ourses,
marble or other stone marked the floor levels, and keyed stone lintels
were customary, although in some of the plainer houses the window frames
were set between ordinary courses of brickwork, without decoration of
any sort. Most of the windows had either six-or nine-paned upper and
lower sashes with third-story windows foreshortened in various ways.
There were paneled shutters at the first-story windows and often on the
second story as well, although blinds were sometimes used on the second
story and rarely on the third. The high, deeply recessed doorways, with
engaged columns or fluted pilasters supporting handsome entablatures or
pediments, and beautifully paneled doors, often with a semicircular
fanlight above, were characteristic of most Philadelphia entrances.
Before them, occupying part of the sidewalk, was a single broad stone
step, or at times a stoop consisting of a flight of three or four steps
with a simple wrought-iron handrail, sometimes on both sides, but often
on only one side. Other common obstructions in the sidewalk were
areaways at one or two basement windows and a rolling way with inclined
double doors giving entrance from the street to the basement.

[Illustration: PLATE XVIII.--Detail of Cliveden Facade; Detail of
Bartram House Facade.]

[Illustration: PLATE XIX.--The Highlands, Skippack Pike, Whitemarsh.
Erected in 1796 by Anthony Morris.]

Many of these city residences were of almost palatial character, built
by wealthy merchants and men in political life who thought it expedient
to live near their wharves and countinghouses or within easy distance of
the seats of city, provincial and later of national government.
Beautiful gardens occupied the backyards of many such dwellings,
affording veritable oases in a desert of bricks and mortar, yet many of
the more affluent citizens maintained countryseats along the
Schuylkill or elsewhere in addition to their town houses.

The location of many of these early city dwellings of brick was such
that as the city grew they became undesirable as places of residence.
Business encroached upon them more and more, so that, except for houses
which have remained for generations in the same family or have historic
interest sufficient to have brought about their preservation by the
city, relatively few still remain in anything like their original
condition. Of the quaint two-and three-story dwellings of modest though
delightfully distinctive character, whi