American colonial architecture

[3] Dutch Colonial structures, built primarily in the Hudson River Valley, Long Island, and northern New Jersey, reflected construction styles from Holland and Flanders and used stone and brick more extensively than buildings in New England.

[4] First Period is a designation given to building styles used in the earliest English settlements at Jamestown, Virginia (1607), and Plymouth, Massachusetts (1620), and later in the other British colonies along the Eastern seaboard.

Developed in French-settled areas of North America beginning with the founding of Quebec in 1608 and New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1718, as well as along the Mississippi River valley to Missouri.

The early French Colonial house type of the Mississippi River Valley region was the poteaux-en-terre, constructed of heavy upright cedar logs set vertically into the ground.

These basic houses featured double-pitched hipped roofs and were surrounded by porches (galleries) to handle the hot summer climate.

From these quarries, coquina was brought to build the Castillo de San Marcos, Fort Matanzas, the Cathedral Basilica, and homes throughout Florida's colonial period.

[6] Tabby, made of lime, oyster shells, water, ash, and sand, was often poured out to make a hard flooring in these structures.

[12] In the countryside of the Hudson Valley, the Dutch farmhouse evolved into a linear-plan home with straight-edged gables moved to the end walls.

Around 1720, the distinctive gambrel roof was adopted from the English styles, with the addition of overhangs on the front and rear to protect the mud mortar used in the typically stone walls and foundations.

[13] Monmouth County in central New Jersey has many surviving examples of a hybrid of the Dutch style termed Anglo-Dutch colonial architecture.

The early colonists to this region adapted the "half-timber" style of construction then popular in Europe, which used a frame of braced timbers filled-in with masonry.

The "bank house" was a popular form of home during this period, typically constructed into a hillside for protection during the cold winters and hot summers of the region.

The standard vernacular house built by the colonists in this region between the first settlement in 1607 and the end of British rule in 1776 followed the I-plan format, had either interior or exterior gable chimneys, and was either wooden or brick.