| The floor plan and mechanical equipment of a New York row
house in the 1870s and 1880s was little different from that of
the
1860s. The first floor had a long, narrow front parlor and
a back parlor, commonly used as a dining room, across the full
width of the house. A handsomely appointed butler’s pantry
with a dumb waiter was often found near the stairway to the
basement. In the basement, the front room still was an informal
dining room and the back room, overlooking the garden, a kitchen
and laundry. Family bedrooms, servants’ rooms, and several
bathrooms filled the two or three upper floors of the house. In
the 1870s and 1880s, the interior design of New York row
houses was much different from that of the earlier Italianate
brownstone-fronts.
The elaborate white-marble mantels, gilt rococo-inspired mirrors,
and lush ceiling plasterwork gave way in the 1870s to the decorative
ideals of relative simplicity and coherency in forms and materials. Fine
woods, polished to show the natural finish, dominated the front
parlor and back dining room—in mantels, doorways, pier-mirror
frames, built-in sideboards and china closets, and wainscoting
or paneling. The fashionable black walnut and dark red mahogany
of the Civil War era had given way to lighter woods . . . mahogany,
quartered oak, bird’s-eye and plain maple, cherry, tulip,
sycamore, hazel, ash, birch, and poplar. Another handsome decorative
innovation of the 1870s in New York row houses was parquet floors.
The product of an ever-advancing technology, parquet floors, partly
covered with rugs . . . complemented the fine woodwork.
|
