Column/Pillar

History

Column typically denoted a support element in architecture, but the column was also used as an independent element in American landscape design, most often as a commemorative monument and sometimes as a support for climbing vines and other vegetation [Fig. 1]. The column was generally understood to be a tall, cylindrical shaft situated on a base and crowned with a capital. Columns could be treated in a number of formulaic styles or orders, the most popular being the classically derived Doric [Fig. 2], Ionic, and Corinthian. Variations on the classical orders were also described in architectural treatises available in the colonies, such as the Toscana and Romana orders noted in Scamozzi’s The Mirror of Architecture (1615) [Fig. 3] and the “Gothick” manner detailed in Batty and Thomas Langley’s Gothic Architecture (1747) [Fig. 4]. Other variations included fluted and “Rustic” versions, as depicted in James Gibbs’ A Book of Architecture (1728) [Fig. 5]. In the colonial and federal context, columns typically were made of wood or stone, but other materials were used, as in the case of brick and mortar employed for the Revolutionary War monument at the residence of Thomas Hancock on Boston’s Beacon Hill. For important public works of art, however, stone was often regarded as the most appropriate material because of its relative permanence.

In his definition of 1828, Noah Webster alluded to the confusion that sometimes arose between the terms column and pillar. He insisted that a pillar was made of multiple sections or drums, while a column possessed a single, undivided shaft. This distinction, however, did not hold up in practice. John Lambert, for example, referred to the monument at Beacon Hill as both a pillar and a column. From the citations collected, the term “column” was used more frequently than “pillar” in treatises and descriptive discourses.

Like his lexicographical predecessor Ephraim Chambers, Webster pointed to the use of columns in public settings as commemorations of venerated events such as military victories. This tradition, which extended back to antiquity, was revived in the eighteenth century. Ruined columns, signifying both a classical past and a recognition of the passage of time, were erected in many well-known eighteenth-century gardens such as Stowe in Great Britain and Ermenonville in France. Hence, when deciding how to commemorate the American Revolution and Gen. George Washington, several designers chose the form of the column. Often executed on a grand scale and placed in public spaces, these monuments dominated their surroundings and served as visual foci. Beacon Hill, for example, was marked by a column crowned by an eagle, symbol of the United States. Robert Mills proposed various designs for a monument to George Washington in Baltimore, each of which featured a column [Figs. 6 and 7]. Maximilian Godefoy’s Baltimore Battle Monument [Fig. 8] and Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s ideal plan for Washington, D.C., proposed the use of columns, obelisks, and statues to inscribe the nation’s history into the public landscape. The venerable associations of columns made them suitable as grave markers; Mount Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, Mass., for example, included both intact and ruined or broken columns [Fig. 9].

Notably, the commemorative functions of columns were (and still are) most often associated with public sites, where columns functioned as signifiers of shared history or cultural identity. In contrast, in private landscape designs columns typically served a purely ornamental function. At the home of Benjamin Henry Latrobe in New Orl eans, for example, a white - painted column (presumably made of wood) capped by a ball supported intertwined jasmine and roses. Garden writer George Jaques (1852) advised homeowners to wreathe columns with woodbine, honeysuckle, and climbing roses as a means to domestic ate this feature, but he ignored the symbolic, triumphal, and monumental associations emphasized by eighteenth - century lexicographers. The form of the column was often the same as indicated by the description of James Gibbs’ s (1728) illustration: “Three Designs for Columns , proper for publick Places or private Gardens. ” In an unusual instance, Alexander Walsh for the New England Farmer in 1841 illustrated four columns connected to serve as a frame work for supporting a lamp or bird cage in an unnamed garden, with vegetation trained over the supporting elements [Fi g. 10].

-- Anne L. Helmreich