December 2006

The Environmental Design Library is pleased to announce the recent acquisition of an extraordinary addition to its rare book collection, the first edition of the “earliest original American work on architecture.”(1) Asher Benjamin’s Country Builder’s Assistant: Containing a Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture Which Will Be Particularly Useful to Country Workmen in General (Greenfield, Mass., Thomas Dickman, printer, 1797)(2) was purchased through the UCB Library Michael Reese Library Endowment Fund.

Asher Benjamin (1773-1845) wrote the first truly “original” American builders’ guide and became one of the most influential architect-writers in America—a sort of Martha Stewart of the first half of the 19th century. Benjamin was born in Connecticut, the son of a rural carpenter of modest means, had a gift for architectural geometry, and designed and built several important houses, churches and public buildings in New England.(3) Using British builders’ guides and pattern books, the only ones available at the time, he discovered that most of them were unsuited to American building; their styles, materials, and huge country houses were not appropriate for rural America, its culture or geography. Although Benjamin drew from the earlier British books, he created a strictly American guide. New England abounded with ship builders, woodcarvers and other craftsmen, but there were almost no trained architects, so Benjamin wrote his The Country Builder’s Assistant, as a simple handbook for rural carpenters. His own building and design experience and limited education allowed him to create a guide that was popular with the vast majority of other “housewrights.” The book helped establish “the simple yet refined classicism that characterizes so much of early nineteenth-century American architecture.”(4) Its clarity and advice also influenced architectural writing for many years. Houses built from Banjamin’s books have been traced as far west as Ohio. As architectural historian Jack Quinan has noted, Benjamin “…recognized the distinctiveness of American architecture and he attempted to give that distinction a consistent form in his handbooks.”

 The book provided both stylistic details, and clear, practical advice for the construction of buildings, especially houses, meeting houses, and churches. Many of the plans were derived from a British pattern book by William Pain, The Practical House Carpenter, first published in London in 1788, but published in Boston in 1796 and Philadelphia in 1797. The meetinghouse design was based on a similar building by Charles Bulfinch, one of the only trained architects in New England at that time, for whose Hartford, Connecticut State House of 1795 Benjamin designed and supervised a circular staircase.

The Country Builder’s Assistant included plates with measured drawings and instructions, identification of terms for various parts of buildings, moldings, columns, etc., and, as the very long subtitle of the book proclaims, was:
Ilustrated with New and USEFUL DESIGNS of Frontispieces, Chimney Pieces, etc. Tuscan, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian Orders, with their Bases, Capitals, and Entablatures:  Architraves for Doors, Windows, and Chimneys:  Cornices, Base, and Surbase Mouldings for Rooms:  Doors, and Sashes, with their Mouldings:  The construction of Stairs, with their Ramp and Twist Rails:  Plan, Elevation, and one Section of a Meetinghouse, with the Pulpit at large:  Plans and Elevations of Houses:  The best Method of finding the length, and backing of Hip Rafters:  Also, the tracing of Groins, Angle Brackets, Circular Soffits in Circular Walls, etc.

Based on the success of The Country Builder’s Assistant, Asher went on to write six additional builders’ handbooks, which, along with the first, went through multiple editions each, and had a major influence on building in America.

The Environmental Design Library  copy has two marks of early ownership:  “Chapman Lee” and a later 19th-century stamp of “Elhanan W. Lee.”  Chapman Lee (1777-1863) was a cabinet maker in Charlton and Southbridge, Massachusetts, and Elhanan Winchester Lee (1804- ?) was one of his four sons. The book’s next recorded appearance was in the hands of Hingham, Massachusetts book dealer Mason Foley, then to the late bookseller, Lawrence B. (Larry) Romaine (of the UC Santa Barbara Romaine Trade Catalog Collection) where it was listed in his July, 1965 catalog 245, item 21. The Environmental Design Library purchased it from Charles Wood Bookseller, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who listed it in his catalog 127, item 7, August, 2006.

Since this was a handbook meant for practical use in the field, on the job, few copies remain, and those that have survived show signs of use. No one knows exactly how many copies of the first edition were published, but fewer than 20 copies of this edition have been located in libraries. Our copy is in remarkably good condition, octavo, with original sheepskin binding neatly rebacked. Both front and back covers have incised geometric designs which were probably added by some early owner along the way. Another very meticulous individual in the past, needing the letters A, U, N, T, carefully cut these from the title page; however good facsimiles have been inserted where these letters were excised. The book has 30 engraved plates, all by Benjamin, of which two are fold-outs. There is scattered foxing throughout, and plates 10 and 11 are facsimiles on old paper; the outer third of plate 21 and the outer half of plate 27 are also in facsimile done by the Green Dragon Bindery in Massachusetts, which preserved the book in a custom folding cloth box with a morocco label.

  1) Henry-Russell Hitchcock. American Architectural Books; a list of books, portfolios and pamphlets published in America before 1895 on architecture and related subjects. Middletown, Conn., 1938-40. Item number 111. Also referenced in Charles Evans, American Bibliography…Chicago, Privately printed by the author and Blakely Press, 1903-59, item 31797.

  2) ENVI NA2520 B41 1797 Rare. Reprinted by N.Y., DaCapo Press in 1972, NA2520 .B41 1972. Also available electronically in Early American Imprints, 1st series, Evans: 1639-1800, American Antiquarian Society and Newsbank, 2002, no. 31797.

  3) Several sources provide excellent information on Benjamin, his buildings and publications:  Kenneth Hafertepe. "Benjamin, Asher;” http://www.anb.org/articles/17/17-00063.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000, access date: Dec 6 2006; Jack Quinan, “Asher Benjamin and American Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, v. 38 no. 3, Oct., 1979, p. 244-53; and Abbott Lowell Cummings, “Asher Benjamin,” in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, N.Y., Free Press and London, Collier Macmillan, 1982.

  4) Kenneth Hafertepe, American National Biography Online.