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The former is broad and has a six-panel door much like that at Number 5011 Germantown Avenue, but the fanlight is of simpler pattern and withal more pleasing. A fine-scale dentil course lends interest to the pedimental cornice, while the frieze portions of the entablature section of the pilasters are elaborated by flutings and drillings, the latter suggestive of a festoon.
One of the earliest and simplest was the six-panel single door with three stiles of about equal width, top and frieze rail about the same, bottom rail somewhat wider and lock rail about double the width of the frieze rail. The upper pair of panels were not quite high enough to be square, while the middle and lower pairs were oblong in shape, the middle one being higher than the lower.
It has the simple excellence in detail of the South Seventh Street doorway, with better proportion, less height of pediment and greater apparent breadth, owing to the six-panel arrangement of the door and the fact that it is white like the wood trim about it. The only carved molding is the Grecian fret of the dentil course in the pedimental cornice.
Two notable instances may be cited at Number 5200 Germantown Avenue, Germantown, and Number 4927 Frankford Avenue. Both have the familiar six-panel doors with corresponding paneled jambs and arch soffit, attractively simple fanlights and much fine-scale hand carving in the pedimental cornice and architrave casing of the keyed arch. The former displays better taste.
One notices first how deeply recessed it is because of the thickness of the stone walls. With the projecting entablature it affords almost as much shelter as a porch. The single door next attracts attention. Of six-panel and familiar arrangement, it differs from most of this sort in having a double stile in the middle, the effect simulating double doors.
Like six-panel single doors, the upper panel was often almost square, and the middle oblong panel higher than the bottom one of the same shape. At Mount Pleasant the middle and lower panels were of the same size. Eight-panel single doors were employed extensively throughout the eighteenth century, and this is one of the most picturesque and distinctive of Philadelphia types.
The door itself is of the regulation six-panel arrangement. Few doorways in the Corinthian order are to be found in what may properly be termed the Colonial architecture of Philadelphia, for this order was little used by American builders until early in the nineteenth century. The doorway of Doctor Denton's house in Germantown instances its employment in a somewhat original manner.
As contrasted with the plain cased frame of the former, the latter has paneled jambs and soffit, the spacing corresponding with that of the door. Both doors are of the popular six-panel type with nicely molded and raised panels, and both doorheads are elaborated by short, broader sections of the vertical casings near the top.
It has substantially the same overmantel frame and mantel treatment. Incidentally it furnishes an excellent example of the complete paneling of one end of a room with the familiar six-panel ordinary inside doors each side of the fireplace.
Rarely this relation was reversed, and the lower pair was higher than the middle pair, the door at Number 6504 Germantown Avenue being an example. As found in the farmhouses of Germantown and thereabouts, notably Wyck, Glen Fern, the Green Tree Inn and the Johnson and Billmeyer houses, these six-panel doors were split horizontally through the lock rail, dividing them into an upper and lower part.
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