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Thoreau's house at Walden
Art Bulletin, The, June, 1999 by W. Barksdale Maynard
The literary and historical stature of Henry David Thoreau grows with every passing year, it seems, and no episode in his career is more celebrated than his construction in 1845 of a little frame house for himself at Walden Pond, a mile and a half outside his native Concord, Massachusetts. For all its fame, however, this house has seldom been examined in the full context of contemporary architectural thought. This is not altogether surprising, as broadly contextual studies of Thoreau - long mythologized as a uniquely brilliant and self-sufficient figure - have been somewhat slow to appear. In particular, his decision to move to Walden, seemingly a bold rejection of society, has usually been ascribed to narrowly personal motivations - notwithstanding the fact that a number of British and American contemporaries made similar moves in the 1840s. Thoreau's Walden sojourn needs to be reevaluated in light of ideas current in his day, especially those concerning rural and suburban retirement put forth in dozens of "villa books" published in England and America between 1780 and 1850, including those by James Malton (d. 1803), William Fuller Pocock (1779-1849), John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843), and, in America, Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852). Building on pastoral conventions popularized by eighteenth-century poetry, these men advocated the habit of retirement and the reform of domestic architecture along the lines of the humble English cottage, a model of integrity, fitness, and the rustic Picturesque. Their ideas were enormously influential, being taken up as themes in general literature and ultimately becoming broadly assimilated into popular thought, providing the philosophical underpinnings for the early suburbanization of the landscape in England and America, a phenomenon in full swing outside Boston during Thoreau's young adulthood.
Viewed in the context of contemporary architectural thought, Thoreau's lakeshore experiment at Walden appears in a new light. Far from abandoning societal conventions, Thoreau in moving to the pond instead participated enthusiastically in the general cultural conversation regarding retirement and the villa. He relocated not to the wilderness but to a recently logged clearing in an intensively used landscape just minutes' walk from town. Here he erected a dwelling he described in terms of economy, sturdiness, and rusticity [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. The way he sited the structure and his descriptions of its arrangements suggest an awareness of specific dictates derived from villa books, as if he meant to offer a small-scale exemplar for the "villas which will one day be built here" (180). His country house recalled several rustic types then popular - summerhouses, hermitages, and wilderness retreats - and seems to have been initially suggested by a Catskills "mountain house" he had recently admired. His Catskills trip (1844) has been virtually overlooked as an essential source of inspiration for Walden. In its wake, Thoreau creatively translated wilderness values to a suburban location as part of his desire "to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization" (11). Following, in part, the lead of the villa books, he published his house design in Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854), urging it as a model both intellectual and practical, stressing its complete opposition to all that was false and pretentious in the architecture of the day and highlighting its affinities to the so-called primitive hut, thereby joining the many contemporaries concerned with the origins of architecture and the promise, by return to "first principles," of true architectural reform. Viewed in context, the Walden experiment no longer seems, as it is so often portrayed, anomalous, antisocial, and escapist; instead, it may be understood as an intelligent and ambitious attempt to engage in current dialogues on the villa, the rustic, and the reform of domestic architecture, as Thoreau sought to participate in a popular new kind of lifestyle, suburban retirement.(1)
The villa books have received increased scholarly attention in recent years, from John Archer's catalogue of period writings to several new studies on Downing. The villa books comprised a diverse body of work, touching on many themes, but their basic purpose was to showcase models for progress in domestic architecture, and so they offer illustrated examples ranging from the humble summerhouse to sprawling neoclassical mansions. A frequent focus, however, is the suburban home of the gentleman of moderate means, which might more or less interchangeably bear the names "cottage," "villa," "country house," or "country seat" [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. These books were texts addressed to members of an emerging middle class, economically tied to the burgeoning cities, who sought a return to traditional ways of living through retirement. The design of the dwellings they illustrate is highly varied, but the authors - usually practicing architects - tended to favor recognized historical styles of architecture for elaborate mansions and, more radically, astylar or rustic approaches for modest homes.
