Architectural Development and Analysis of Existing Fabric - Ringwood Manor

David V. Abramson & Assoc., from 1987 Historic Structures Report

Ringwood Manor might be called an unusually complex version of an "additive" house. Although the term "additive" is customarily reserved for modest vernacular dwellings that grow haphazardly and without artifice, the successive building campaigns at Ringwood are nothing if not additive in the ultimate sense. In its final stages, the house grew almost organically, as older parts were totally engulfed or joined together by the connective tissue of new construction.

At the end of the 19th century, wealthy Americans often paid their European counterparts the dubious compliment of building mansions that appeared to have evolved over a span of centuries, sometimes combining Tudor Great Halls and Adamesque salons to foster that illusion. Ringwood Manor is an unusual example of an American country seat that actually did evolve over a long period of time, so that its Federal-style, Italianate, Neo-Grec and neoclassical components represent an amalgamation of genuine parts.

The earliest discernible wing of Ringwood Manor is a side-hall Federal-style, clapboard sided house typical of those built throughout northern New Jersey during the years 1790-1820. Although 1807, the year Martin Ryerson acquired the Ringwood property, is the traditional date for this wing (Ryerson Wing), an evaluation of nails and some stylistic features leads to a c.1820 date. This house must once have had at least one attached kitchen wing, (and in fact a painting of the early house, part of the Ringwood collection, depicts two attached wings), but its arrangement of rooms and many of its features seem original. The double parlors are separated by an elaborate "screen" that incorporates small closets or pantries, (subsequently altered for bookshelves), and architrave moldings enriched with decorated corner blocks and center blocks. This method of separating parlors is found more often in urban locations, and is a transitional Federal-Greek Revival device that argues for a somewhat later date than that traditionally ascribed to the house. Both Talbot Hamlin and Charles Lockwood discuss this kind of parlor feature. Its use here in such an out-of-the-way location underscored the builder's desire for a high-style dwelling. Because the pocket doors now in place became popular during the 1820s, they represent evidence of a later construction date.

Above the spaces once occupied by the pantry doors are leaded glass panels (now painted over); these and the leaded glass transom and sidelights around the main entry appear to be original. So does the stair, but the authenticity of the mantels is highly questionable. Although their design is Federal, the fact that all four (in both parlors and both bedchambers) are identical raises doubts. As the HABS drawing from a contemporaneous northern New Jersey house illustrated, Federal mantels were usually executed in related but different designs for each room.

Combined evidence from paint analysis and documentary history suggests that these mantels were added as part of a Colonial Revival modernization that the house sustained c 1895. The wall moldings that define panels in the bedrooms were probably added at the same time.

An evaluation of nails found throughout the Ryerson Wing supports a c.1820 date. The oldest nails, early machine-cut nails with integral heads, date c.1810-1840, while others, such as the modern machine-cut nails from the North Ryerson Parlour, date c.1830 to the present. Modern machine-cut nails with lengthwise grain were used in the construction of the latter 19th century, second floor bay addition.

After construction of the Federal house, the next major building project seems to have been the addition of a large, clapboard sided, Romantic Revival house joined to the earlier house in 1864. The term "Romantic Revival" is used advisedly, since this was a period during which Gothic Revival and Italianate modes co-existed, and both were probably found in the building project of 1864.

In order to join this new house to the older building and to create some impression of picturesque massing, the section abutting the Federal house is designed with large bays projecting from front and rear facades. Not only do these typically Italianate bays create a picturesque effect, they introduce ample light into an otherwise windowless wing. Walking east from this bay-windowed wing, one enters the main part of the new house, which is set back several feet from the facade line of the Federal house. The exterior appearance and the floor plan of this section were originally conservative and symmetrical (quite in keeping with the pattern book designs of the period, when picturesque effects were usually confined to applied ornament and superficial asymmetry). Before subsequent alterations, a center hall gave access to four principal rooms on each floor.

The two large ground-floor rooms of the bay window wing, known eventually as the Music Room and the French Drawing Room, are united visually by an identical wooden wainscot. Composed of vertical paneling finished with a trefoil-punched rail, this woodwork is similar to the interior decorative elements of the 1878 alterations, and was probably added then. The wood trim and wainscot were originally varnished. The window and door enframements are the simple but boldly profiled type common to both Italianate and Gothic Revival houses during the 1850s and 1860s.

The combination of c.1820 and 1864 houses created a rambling house that had already earned the appellation "manor". It is interesting to note that no attempt was made to impose any stylistic unity on the interior at this time. The exterior appearance is not recorded in the 1860s.

No documents identifying the designer of the 1864 house have been found in family papers; contemporary practice points to a carpenter-builder working with the help of pattern books. The first proof of an architect's involvement is the splashy building campaign of 1878, when the Hewitts hired Edward J.M. Derrick of Paterson to modernize and enlarge the 1864 wing. Derrick was practicing at a time when the Reform Movement was making its impact felt on American shores. Although Queen Anne of "free classic" style is more popularly associated with the 1880s, its influence is clearly apparent in Derrick's work at Ringwood Manor, in terms of both planning and decoration.

