Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Historic Homesteads of Kings County
The Dutch Farm Houses with which we are familiar are different from the houses of any other time or country. They are even unlike the houses of Holland. This was due to necessity. The Dutch farmers developed a type of house most suited to their new home.
The earliest houses erected on Long Island were of the Arts and Craft variety, hand-made throughout, but after numerous fires had occurred the people built largely of sun-dried brick. They were made in the local kiln, for each town had its own kiln.
Almost all houses after 1700 were built of wood, and then the design of the comfortable Dutch farm house was developed. It was a broadening out of the original Holland house so as to extend over a larger area. In Netherlands they built miniature sky-scrapers, but in America land was plentiful and there was room to Spread out.
The house we are describing is the typical one. Facing the south, as all Dutch houses faced the south, they often stood endwise to the road. In those early days the house had little or no cellar, but after 1750 large spacious cellars were the custom.
In the older houses, as those which were built before 1800, all the rooms were, generally, on the ground ?oor. The large attic was used for storage. A large amount of the labor of the house wife was performed herein summer, such as quilting, spinning and weaving.
The exterior design consisted of a main house, through the center of which, in later years, extended the broad hall, with a great door at both ends. Bull's-eye windows were cut in these doors, to admit more light than was transmitted into the hall by the transoms. Frequently, these doors were beautifully carved.
On each side of this hall were two rooms; to the right a parlor and a bedroom. Often this bedroom was divided into two rooms. To the left was a sitting room and one or two back bedrooms.
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