In honour of Parfait Bacon

As we all have realized in Gaspésie, the study of cemeteries can offer unexpected satisfactions...

I'd like to share with you a little list of sources provided by members of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, in case you decide to do some research in this field.

- Lynette Strangsteds, Cemetery Architecture, 1988 AASLH
- For 19th century cemetery architecture, the classic "A Time to Mourn: Expressions of Grief in 19th C America" by Martha V. Pike & Janice Gray Armstrong (a good place to start)
- http://www.gravestonestudies.org/
- http://potifos.com/cemeteries.html
- Cemeteries & Gravemarkers: Voices of American Culture, Richard E. Meyer
- Soul In The Stone: Cemetery Art From America's Heartland. John Gary Brown.

The two photos show the Mount Royal, the mountain that gives the name to Montreal. Besides being a fantastic park with two beautiful belvederes, and a place for cross-country skiing, skating and running, this is also the city's cemetery.
The Mount Royal Cemetery was incorporated in 1847 and covers 165 acres that belonged once to old farms. The property hosts many historical burials and valuable monuments.

As it happens in many cemeteries, the monuments are often subject to theft and damage. This summer, comprehensive documentation of all the works of art has begun. Hopefully this catalogue will be soon made available to the public, as it could help avoiding illegal commerce of these pieces.

One thing I like in the first picture is the mix of ethnic origins. In the foreground you can see a stone with an Arab name just beside a stone written in Cyrillic alphabet. Behind them there are 4 Anglophone names and among them a very Italian one (De Santis).

Southwestern New Jersey Houses

Early in May is the annual Salem County House Tour from which I'll share a number of houses to give you a taste of the character of the eighteenth and nineteenth century cultural landscape where I live and study. Bear in mind the bias of this selection - these were the mansions of elites that have survived by virtue of their durability and "authority," that is, their genealogical linkage with the early, landed families.

The Dickinson House to the left is the one usually pictured in articles depicting the character of Salem County historic architecture. In fact, Dell Upton leads off with a photo of this house in his Architecture in the United States (I am a copy-cat). Though pattern-brick houses are found in ten eastern states, southwestern New Jersey has the greatest concentration. Most of these houses were built by second and third-generation Quakers of English descent. The Dickinson House has the most extraordinary pattern of any of the pattern-brick houses known today. It combines three of the possible pattern options--initials, date and a decorative motif.

The facade of the Dickinson House displays a typical three-bay, window-door-window arrangement incorporating two rooms on the first floor called a hall and parlor. The brick bond is Flemish, but it is not the more common "checker" type that uses a vitrified or dark-colored header. At the base of the wall is a "water table" that is not normally stuccoed as it is here. The pent roof above the first floor level is another typical feature on these early houses.

Another is the Jarman House dated 1755. Like the Dickinson House, it has the same fenestration, hall/parlor layout, water table, and pent roof. However, the front and one side has the more typical Flemish "checker" bond and the date is engraved within an oculus in the gable peak. This house has an original kitchen wing at the left side that was raised to two stories at a later time.

Here you see the detail of the date stone oculus and the Flemish checker bond on the Jarman House.

Dr. Michael Chiarappa's dissertation on these houses linked them with their brick artisans and the Quaker hierarchy of the region. They contain meaning as expressions of Quaker social and economic power in the face of a diversifying society.

This house is different in several ways. It is part brick and part frame, two rooms deep instead of one, and exemplifies the trend toward a closed floor plan with increasing privacy and specialization of domestic space. The left side is a three bay, side-hall plan that dates to about 1790, after the American Revolution. At this time the Georgian, or closed, plan (meaning that entry is into an unheated stair passage which leads to heated parlors) was becoming more popular. The brick side is a earlier house that houses the kitchen with a huge walk-in cooking fireplace.

Obviously, the tour houses are those that are restored, the best cared for, and valorized. So, to be fair in showing Salem County's historic landscape character, I show a less appreciated and fast-disappearing vernacular house type. On our journey to see the houses of the elite, we passed this forlorn frame house of perhaps a tenant farmer which is much more typical of what most people lived in. It shares with the pattern-brick houses the traditional one-room deep, three-bay arrangement, but this version is small, with one room (a hall) under the gable, and it is built of wood. A shed addition probably housed the kitchen and another room above. Shed additions proliferated over time to serve growing needs. No one seems to want it now. Though it is evidence of the historic cultural landscape, it is threatened with extinction. Looks like a documentation project to me.

Well, there is a taste of Salem County's cultural landscape. You may have noticed the absence of flying eaves here! What features do all of these houses have in common?

Janet

Welcome to the blog!

Welcome to Shared Landscapes, a blog for the participants of the 2008 Laval University's Summer Field School in Built Heritage and Cultural Landscapes (Cours d'été patrimoine bâti et payages culturels in situ) in the Gaspésie in Canada.

After three intensive weeks with all of you, I missed the interaction, so I thought, "why don't we share our continuing cultural landscape experiences with each other?" The idea is to show buildings and landscapes that you are experiencing, whether at home, at school, on trips, or as projects. I initially ran the idea by Silvia. She suggested a blog, and so I set one up. After a "test-drive" and conferring, we now invite everyone else to join in. In this way, we can stay in touch with each another and keep learning about cultural landscapes in Canada, the U. S. and possibly elsewhere (perhaps the Erbil citadel in Kurdistan of Iraq!).

Include some photos and briefly tell about it, such as how it came to be, how it evolved, its cultural meaning, if there are any preservation/conservation issues, and your relationship to it.

I have registered each participant (for whom I have an email address) as an author who can submit a posting. Use the language of your choice. Blog as often as you wish. Fill out a personal profile if you wish. Please observe copyright laws and ask permission if you want to use someone else's photo or article. FYI, Silvia and I chose the small photo format in our posts, and 640 pixels on the long side is a good size to upload so they are not too big when clicked in the blog.

I hope you will join in and share your landscapes.

Happy blogging!

Janet