Furthermore, the Dutchman did not restrict himself to any one material for the whole fabric of his house. He was not in the least averse to using a variety of materials in the same building and this he often did with excellent effect. It is no unusual thing to find two or three materials used for several parts of the same small building, and it is not a hard matter to find instances in which stone, brick, stucco, clapboards and shingles all occur in the one structure and the result is usually felicitous, possibly, perhaps, because of the _naïveté_ with which the several materials are employed, necessity and common sense being obviously the causes dictating their presence.
The stone used was sometimes carefully squared and dressed and, at others, the walls were of rubble construction without any attempt at careful arrangement. Occasionally the front of the house would be of dressed stone laid in orderly courses while the sides and back showed rubble walls. Then, again, where circumstances permitted, brick quoins and window and door trims, as in the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson, might be used while the body of the walls was rubble. In this connexion it should be stated that the walls were carefully laid so that the stonework would hold together without much dependence being placed on the mortar, for the earliest mortar was of rather poor quality. In this respect the masonwork approached the ideal of a good wall construction.
When stucco was used it was generally plastered over a rough stone surface and whitewashed or washed with some colour. When this stucco is removed it will often be found that the wall underneath is of admirable rubble construction and that the stucco coating was apparently added as a ground work for white or coloured wash. Some years ago, the stucco coat was removed from the walls of the Manor House at Croton-on-Hudson, and the stone walls beneath presented a far more interesting surface than the plaster, which seems to have been added at a date considerably subsequent to that of original construction.
An examination in detail of the characteristics of the earliest Dutch houses discloses the following features of importance. As previously stated, almost all the houses were low, the eaves coming down to within a few feet of the tops