NOTES
- Readers should be aware of an important distinction between the substance and approach used by those who study vernacular and folk architecture and those who would call themselves architectural historians. Architectural historians have traditionally been concerned primarily with great buildings: churches, public buildings, and the houses of the elite. And, while attention focuses on the singularity of such buildings, they are generally referenced in relation to well defined and international period classes, e.g. Georgian, Greek Revival, Romanesque neo-gothic, etc. Vernacular or folk architecture is concerned with more prosaic buildings—domestic houses, barns, and other utilitarian structures, buildings whose form is determined more by function and tradition than by art and intellect. Vernacular architectural historians are concerned to reference buildings in relation to a specific cultural group or region and have developed class labels quite distinct from those of architectural historians.
- Examples of this work for Canada include: Peter Ennals and Deryck Holdsworth, “Vernacular Architecture and the Cultural Landscape of the Maritime Provinces—A Reconnaisance,” Acadiensis, 10 (Spring, 1981) pp. 86–106; Peter Ennals, “Nineteenth Century Barns in Southern Ontario,” Canadian Geographer 16 (Fall, 1972) pp. 257–270; Deryck Holdsworth, “House and Home in Vancouver: Images of West Coast Urbanism, 1886 1929,” in G.A. Stelter and A.F.J. Artibise, eds., The Canadian City: Essays in Urban History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977), pp. 186–211; David B. Mills, “The Development of Folk Architecture in Trinity Bay, Newfoundland,” in John J. Mannion, ed., The Peopling of Newfoundland (St. John's: Memorial University, 1977), pp. 77–101; John Lehr, Ukrainian Vernacular Architecture in Alberta (Edmonton: Historical Resource Division, Alberta Culture, 1976): John J. Mannion, Irish Settlement in Eastern Canada: A Study in Cultural Transfer and Adaptation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974); Georges Gauthier-Larouche, Evolution de la maison rurale traditionelle dons la région de Québec (Québec: Ministère des Affaires culturelles, 1974); Robert-Lionel Séguin. Les granges du Québec du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1963).
- See, for example Deryck Holdsworth, “Regional Distinctiveness in an Industrial Age: Some California Influences on British Columbia Housing,” in this issue of The American Review of Canadian Studies.
- The typology used here is that described in Ennals and Holdsworth, op. cit. It is crude classification to be sure, and one could with extensive field recording develop a more refined set of classes and subclasses. However, recent work points to the fallacy of elaborate encompassing classifications, noting that many buildings have undergone radical surgery since first construction, e.g. addition or deletion of storeys, major stylistic revisions, etc. (Gerald Pocious, “Evolution, Devolution and Architectural Typology: Alterations of Vernacular House Forms on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland,” unpublished paper read at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Corner Brook, Nfld., August, 1981). A useful visual survey of surviving houses in this region is provided by the series of volumes published by the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia: Founded Upon a Rock (Halifax, 1971); South Shore (Halifax, 1971); Seasoned Timbers (Halifax, 1974); Lakes, Salt Marshes and the Narrow Green Strip (Halifax, 1979).
- See Mary Mix Foley, The American House (New York: Harper and Row, 1980), p. 30; there were also half houses. To confuse the issue of terminology there is also an earlier system of modular references applied to the Cape Cod, viz. house (half house); house and a half (three quarter house); double house (house). The logic of this system derives from the probable evolutionary history of the house which began as a single room with an end chimney bay which was called as a “house.” See Ernest Allen Connolly, “The Cape Cod House: An Introductory Study,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 19 (Spring, 1960), pp. 47–56.
- Connected house and service buildings are a common occurence over wide areas of northern New England. See Wilbur Zelinsky, “New England Connecting Barns,” Geographical Review, 48 (October, 1958), pp. 540–553. The custom does spill over into Maritime Canada but is not as pervasive and is more evident in New Brunswick than in Nova Scotia.
- Something of the economic background of occupants of houses can be gleaned from Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia, South Shore, and Lakes, Salt Marshes and the Narrow Green Strip.
- The best recent source documenting antecedents of New England house form is Abbot Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625–1725 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).
- Connolly, “The Cape Cod House.”
- For the geographic origins of early Nova Scotia settlers see Esther Clark Wright, Planters and Pioneers (Hantsport, N.S.: Lancelot, 1978).
- Carole Rifkind, A Field Guide to American Architecture (New York: New American Library, 1980).
- Jean-Claude Dupont, Histoire populaire de I'Acadie (Ottawa: Leméac, 1978), pp. 48–58; Clarence LeBreton, “Civilisation matérielle en Acadie,” in Jean Daigle, ed. Les Acadiens des Maritimes (Moncton: Université de Moncton, 1980). pp. 467–519.
- See, for example, the descriptions by Rameau, Gargas, Meneval and Saccardy as cited in Andrew H. Clark, Acadia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 105, 137–38.
- Peter Ennals, “Folk Tradition and Change in Recent Acadian Housing,” unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers, Corner Brook, Nfld., August 1981. It is argued in the paper that while Acadians adapted New England house building techniques they maintained an internal plan that was distinctive and which was probably of medieval origin.
- Personal communication, Professor Barry Moody, Annapolis, N.S.
- David Artiss, “German Cultural Heritage Studies in Atlantic Canada,” Proceedings of the Atlantic University Teachers of German Conference (Sackville, N.B.: Mount Allison University, 1979), p. 77. The documentary record is not very clear on this matter. Winthrop Pickard Bell describes the house building in the colony noting that both log and frame houses were constructed from the beginning. Winthrop Pickard Bell, The “Foreign Protestants” and the Settlement of Nova Scotia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), pp. 345, 437. At least one log house survives in Lunenburg (the Romkey House), and Artiss has identified a handful of German folk features in its interior design which suggests that more detailed individual study of Lunenburg homes may prove fruitful.
- Artiss, Ibid., p. 73.
- Ennals and Holdsworth, “Vernacular Architecture and the Cultural Landscape of the Maritime Provinces,” pp. 97–98.
- See the description and discussion of Type III in Ennals and Holdsworth, Ibid., pp. 92–94, 103–104.
- These ideas are synthesized in Wilbur Zelinsky, The Cultural Geography of the United States (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), chapters 3 and 4. Also see Henry Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968).
- Fred Kniffen, “Folk Housing: Key to Diffusion,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, 55 (December, 1965), pp. 549–577; Glassie, Patterns in the Material Folk Culture; Peirce Lewis. “The Geography of Old Houses,” Earth and Mineral Sciences (Pennsylvania State University) 39, (February, 1970). pp. 33–37.
- See the map in Zelinsky, “New England Connecting Barns,” p. 81, and Glassie, Patterns in the Material Folk Culture, p. 39.
- Zelinsky, Ibid., pp. 77–108.
- J.M. Bumstead, Henry Alline, 1748–1785 (Montreal: Queen's-McGill University Press, 1971).
- A good deal can be learned of the links between the two regions in the pages of Northeast Folklore. In particular, see Edward D. Ives, “Folksongs from Maine,” Northeast Folklore, VII (1965). p. 8.