OCR Text |
Show ment, the internal floor plan arrangement remains constant until the breakdown of the folk building tradition toward the end of the nineteenth century. In its ability to assimilate stylistic aspects of the major shifts in architectural design, folk housing was able to meet Utah's needs for both external appearance and internal comfort. While pioneer buildings have often been characterized as austere and spartan, it seems that the Mormon people took to heart Brigham Young's admonition to "build beautiful houses"25 and whenever possible chose the adorned over the plain. Decoration within the folk tradition is confined to designated areas on the building's outward fabric. On the gables, eaves, dormers, and entrances, builders could experiment with the frivolities of fashion without jeopardizing the successful appearance of the house. Folk housing in the United States generally adheres to a formal arrangement and symmetrical composition traceable to the dramatic influence of the Georgian architectural style on Colonial America.26 Directed by the Georgian preference for visual order and rhythmical balance, Utah folk builders, like their counterparts in other sections of the country, manipulated decorative elements in such a way as to make them compatible with the discipline exerted by these governing stylistic principles. As new architectural fashions emerged from the architect's sketchbook, they were quickly inspected for decorative features appropriate to the folk repertoire. The Federal style lent a shallow, low-pitched roof to the builder's book, but it changed the shape of the house only slightly. The colossal columns and pedimented gables of the Greek Revival were rejected at the folk level, but a scaled-down version of the Greek Temple Form house became a part of the Mormon New England tradition and can be found in Utah.27 Folk builders regularly used Greek Revival-inspired entablature, pediment-shaped window heads, and plain cornice returns on traditional house types (Fig. 52). The visual complexity associated with the picturesque Gothic Revival style was translated by folk carpenters into a simple center facade gable, symmetrically incorporated into the older house plan.28 Spired finials and intricately cut bargeboards were other Gothic Revival ornaments popularly incorporated into the Utah folk style (Fig. 52A). Later nineteenth-century styles, often lumped together rather casually under the term Victorian, are rarely found in the folk repertoire, though some Victorian details like gable shingling show up in later folk designs (Fig. 52B). Most of the ideas for decorative work were disseminated in the countryside through popularly oriented house "pattern books." Such books, really builders' manuals, contained house plans, decorative ideas, and landscaping suggestions. If the builder was attracted by a particular geegaw or filigree in these catalogs, it was or- 44 |