820-28 In 1871 the painter Robert Harris produced a watercolour with a viewpoint near the bottom of Mount Edward Road. As cows return home to their town stables…

Interlude – the birth of the Greek Revival Style on PEI  The evolution of Georgian architecture on the Island is unique in one startling way and I feel an enormous compulsion to interrupt my narrative on domestic buildings to explain how one original and beautiful method of joining the corners to the eaves originated and developed. We have seen examples of it in previous posts and it will appear in the ones that follow. Let us pause for a short while and contemplate this elegant invention and make it second nature in our perception. As the colony of Prince Edward Island began to grow in the early Nineteenth Century, buildings…