The lover of country life who looks upon rural objects in the true
spirit, and, for the first time surveys the cultivated portions of the
United States, will be struck with the incongruous appearance and style
of our farm houses and their contiguous buildings; and, although, on
examination, he will find many, that in their interior accommodation,
and perhaps relative arrangement to each other, are tolerably suited to
the business and convenience of the husbandman, still, the feeling will
prevail that there is an absence of method, congruity, and correct taste
in the architectural structure of his buildings generally, by the
American farmer.
We may, in truth, be said to have no architecture at all, as exhibited
in our agricultural districts, so far as any correct system, or plan is
concerned, as the better taste in building, which a few years past has
introduced among us, has been chiefly confined to our cities and towns
of rapid growth. Even in the comparatively few buildings in the modern
style to be seen in our farming districts, from the various requirements
of those buildings being partially unknown to the architect and builder,
who had their planning--and upon whom, owing to their own inexperience
in such matters, their employers have relied--a majority of such
dwellings have turned out, if not absolute failures, certainly not what
the necessities of the farmer has demanded. Consequently, save in the
mere item of outward appearance--and that, not always--the farmer and
cottager have gained nothing, owing to the absurdity in style or
arrangement, and want of fitness to circumstances adopted for the
occasion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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