When were hallways invented?

[Joshua]

I've read that hallways first appeared in the 18th century, but I've found few details. Can anyone elaborate on this matter? Thanks.

[RicodJour]

I believe it was the 9th Earl of Hall (my mind plays tricks, it may have been the Duke of Earl) created the first interior passageway to get from his dining table (where he ate meat with his fingers) to the gambling table in the back of the house (that's how they did it back den) without having to cross the path of She Who Must Be Obeyed.

R

[DBM]

Back in the 18th C rooms were traditionally rather large (thinks Hall of Mirrors). Due to the pressures urban development (read wars recession and labor shortages), it wasnt possible to keep building outwards as before.

Hence they started sub-dividing the big room.

The bit left over was considered to be part of going all the way........ Or maybe it was a hell of a way to about renovating.

The rest is history.

DBM

[gruhn]

Everything below is GUESSING:

Been long enough ago that I don't remember. You might have a look at Rybczynski's "Home". Another interesting place to look would be the various books on vernacular architecture to see if Vern ever did it. Trying to think back to my childhood toddling about the ancient houses of New England, I'm not coming up with anything to contradict. I'm willing to take a stab at a gut reaction being "they probably did become _common_ at that time." First guess is that heating issues were the primary limiting factor.

The poster who mentioned the Hall of Mirrors (while giving a fairly atypical example of building) does bring up the idea of looking at different classes for building types. Probably three tiers of society is enough even though at the era we'd be looking - 16th, 17th Cs - more distinctions were cropping up. If, as I posit, heating is an issue in hallway use (think shared room, shared chiney mass)(chimneys are also a structural/building issue) then expect people who can afford more heating and support structures to be able to use hallways earlier.

Is the side aisle in a gothic cathedral a "hallway"? A cloister? I suspect you might find earlier inventions of the hallway in a religious setting. Lots of people living in a monastery - if even a number of the seniors get a cell of their very own you might find need for a hallway. Brings up: hallways increase privacy so you'll need people who value/need privacy (again Rybczynski may be helpful. This sense of how people live and used their ... privately held buildings occupies much of his history). Brings up: hallways are between things differentiated.

Without hallways, domestic spaces were built (even at the "merchant" level) with many rooms on one level but connected directly with a pleasing view through a series of doors.

There may be part of an answer in the word "hall" (as opposed to the word "corridor" which I don't know anythign about) as it relates to "big room". You may find a transition from the single big hall to the single big hall with a few auxiliary rooms off of it (sleeping chamber, office of the lord) through a shrinking of the hall from "a place where all of life happens" to "a place where we stand around and admire each other's clothes and do business deals over coffee" (see this grow to the specialized "ball room"). Then as business moves out of the home the hall becomes even less hall and more way. OR the circulatory aspect takes over and a new big room is built.

I don't think you'll find any joy looking for an increase in household size as a primary factor. I think you'd find that household size is decreasing as the hallway comes to the fore.

I suspect gallery graves don't count. (Third party mentions Egyptian tomb entries. Similar configuration tunnel to rooms. In particular re: Egyptian, iirc, once you get to rooms you get rooms w/ doors and now hallway in particular. I'm suspecting we can't look there for early hallway influence. Brings up Egyptian temples. Again, I think (you should double check) we're talking processional way and once rooms start happening then we're in to rooms. Similar processionals or porches may be seen in Greek and Indian temple forms. Wonder if they are related. Glass one in and >pting< you've got a hallway. First suspicion - no.)

Check Japanese floor plans. I'm recalling some spaces that might qualify for "hallway" status at Katsura. Though that might give you an "early first" date it wouldn't likely be useful in terms of "evolution of western architecture".

Maybe look north. Single loaded hallway with solar gain on one side. Without a need for solar gain, a star shaped arrangement off a central main room would suffice (came to me pondering trulli homes).

That's all for now.

[gruhn]

It might be better to ask "when did recognizable hallways come in to prominence" and be flexible about how you recognize them.

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 12 Jul 2005, Joshua wrote

If by "hallways" you mean corridors off which individual rooms are accessed, it's not really a straight line. (Is it ever??)

On the one hand, "room-to-room" access -- without an adjacent corridor

-- is certainly still found in high-level design in the early 1500s: the "good rooms" (technical sense) of Hampton Court Palace don't have corridor access.

