The foregoing pages, cursory as the review of ecclesiastical architecture has necessarily been, will show the diversity of styles that prevailed in the Colonies from North to South and incidentally the reader will be enabled to compare the modes of architectural expression with the ideals and habits of the people inhabiting the several sections of the country.
The materials of which any structure is built and the way in which those materials are manipulated have quite as much to do with the general aspect as mass or contour. It is of the utmost importance, therefore, that we pay due heed to the material resources at the disposal of builders in the Colonial period. Furthermore, it must be borne in mind that materials to some extent influenced architectural forms while, on the other hand, tradition and hereditary preferences, as we have seen, exerted a powerful influence upon the choice of materials and affected the way in which they were employed.
A very great number of the settlers of New England, as stated in a previous chapter, came from the Danish parts of England where the timber tradition was especially strong. Consequently, despite the abundance of stone in the new land, which they might readily have used, they preferred, in the majority of instances, to build their houses of wood. Of course, some allowance, too, in this respect, must be made for ease and expedition of working and for climatic conditions. In the Middle Colonies and the South, most of the settlers came from the Saxon portions of England where stone and brick traditions had always prevailed and, although there was abundance of good timber and occasionally some lack of other materials, there was a general preference for brick or stone walls notwithstanding any inconvenience incidental to procuring them. The artisans in each section preferred to work with the materials with which they were most familiar and householders also seem to have concurred in the popular choice. It is to be noted that the lack of requisite material--marble or suitable stone--had not a little to do with the common use of white-painted wood for trims and external ornamental features in Georgian buildings whose English prototypes, in many cases, were embellished with pillars, pediments and cornices of the more durable substance.