In contrast to the New England village-community was the trading post. Of this nature were the little towns in the New Netherlands which were planted there by the Dutch West India Company: the settlers were for the most part either harassed individuals who were lured to the New World by the prospects of a good living, or people of established rank who were tempted to leave the walks of commerce for the dignities and affluences that were attached to the feudal tenure of the large estates that lined the Hudson.
The germs of town life came over with these people, and sheer necessity turned part of their energies to agriculture, but they did not develop the close village-community we find in New England; and though New Amsterdam was a replica of the Old World port, with its gabled brick houses, and its well-banked canals and fine gardens, it left no decided pattern on the American scene. It is only the country architecture of the Dutch which survives as either a relic or a memory. These trading posts like Manhattan and Fort Orange were, as Messrs. Petersen and Edwards have shown in their study of New York as an Eighteenth Century Municipality, medieval in their economy: numerous guild and civic regulations which provided for honest weight and measure and workmanship continued in force within the town. In their external dealings, on the other hand, the practice of the traders was sharp, and every man was for himself. Beginning its life by bargaining in necessities, the trading post ends by making a necessity of bargaining; and it was the impetus from its original commercial habits which determined the characteristics of the abortive city plan that was laid down for Manhattan Island in 1811. Rich as the Dutch precedent is in individual farmhouses, it brings us no pattern, such as we find in New England, for the community as a whole.
II
Since we are accustomed to look upon the village as a quaint primitive relic of a bygone age, we do not readily see that its form was dictated by social and economic conditions. Where the village had to defend itself against Indians, it was necessary to lay it out completely, so that it might be surrounded by a stockade, and so that the meetinghouse might be such a rallying center as the bell-tower or the castle was in Europe, or as the high temple site was in classic times. But in the eighteenth century the Indian figured less in the scheme of colonial life, and along the seacoast and river—as at Wells Beach in Maine or Litchfield in Connecticut—the village became a long strip upon a highroad, and the arable land stretched in narrow plots from the house to the water, so that the farmer might better protect his crops and his livestock from the fox, the wolf, the woodchuck, the hawk, the skunk, and the deer.
I emphasize these points of structure because of the silly notion superficial observers sometimes carry away from the villages of Europe or New England; namely, that their irregularity is altogether capricious and uneconomical, associated only with the vagaries of the straying cow. It would be more correct to say that the precise reverse was true. The inequality in size and shape of plots shows always that attention was paid to the function the land was to perform, rather than to the mere possession of property. Thus, there was a difference in size between home lots, which were always seated in the village, and purely agricultural tracts of land, which were usually on the outskirts; and in Dedham, for example, married men had home lots of twelve acres, while bachelors received only eight. Another reason for the compactness of the village was a decree of the General Court in Massachusetts, in 1635, that no dwelling should be placed more than half a mile from the meetinghouse in any new plantation. Even irregularities in the layout and placement of houses, which cannot be referred to such obvious points as these, very often derive from an attempt to break the path of the wind, to get a good exposure in summer, or to profit by a view.
All this was genuine community planning. It did not go by this name, perhaps, but it achieved the result.
III
We have learned in recent years to appreciate the felicities of eighteenth-century colonial architecture, and even the earlier seventeenth-century style is now coming into its own, in the sense that it is being imitated by architects who have an eye for picturesque effects; but we lose our perspective altogether if we think that the charm of an old New England house can be recaptured by designing overhanging second stories or panelled interiors. The just design, the careful execution, the fine style that brings all the houses into harmony no matter how diverse the purposes they served—for the farmhouse shares its characteristics with the mill, and the mill with the meetinghouse—was the outcome of a common spirit, nourished by men who had divided the land fairly and who shared adversity and good fortune together. When the frame of the house is to be raised, a man’s neighbors will lend him a hand; if the harvest is in danger, every man goes out into the fields, even if his own crop is not at stake; if a whale founders on the beach, even the smallest boy bears a hand, and gets a share of the reward. All these practices were not without their subtle effect upon craftsmanship.
Schooled in the traditions of his guild, the medieval carpenter pours his all into the work. Since sale does not enter into the bargain, it is both to his patron’s advantage to give him
