[Illustration: PLATE LXX.--Pedimental Doorway, First Floor, Mount Pleasant; Pedimental Doorway, Second Floor, Mount Pleasant.]
[Illustration: PLATE LXXI.--Doorways, Second Floor Hall, Mount Pleasant; Doorway Detail, Whitby Hall.]
The hall is of particular moment in the design of a house. There guests are welcomed to the fireside, and there their first impressions of the home are formed. The architectural treatment of the hall sets the keynote of the entire home interior, so to speak. Its doorways and open arches frame vistas of the principal adjoining rooms, and its staircase, usually winding, affords a more or less complete survey of the whole house from various altitudes and angles. It is the place where the master puts his best foot foremost, as the expression goes, and happily the recognized utilitarian features of the typical Colonial hall permit a notable degree of elaboration at once consistent and beautiful.
Throughout the feudal period of the Middle Ages the hall was the main and often the only living, reception and banquet room of castles, palaces and manor houses. It was the common center of home activities. There the lord and family retainers, servants and visitors were accommodated, and all the common life of the household was carried on. In early times there were, besides the hall, only a few sleeping rooms, even in the greatest establishments. Later, more retired rooms were added, and gradually the hall became more and more an entranceway or passageway in the house, communicating with its different parts.
When houses began to be built more than a single story in height, the staircase became an important feature of the hall, and balconies were also introduced overlooking this great room, which was often the full height of the building. In fact, balconies were for a time more conspicuous than staircases, which were frequently located in any convenient secluded place. However, as builders came to appreciate more fully the attractiveness of this utilitarian structure, when embellished with suitable ornament, the staircase was accorded a more prominent position. Eventually it became the most important architectural feature of the hall, for the most part supplanting the balcony, which was in a measure replaced by the broad landings of broken, winding and wing flights.
