Living in New England

Introduction When explorer Captain John Smith received a royal charter from the Virginia Company of London, he sailed from England to the Chesapeake Bay and, in 1607, founded the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia. Seven years later, on another expedition, Captain Smith mapped the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, and gave those six states, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the name of New England. Most of the original seventeenth-century settlers were English, many of them Calvinists or Puritans, who believed in plain and religious living. Some of the early homes, especially in northern New England, were farms, continuous buildings where each part had its own function -- the main house, a barn for the cows or sheep, and a shed for chickens and pigs. But many of the settlers had brought with them the culture and the architecture of England. The earliest seventeenth-century homes were one-room wood houses. Then a shed was added, a center chimney, and a second story. As people prospered, they began to emulate the more elaborate styles that were popular in England. By the eighteenth century, some homeowners, like merchants or shipowners, started building Georgian houses with square layout, central hallway, and doorway framed by columns supporting a pediment. In the nineteenth century, the Georgian house was transformed into a more refined Federal style that included larger window openings and more slender muntins. The door became wider and taller and was topped by a fanlight and flanked by sidelights. From 1820 to 1860, the Greek Revival style held sway, with facades designed as two-story temple fronts with pedimented gables. The second half of the nineteenth century saw the emergence of the Victorian style, with fanciful gingerbread trim, turrets, exploded bay windows and gas lights. Plate glass encouraged bigger windows. By the twentieth century, the mill towns that had dotted New England declined as industry went south, and New England had to reinvent itself again. High-technology businesses surround Boston. Hartford, Connecticut, calls itself the insurance capital of the country, while Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard are sleepy in winter and tourist havens in the summer.Living in New England is an album of 25 different houses that shows how the owners embrace not only the New England architecture, but also the land, the vistas, and the seasons. Within New England, each of the six states has its own personality. Connecticut, whose original inhabitants were the Algonquin, has beaches and harbors, rolling hills and lakes. The landscape is gentle. When you are in northwest Connecticut, it is so quiet it feels like you can hear a leaf drop. The Connecticut houses in this book possess a kind of genteelness that matches the landscape.But if Connecticut is genteel, Maine is rugged. Like Norway, the state has more trees than people. It is 80 percent forest and has a wild, rocky coast. When you drive the highway or roads in Maine, it is sometimes so desolate of people that for miles and miles the only view is of trees, lit softly by the low-lying sun. The people of Maine are a mix of English, Irish and Scottish, some French, a few Indians and African Americans, all known for their taciturn, dry humor. Shipbuilding was once an important trade, and those same skills survive, often translated into the building of homes rather than boats. Floors don't creak. Walls are plumb. Houses have a deep solidity about them. The homes range from a farm to Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic and Victorian.Two American presidents, John Quincy Adams and John F. Kennedy have lived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as the state is known. Other famous literary inhabitants include Edith Wharton, Eugene O'Neill, and Norman Mailer. The Boston Tea Party helped trigger the Revolutionary War and Boston is now feted asLouie, Elaine is the author of 'Living in New England' with ISBN 9780743203753 and ISBN 0743203755.