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| Victorian Styles | Rural Tennessee |
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The architectural planning of the colony reflected the class of the people settling in the hills of Tennessee who knew popular architectural styles of the late nineteenth century. The edifices were built in what Alan Gowans terms the “Picturesque” styles, which were prominent throughout the Victorian era in both England and in the United States. The Picturesque style flourished in American urban areas in the late nineteenth century and served the social function of legitimizing wealth as democratic. These styles were so decorative and intricate that regardless of an observer’s knowledge of past styles, she or he could enjoy a building’s aesthetics. While emulating past European styles, the Picturesque building became very popular in the United States.1 For the Rugbeians, the architecture reminded them of the British landscape, the heritage from which the new styles drew upon. Examples can be seen in various edifices in the plan of the town. The plan of the Rugby town was similar to that of an English Village.
The arrangement of buildings within a small area made the town the
center of the colony's life, while individual plots of farm land
were extraneous to the small area cleared for the town center. Read the description from the Rugby Handbook. Thomas Hughes oversaw the hiring of architects to design the buildings and plan a village fit for aristocratic second sons. Cornelius Onderdock arrived to supervise the construction of the public buildings in the Rugby town. All of the buildings were supposed to be “attractive and roomy,” while their names were distinctively British, such as the Tabard Inn, or Kingstone Lisle, Thomas Hughes's home.2 A good example of the Victorian styles is the first Tabard Inn completed
in 1880, named for the Southwark Tabard Inn from Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales. Donning a mansard roof with dormer windows and columned
verandah with patterned railings, the Inn is a good example of the
French
A vernacular house of the plateau contrasted with
the architecture of Rugby by its simplicity. Built for function
primarily, rather than style, the mountain cabins These styles of Rugby might be found in the lowlands in cities such as Knoxville or Chattanooga, but not in the rural mountains.4 The Plateau region was sparsely populated and much more rural than the lowlands. Knoxville, the closest urban area to Rugby, was seventy-five miles away and was accessible by one crude road on horseback or by ox cart.5 Within a twenty-five mile radius of this settlement, there were only three towns populated with over one hundred people.6 1 Alan Gowans, Styles and Types of North American Architecture: Social Function and Cultural Expression (New York: HaperCollins, 1992), 165-207. Subsequent architectural terminology follows Gowans's definitions. 2 Sarah L. Walton, Memories of Rugby Colony (n.p., n.d.), 6. 3 Gowans, Styles and Types of North American Architecture, 153-4. 4 James Patrick, Architecture in Tennessee, 1768-1897 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1981), 183-203. 5 Walton, Memories of Rugby Colony, 3; William Bruce Wheeler and Michael J. MacDonald, "The Communities of Eastern Tennessee, 1850-1940: An Interpretive Overview," East Tennessee Historical Society's Publications, nos.58-59 (1986-7): 17-19. 6 Ernest I. Miller, The English Settlement at Rugby, Tennessee, Rural Research Series, Monograph No. 128 (Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee, 1941), 31. |
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The
architecture and town plan of Rugby reflected British and American
design trends not seen on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee. By
the official opening day on October 5, 1880 the Rugby Colony consisted
of a hotel, three boarding houses, a commissary, and some private
homes. While the physical surroundings may have been foreign to
the new settlers, the built environment within Rugby was very familiar.
The
hamlet included the church, school, hotel, and library, and the
site for the colony's many leisure activities. The winding paths
and roads situated within the forest, adhered to the contour of
the terrain and followed the Picturesque motif. Town planners reserved
strips of land near the streams as public parks and always kept
the area well-groomed with various floras of the surroundings. 
Second
Empire style. The physical setting of the hotel, amongst trees and
landscaped paths, helps to create its Picturesque style by the intermingling
of architecture with nature. Just as American architect Andrew Jackson
Downing promoted nestling residential homes amongst landscaped pieces
of land, the Inn was nestled in nature. The large, two-story, wrap-around
verandahs allowed guests to enjoy the clean air and to relax and
take in the magnificent views of the Plateau area. The Inn was a
site for socializing and the verandahs, as an extension of the Inn
into nature, were gathering places for guests and residents. The
wealth symbolized by the Tabard Inn could also be found in many
of the residences in town. 
Even
the Christ Church, Rugby’s Episcopal Church, reflected the
Picturesque style in Gothic Vernacular. The pointed arch and detailed
stained glass windows mark the Church as Gothic, but its short steeple
and cladding in wood denote it as a mixture of styles.
Most
of the colony’s homes were built in various Victorian styles,
including the Queen Anne’s and Stick Styles. Asymmetrical
by design, many carried porches with decorative columns, important
for socializing and for escaping the summer’s heat, as well
as roofs with different sloped pitches. Some, like Thomas Hughes’s
home Kingstone Lisle built in 1884 or Percy cottage (to the left)
carried decorated verge boards on the dormer window roofs, providing
extra detailing to a relatively simple Queen Anne’s style
home. Another feature of the Picturesque style was a polychromatic
texture on all facades, which many of the homes exhibited. The intricacies
of the private homes at Rugby differed greatly from the homes of
the native Tennesseans.
