It will be unnecessary to make any further mention of the Georgian churches of New York as they are, in the main, similar to those that have been mentioned in an earlier part of this chapter. Some note, however, should be made of the little Dutch churches one occasionally finds such as that at Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. Here we see the same persistence of Dutch ecclesiastical traditions as was noted in Pennsylvania in the case of German traditions exemplified in the structures like the Trappe Meeting House. The general form of the building and the method of its execution might readily be paralleled in Holland.
We now come to the New England Meeting House as the next type demanding examination and for this we can find no more fitting example than the Old Ship Meeting-house at Hingham, Massachusetts. This building was erected in 1680 and it is said to have been framed by ship’s carpenters. It is a spacious square building of extreme severity of line. The roof is hipped, or would be a perfectly hipped roof were it not truncated at the top and finished with a balustrade and a belfry with a small pointed spire. The exterior is so devoid of all architectural amenity that one can scarcely speak of the structure as having any architecture at all. The walls are clapboarded and the cornice is of the simplest contour. The interior is plain and, owing to modernisation, has been made unattractive and prosaic. For our purpose this building is valuable as marking the four-square type of meeting house so often met with.
Where the older meetings have not fallen victims of modern improvement, their interiors, though severe and rigid, possess a degree of charm with their ancient high backed pews, tall pulpits, and seats for the elders of the meeting immediately below them. Their excessive plainness is, of course, proverbial, but although there was a dearth of architectural amenity in their construction, it must be admitted that many of them possessed the charm of unobtrusive simplicity.
The Old South Meeting-house, erected in 1730, is a fair representative of similar structures where more attention was paid to and more allowance made for architectural endeavour. The wonted plan of having the pulpit on one of the long sides was adhered to and the gallery stretched around on the other sides. The double rows of windows are round arched and form the chief point of interest both on the exterior and in the interior. The brick is laid in Flemish bond and there is a slightly projecting base course several feet from the ground. Cornices are plain and the expansive roof is rather flat in pitch. The tower, while graceful enough in proportion, is severely plain. Nevertheless it must be confessed that the attenuated proportions of the spire with the little arcade around its base have a certain charm of their own which it is extremely difficult to analyse.