of spacious size, often running entirely through the
building from front to back with the staircase located in a smaller side
hall adjoining. Where space or expense were considerations, or where
spacious parlors and drawing-rooms rendered the use of the hall for
social purposes unnecessary, the staircase ascended in various ways at
the rear of the main hall, usually beyond a flat or elliptical arch,
where it added very materially to the effectiveness of the apartment
without detracting at all from the use of the front portion as a
reception room.

Such halls as the latter are as typical of the better Provincial
mansions of Philadelphia, especially its countryseats, as of the
plantation houses of Virginia and the early settled communities farther
south. In the city residences of Philadelphia, built in blocks as
elsewhere, the halls were of necessity narrower, mere passageways
notable chiefly for their well-designed staircases, which consisted for
the most part of a long straight run along one side with a single turn
near the top to the second-floor passageway directly above that to the
rear of the house on the floor below. In a few of the earlier country
houses there are, however, halls reminiscent of medieval times, for the
influences of the mother country were very strong in Philadelphia, and
its Colonial architecture displays marked Georgian tendencies, some of
it the very earliest Georgian characteristics still somewhat influenced
by the life and manners of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.

At Stenton, the countryseat of James Logan, to which detailed reference
has been made in a previous chapter, there is a hall and staircase
arrangement such as can be found only in some of the earliest
eighteenth-century country houses. This great brick-paved room
wainscoted to the ceiling, with a fireplace across the right-hand
corner, reflects the hall of the English manor house, which was a
gathering place for the family and for the reception of guests, as
instanced by the reception tendered to LaFayette in the great hall at
Wyck on July 20, 1825.

[Illustration: PLATE LXXII.--Inside of Front Door, Whitby Hall;
Palladian Window on Stair Landing, Whitby Hall.]

[Illustration: PLATE LXXIII.--Window Detail, Parlor, Whitby Hall; Window
Detail, Dining Room, Whitby Hall.]

Admirable bolection molded wood paneling of the dado and wall space
above, a heavy molded cornice and high, fluted and slightly tapering
pilasters standi