[00:00.00]In New England today, around eighty houses that were built in the seventeenth century are still standing.[00:06.43]Many of these houses—and the documents relating to them—have been thoroughly studied, and some of the houses have been carefully restored to their original condition.[00:15.73] These early houses of New England are the greatest single source of knowledge about domestic architecture of the seventeenth century, particularly about details of plan and construction.
[00:27.83]All seventeenth-century houses were not alike. [00:31.73]There was some variety in their floor plans, with each house being shaped by the circumstances of the family and the characteristics of the site. [00:41.43]Nevertheless, it’s possible to identify the three most common plan types, which were the one-room plan, the two- room plan, and the added lean-to plan. [00:53.52]We can even figure out the order in which they probably evolved.
[00:57.83]The one-room plan was the simplest and the earliest design. [01:01.93]It was used in the early cottages at Plymouth and Salem, dating back to the 1620s, and it remained common in smaller and poorer dwellings throughout the century.[01:13.53] In the one-room plan, the front door opened into a small entry room, which was then called the “porch.” [01:21.03]In the porch, there was a steep staircase built up against a massive chimney. [01:26.50]The large main room was a combination living-dining-cooking room called the “hall.”[01:33.35] In this room, there was a huge fireplace set into the chimney mass. [01:38.93]The staircase in the porch led to one large sleeping room upstairs.
[01:44.33]The second house design was the two-room plan, which was simply the one-room plan with a parlor added at the other side of the chimney and porch. [01:54.93]The result was a house with two fireplaces, one in the hall and one in the parlor, that were set back-to-back in the central chimney structure.[02:04.23] In several earlier examples of this design, the parlor was actually built onto an older one-room house, enlarging the smaller house. [02:13.73]But more common in later examples, both rooms were built at the same time when families could afford it. [02:20.23]Upstairs, there were two sleeping rooms, called the “hall chamber” and the “parlor chamber,” after the room below each.
[02:27.73]The third design, the added lean-to plan, was the result of an addition at the back of the house, making this the largest of the three plans. [02:37.93]The lean-to addition had roof rafters leaning against the second-story wall of the main house.[02:45.23] The added space was used as a kitchen.[02:48.13] The cooking was done in a fireplace added to the back of the central chimney structure. [02:53.73]There were two more rooms built on either side of the kitchen. [02:57.23]On the cold side of the kitchen, there was a pantry for food storage, and on the warm side, facing the sun on the south, there was a bedroom. [03:05.93]Above the kitchen, under the lean-to roof, there was attic space for storage or more sleeping rooms, which you reached by a staircase leading up from the kitchen.
[03:16.43]These three house plans form a logical evolutionary sequence.[03:21.53]The one-room plan was the earliest design. [03:24.93]Then the two-room plan was most common up until around 1650.[03:29.73]By the year 1700, the lean-to plan was dominant. [03:33.73]However, it’s important to note that the one-room plan—although it came earliest—continued to be built throughout the seventeenth century.[03:42.33]So, it’s best not to try to determine the age of a colonial house strictly by its plan type, which is not a perfect indicator of the house’s age．
托福14天冲刺微信战团