On the other hand, mediaeval cloisters functioned as single-loaded corridors, and I know of houses of the mid 1400s where that model was adopted on upper as well as ground floors for an entirely domestic/secular building. (It was pretty cutting-edge design at the time, though.)

"18th century" sounds much too late to me, but I'd guess that whilst corridors were around for centuries, they weren't widely adopted in domestic layouts until the 17th century.

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 12 Jul 2005, gruhn wrote

-snip excellent stuff-

Nope: primarily accessed through the arches from the nave, and ready- made to be partitioned off as side chapels if somebody paid for the work and a chantry priest to go with it.

[AVAILABLE NOW! DON'T DELAY! Why not ask about our Perpetual Prayer Plans -- PPP (tm) -- which are available with "pay-nothing-till-you- die" financing?]

Definitely. Single-loaded corridor.

[DBM]

I wonder if the modern domestic adoptation of the hallway came about from the colonisation of countries with hot climates. There the hallway is used to ventilate the house, something that was not neccessary in European countries. As the size of houses grew in Europe, due to wealth, so a means of linking all the new fangled rooms was needed.

Returning colonialists used the hallway to do this.

My 2c's worth.

DBM

[gruhn]

Thought it might be a stretch.

Liked that one better.

[gruhn]

, thanks. Working on it.

[gruhn]

Good idea. I think the answer is "hell no" ;-)

I don't think so. Hallways enclose space. If you have a house that is as open on the outside as possible with maximum cross ventilation on the interior you can take advantage of whatever air movement there is (think colonial bungaloe)(hot wet stormy). Add hallways and you start restricting and blocking movement. The other way is to open a courtyard. Some nice multistory urban houses in India that go... back a way. Balconys to the courtyard, I think. There will be an entry tunnel from the street. But that goes back to gallery graves and "doesn't count" I don't think (see similar behaviours in Norman castle layouts).

Speaking of Norman castles, a spiral stair up one corner tower with a room off it at each level is like a hallway in function only oriented differently. But I don't imagine you'll find that a source.

You've got a hallway and you've got doors and in rooms big areas of blank wall where you're proposing moving air (from the "room" into the "hall/chimney"). Also the hallway greatly restricts the most efficent direction of ventilation. "Mommy, I'm hawwwwt." "Well pray to the Baby Jesus to shift the wind around 15 more degrees to the north."

Other hot climates (say, Phoenix) you don't want ventilation, you want too keep what cool air you grabbed in the evening to sit around inside your thick walled small opening adobe block as long as possible.

Been mentioned already but restressing that doorways directly between rooms were used. Even in long sequences. By lining them up, I think the "ancients" have told us they liked the effect and weren't necessarily in the market to avoid it. At least, not at the time they were doing it. Tastes change.

Nice idea, but I'm not gonna buy it.

- gruhn

[marcenmoni]

Depends what you mean by 'hallway'.

According to the dictionary:

'hall' has its roots in old high German and old Norse, and has several meanings, on of which being the main hall of a medieval castle.

'hallway' came about in the US in 1875-1880, as a variation of corridor

'corridor' in English came about in 1580s from middle French from upper Italian 'corridore', a compound of 'currere' and 'itorium' (run+place for)

Exterior single or double loaded corridors happened the moment you had a main path between vendor stalls in the market place.

The Greek Agora is a single loaded exterior arcade.

Large Roman buildings had large halls and connecting passageways (especially structures like the Coliseum).

The central courtyard in a Roman villa was a single loaded corridor as well.

I'm sure the idea goes back even further than Roman architecture, and probably even further than Egyptian architecture (the hallways in pyramids leading to tombs.)

As a term meaning a corridor connecting various sleeping room/bathrooms, it was probably done that way even the 15th century in large villas/ palaces/ castles, and before (medieval rowhouses in Italy had hallways of a sort leading from front to back.)

The 1875 date is a good indicator of when the space became 'common' in US residential construction for the average person.

Marcello

[gruhn]

I rather like

is also of interest.

(about halfway down, the sketch gallery)

Couldn't find any interior representations of Hardwick Hall which I understand has a great hall of just the transitional type I described in an earlier post. Check your library.