ABSTRACT
The European immigrants of the seventeenth century generally had built on the basis of their individual vernacular traditions, using materials at hand in response to local environmental conditions. American Georgian Colonial architecture during the eighteenth century falls into two broad chronological periods. The first, early Georgian, from about 1700 to around 1750, shows the general influence of Inigo Jones and more especially of Sir Christopher Wren; buildings and details tended to be comparatively restrained. The eighteenth century was a period of urbanization in the colonies, largely through concentration and development of the centers already established. In 1664 New Amsterdam had been seized by the English as a result of political squabbles between King Charles II and the Dutch; it surrendered without a fight. While New York grew in stages northward from the Dutch nucleus, both Annapolis, Maryland, and Williamsburg, Virginia, were laid out as new towns.
