Penn Plan House
The continental plan, with its three-room first-floor arrangement, was used in 2- or 21/2-story structures in the eighteenth century, especially in Pennsylvania (a). Quaker migrants to the Carolinas introduced a variant of the house there (b). Continental plan houses are very similar in exterior appearance to two-thirds double-pile houses. Only the off-center placement of the chimneys and front doors suggests German or German-Swiss origins. Internal gable-end chimneys are common in nineteenth-century houses which, on the exterior, embrace English building ideas (c). Bucher 1962, 14; Glassie 1968a, 54; Glassie 1972, 41; Swaim 1978, 34; Herman 1978, 162; Foley 1980, 63; Patrick 1981, 62; Walker 1981, 73, 77; Noble 1984, 45. (Jakle, 1989)