The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (2024)

Gloucester County Historical Society Presentation on West Jersey Quaker Life and Architecture

Author: Hoag Levins on Aug 25, 2024|Categories: News

The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (1)

It’s difficult for people in 2024 to think of the lowly red construction brick as the luxury item it was 300 years ago in southern New Jersey. Making bricks from local clay deposits was an arduous, extremely labor-intensive task that only affluent colonial families could afford. And for the most affluent, having artwork patterns of different color bricks embedded in the walls of their mansions was the ultimate announcement of success and prosperity. This architectural style was called patterned brick houses.

“In the Quaker communities of what was then known as West New Jersey, patterned brick architecture was much like a Mercedes parked in the driveway today — a premiere symbol of wealth and status,” said Robert Thompson in his presentation at the Gloucester County Historical Society about his new book detailing the regional architectural fad that lasted from the end of the 1600s to the end of the 1700s. There were at least 107 of these structures in the lower counties of the state.

Thompson is a historic preservation planner and administrator who has overseen large government historic preservation projects across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including studies involving more than 500 structures in the cities of Burlington and Camden.

Titled “Patterned Brick Architecture of West New Jersey,” his book provides an in-depth look at the surviving structures and history of the curious building fad pursued by 18th-century communities of West New Jersey Quakers. At great expense, they had huge artful patterns, symbols and initials embedded in the brick walls of their mansions.

The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (2)

The new book features a photo of the John and Mary Dickinson House built in 1754 in Salem County. Its western wall has the most ornate example of patterned brick art in colonial New Jersey homes.
“Part of the purpose of the book is to just draw attention to the remaining buildings so that people will see a need to save them. Since I started looking at them some years ago, three or four more have been lost for one reason or another because people weren’t aware of their historical significance,” said Thompson.

Five Years of Research

While local newspapers over the decades have done stories about these local historic patterned brick houses, they have been narrowly focused on the architecture itself. Thompson’s book, on the other hand, is the result of five years of research conducted around the east coast and England. It tells a deeper story of the people who used this unique architectural decorative art in their houses and what they believed they were achieving by its use. (Continues below photos)

It unpacks the current common public view of 18th-century Quakers as a single monolithic social sect to show how two very separate groups of Quakers — one that arrived in the colonies before the 1666 Great Fire of London and the other that arrived on the colonial shores of New Jersey after the Great Fire. They were dramatically different in their social standing, financial resources, and memory (or lack of memory) of how a major part of London’s dense warren of wooden buildings burned to the ground in one of that country’s greatest disasters. (Continues below photos)

The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (3)
The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (4)

Patterned brick house photos by Hoag Levins

The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (5)
The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (6)

The earliest wave of Quaker immigrants to New Jersey consisted of people of modest or impoverished means. They settled in coastal lands north of what is now Burlington County, built their structures of wood, and operated small family farms. The later wave of immigrants consisted largely of people who had been professionally and financially successful in England before they left for the colonies. They arrived in the southern New Jersey area then known as “West New Jersey” with high-levels of business and organizational skills. And they had access to capital that enabled them to build prosperous plantation-based farms and open other thriving businesses throughout the region that served the burgeoning market for goods and services across the Delaware River in Philadelphia, then the colonies’ largest and richest city.

Safety and Status

These West New Jersey Quakers’ fascination with brick architecture was driven by considerations of safety as well as a desire for the status conveyed by living in the region’s most expensive houses. And the added cost of having these homes outwardly marked with the region’s largest artworks only added to their pleasure. (Continues below photos)

The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (7)
The Colonial Era’s Most Ostentatious Status Symbol: Patterned Brick Houses | Gloucester County Historical Society (8)

The surviving patterned brick houses that are now most famous are those with entire walls wrapped in ornate graphic patterns covering the entire space. Thompson noted that the “creme de la creme” of this style is the John and Mary Dickinson House in Alloways Creek, Salem County. That same house also boasts a second motif common to the architectural genre — a triangular family identification symbol in the gable. It consists of the first initials of the family surname, and the husband and wife’s first names and, sometimes, another decorative symbol like a crown.

Thompson pointed out that despite some assumptions to the contrary, it was not unusual for Quakers to be wealthy, and favor luxuries of various kinds.

Imported Furniture and Silver Tea Sets

“They built brick houses of the most expensive kind, and imported their high quality mahogany tables and walnut cabinets from England. They wore plain clothing; but inside their homes, they had silver tea sets and other household accoutrements of wealth. There wasn’t a lot of moralizing about how much money they had,” said Thompson.

“If you look at William Penn,” Thompson continued, “he said ‘God gives some more than others and they do what they will with it.’”

“In our research we found the book ‘Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit,’ by Jean Soderlund, a professor of history emeritus at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a renowned author of books on 17th and 18th century life in British America,” said Thompson. “Her work found that during this era estates valued in excess of £200 and families that owned over 250 acres of land tended to have slaves,” said Thompson.

Patterned Brick Houses and Slaves

“If we look through the owners of patterned brick houses, what we find is that they typically had in excess of £200 personal estates and owned over 250 acres of land,” said Thompson. “So, in West New Jersey, farms were more like the plantations in the South There could be as much as 500 acres in these properties.”

“We find that many patterned brick house owners kept slaves,” continued Thompson. “It was a whole different view of life, and they did it because they could afford to do it. And so, with their slaves and their expensive houses they were expressing how different they were from their neighbors. It was basically a keeping up with the Joneses story — but they were the joneses.”

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