The Persistent Pediment

The Georgian style prevailed in the Colonies from around 1700 to the Revolution. During that time builders copied and adapted patterns from contemporary English design books, such as William Salmon’s Palladio Londinensis . A drawing in that book (left) is the model for Westover’s doorway. In the 1750s and 1760s the style spread through New England, as can be seen from the examples shown here. As late as 1918, when Wallace Nutting, the authority on New England furniture, was attempting to remove Victorianisms from the Wentworth-Gardner house in New Hampshire in order to return it to its Georgian origins, he too designed a door that may have been inspired by Salmon’s book.