Beauty and Convenience: Architecture and Order in the New Republic

The rebuilding of New England during what architectural historians have labeled the Federal period serves as the basis for most Americans’ visual or mental image of rural New England. This reconstruction became very controversial as a result of the differing definitions of republican virtue, taste, beauty, and economy held by the architects, rural reformers, and those engaged in rebuilding their homes and communities during this time. What could have promoted the attacks, primarily in the agricultural press, on the new two-story-with-ell rural homes? The answer lies in the attitudes and perceptions of cultural aesthetics and the notion of republican virtue.