In domestic architecture, one of the hallmarks of the Reform or Aesthetic Movement is the Queen Anne Living hall. In order to fashion more free-flowing plans and open interiors, the architects of the period vanquished the traditional center-or-side-hall-with-stair arrangement whenever possible, in favor of an expansive living "hall". In the best examples, this room incorporates not only a fireplace but an open staircase meant to be beautiful as well as functional.

Derrick's most extravagant gesture at Ringwood Manor involved the creation of just such a room. This he accomplished by knocking out the south wall of the center hall so that the former hall and parlor space could become one. A staircase rises in the far corner, where the entire back of the house was extended for a connection to a new dining room wing. Derrick's grandiose living hall is clad entirely in matched parti-colored woods, so that the effect is rather dark, but rich instead of gloomy. Derrick was somewhat hampered by the ceiling height of the existing house, but he had learned well the lessons of popular architect-authors like Henry Hudson Holly, who illustrates several such halls in his Modern Dwellings in Town and County.

Apart from these major ceremonial spaces, it is not always possible to identify Derrick's work. However, on the basis of stylistic affinities and paint analysis, it seems safe to say that he added the previously noted wainscot in the bay-window wind; remodeled Miss Nellie's Room and Miss Sally's Room (the latter with particularly fine paneling); added the sitting room and most of the dining room corridor; and introduced throughout much of the second floor a kind of "free classic" door and window trim characterized by reeded molding and entablature-like corner blocks. As the paint analysis report points out, these features, together with some matching mantels, look more neoclassical today because of their white paint. The original dark, varnished finish was perfectly in keeping with Derrick's Reform Movement outlook. We can look once again to Holly for proof that such trim was a la mode in the 1879s. The present patterned floors - primarily pine with accents of cherry, maple, chestnut and walnut - were installed at this time. They were laid directly over the original floors in the Ryerson and 1864 wings.

Derrick's remodeling is also the likely time for exterior changes which resulted in eclectic elevations characterized by a chamfered columned porch and ports-cochere, heavy barge-boards, stickwork overlays, and an oriel window at the front of the Federal wing. With these changes, the outside of the house presented a uniform face.

Physical and written evidence, despite some contradictions, indicates that the 1878 work is limited to the Great Hall with subsequent northward and eastward expansion. The Hewitt brother's separate recollections note the Sitting Rooms as the first additions but structural evidence indicates that the Sitting Room and Dining Room were constructed at the same time while the different floor structure of the Room 115 indicates a separate date. When the Dining Room was constructed a kitchen wing was probably added at the same time.

Prior to the series of "classicizing" alterations which resulted in the building we view today, Ringwood was expanded with additions of the sitting room (Room 115) and dining room passage way (Room 117), which then permitted circulation to numerous utilitarian support rooms to the east. Joints in the hallway (Room 113) wainscot substantiate the argument for the addition, as does the rather awkward relationship in elevation of the two northern sitting rooms.

Local tradition, supported in part by the written reminisces of both Edward and Erskine Hewitt, includes the relocation of various outbuildings from other locations near the Manor to form the servant's wing. The c.1895 photographs, which depict a variety of rooflines, plan shapes as well as an adjacent outbuilding lend credence to this story.

During a period of approximately 15 years the east, service wing was expanded to its present position, basements were excavated, new coal fired furnaces were installed, and toilet facilities inserted throughout the Manor.

Various explanations circulate to explain the next effort to modernize the house, which occurred c.1895. The Hewitt brothers' writings place the work in this time frame. Local tradition holds that McKim, Mead and White (or Stanford White) added the porte-cochere. Inside and out the taste for neoclassicism, so powerful at the beginning of the 20th century, made a clean sweep, with a few notable exceptions.

On the exterior, by 1903 most of the c.1880 trim was removed, and the clapboard walls were treated to a coat of unifying stucco. An Ionic-columned veranda and porte-cochere were added. The most substantial alterations during this campaign included the unification of the east wing as a complete, symmetrical 21/2 half story gable-roofed element. This included creating a gambrel roof over the 1863 wing and raising all east wing rooflines, replacing the original structure with steeply pitched gables punctuated by dormers. And, although these changes could not totally disguise the quirky evolution of the manor, they did impart a certain cohesiveness (and to modern eyes, grown appreciative of Victorian architecture, a certain blandness).

During the final reconstruction, the Victorian porch, attached to the west side of the Federal wing was replaced by a conservatory (piazza) with full-length round-arched windows. Edward and Erskine Hewitt note that the windows came from Cooper Union at the time of a renovation there. These are identical in dimensions to some found currently at Cooper Union. The corbelled, paneled chimneys were all rebuilt in their present design.

Inside, the classicizing was accomplished with an ocean of white paint. Because of the "free classic" trim mentioned above, many rooms lent themselves to at least a superficial neoclassical flavor, which was married in some instances to a taste for French decoration. The result would not delude the dullest observer into believing that the interior was designed all of a piece. Its eclecticism and odd stylistic juxtaposition are too obvious for that. But thanks to the retention of the two most significant spaces (the Federal parlors and Derrick's living hall) Ringwood Manor today has its own slightly perverse logic, a bit like Winterthur's train of period rooms, whose aristocratic owners strove for summer elegance without ever taking themselves too seriously.