Excerpt from The Horticulturist, and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste, Vol. 5: Devoted to Horticulture, Landscape Gardening, Rural Architecture, Botany, Pomology, Entomology, Rural Economy, &C; July to December, 1850
No one pretends that we have as yet either a national architecture or national music in America; unless our Yankee elap-board house be taken as a specimen of the first, and "old Susannah" of the second, fine art. But there is, on the other hand, perhaps, no country where there is more building or more "musicianing," such as they are, at the present moment. And as a perfect taste in the arts is no more to be expected in a young nation, mainly occupied with the practical wants of life, than a knowledge of geometry is in an infant school, we arc content with the large promise that we find in the present, and confidently look forward for fulfilment to the future.
In almost every other country, a few landlords own the land, which a great many tenants live upon and cultivate. Hence the general interest in building is confined to a comparatively small class, improvements are made in a solid and substantial way, and but little change takes place from one generation to another in the style of the dwelling and the manner of living.
But in this country we arc, comparatively, all landlords. In the country, especially, a large part of the rural population own the land they cultivate, and build their own houses. Hence it is a matter of no little moment to them, to avail themselves of every possible improvement in the manner of constructing their dwellings, so as to secure the largest amount of comfort, convenience, and beauty, for the moderate sum which an American landholder has to spend. While the rural proprietors of the other continent arc often content to live in the same houses, and with the same inconveniences as their forefathers, no one in our time and country, who has any of the national spirit of progress in him, Ls satisfied unless, in building a new house, lie has some of the "modern improvements" in it.
This is a good sign of the times; and when we sec it coupled with another, viz., the great desire to make the dwelling agreeable and ornamental, as well as comfortable, we think there is abundant reason to hope, so far as the country is concerned, that something like a national taste will come in due time.
What the popular taste in building seems to us to require, just now, is not so much impulse as right direction. There are numberless persons who have determined, in building their new home in the country, that they "will have something pretty;" but precisely what character it shall have, and whether there is any character, beyond that of a "pretty cottage" or a "splendid house," is not perhaps very clear to their minds.
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