OBSERVATIONS
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IN THIS ISSUE
The location was beautiful: A ridge overlooking a wooded valley and a lake to the south, and a view to the mountains to the north. The owners had asked me to consult on a number of concerns, one of which, very obviously, was the condition of the barn. "It's falling over," he told me. The property had been a working farm for about a century, following which it had been used as a summer home until the nineteen-fifties, when it was again occupied year-round. One of the summer folk had finished off the inside of the barn in the typical honey-pine vertical-board Colonial Revival paneling that was fashionable from the nineteen-twenties through the forties. It was an interior of great character and warmth, and seemed to be in remarkably good condition for a building that was "falling over." There was no indication of the distortions that would be expected if the building were moving: joints between the boards making up the paneling were tight, the ends of the boards were square to the floor and to the ceiling, and most of the finishes appeared to be in good condition. When I asked my clients what made them think the barn was falling over, they indicated that the side walls were not vertical. Indeed, they were not; one leaned in and one leaned out. The building had racked, leaving these two walls several inches out of plumb.
"I can see that the barn is racked," I said, "but why do you think that it is still moving? Let's see if we can find where interior finish joins an exterior wall." After a lot of looking, we found just such a condition--an added wall abutted the exterior of the building at right angles. "Let's see: If the building is moving, we should see a triangular gap between the old outside wall of the building and the interior partition, since the old wall would be rotating away from the newer one." What did we find? Not only was there no significant gap, the board that butted against the exterior wall had been cut to match an out-of-plumb condition, and was in fact more than an inch wider at head height than at floor level. The barn had already racked when the finish was installed, some sixty or more years ago. Since then, the additional movement had amounted to less than an eighth of an inch, which represented no cause for concern. My clients were greatly relieved, and invited me to stay for a delicious lunch. The moral of the story: An old building that has moved is different from an old building that is moving. Sometimes careful inspection can find the difference, reassure an anxious building-owner, and save him an unnecessary expense. Back to the top One of the constant challenges to those of us who do architectural history is the tenacity of outmoded notions about old buildings, even when confronted with the contrary results of new research. At a recent meeting of the New England Chapter of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Claire Dempsey referred to this phenomenon as established error versus novel fact. Established error is simply "what we've always known" about a building or site. It may even once have been based on state-of-the-art research, or it may simply have been a flight of historical fancy that was repeated so many times that it finally came to be taken for fact. Occasionally, novel facts are welcomed, particularly when they fill in gaps or reconcile puzzling contradictions in the historical record, and don't rock the boat too much. More often, though, novel facts shake things up. They suggest that the Whazzisname House wasn't built nearly as long ago as its owners had believed, that such-and-such an event never happened, or otherwise rein in extravagant traditions, and are not especially welcome. Even though information may have been based on the best available scholarship of its day, it tends, like bread, to go stale and moldy over time. Knowledge doesn't stand still. Little by little, what was once solid fact tends to drift into established error. The best understanding of, say, first period New England houses (built between the 1630s and about 1720) that was available in 1970 has been rendered inadequate by the information that has been brought to light over the last thirty years. The problem arises because people form emotional attachments to these notions, gradually enthroning and establishing them as timeless Truths. Then, when presented with the results of new research that suggests that their beloved beliefs are wrong, they don't want to let go and to accept the new information. As one historical-society stalwart put it when offered the results of new research: "Thank you very much, but I think I prefer my established error to your novel facts." I remember visiting a house museum where the framing of the chimney-wall paneling was not square, but sloped down away from the fireplace on both sides. The guide proudly presented it as evidence that the house had been built by ship's carpenters (established error). I pointed out that the panels themselves were rectangular, though, and that paint shadows on them indicated that the wall had originally been square, and had taken its present slopes in response to rotting in the sills that led to the outside walls of the house settling (novel facts). What followed was typical: The atmosphere in the room cooled noticeably, and the guide told me that my observations were very fine for me, but that she would continue to believe that ship's carpenters had constructed the wall. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that when we let ourselves bond emotionally with "what we know," we make it difficult to exchange established error for novel fact. But let's not throw out our emotions; passion is an essential part of doing anything well, especially history. Just let's get passionate and bond emotionally with the exciting, frustrating, rewarding process of attempting to come always closer to solving the great puzzle of what an historic place really is, and what really happened there. Back to the top One of the delightful and rewarding aspects of the preservation and architectural history game is that there is always something to learn, and that the Revealed Truth can be cast into confusion very quickly indeed. A case in point has to do with fake divided-light windows: There probably isn't anything more universally detested in the preservation business than those little window grids that are applied over large panes of glass to make a window look more or less as though it were composed of small panes. Most preservation folk that I know hate them. Fake divided light grids don't look right, they're phony, they dilute the character of the building, and so forth... I recently went on a field trip to Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts, a museum with many eighteenth and early nineteenth-century buildings. In the course of the day, we visited the newest (and most recently-built) house in the museum's collection--a little cottage constructed "on the cheap" in 1848. There was much to see and learn; extensive conservation work was under way, and the innards of the house were exposed to view. It contained a shocker: In the front second-story windows were original sash containing the preservationists' anathema--in each piece of sash a single pane of glass was overlaid with fake muntins to create the appearance of divided lights. Fake divided-light sash in 1848! If I hadn't seen it and poked the muntins myself, I wouldn't have believed it. This is not to say that fake divided-light windows were common before the advent of insulating glass in the 1950s and early 1960s, because they certainly weren't. It is simply to say that you never know what the next old building will contain, and what it will do to your previous assumptions. Back to the top Heritage Preservation--the organization that administers the CAP assessment program for small museums--has done it again with the publication of a splendid addition to the literature of dealing with historic buildings. This time, though, their audience is all stewards of old houses, not just museums. Caring for your Historic House is a compilation of state-of-the-art practical wisdom and technique, ostensibly aimed at private homeowners, but informed by a degree of professional knowledge that makes it valuable to museums, as well. Organized into twenty topical chapters, each written by a different specialist, it covers the gamut from Why Care about Your Historic House? to Appraisals, Insurance, Preservation Easements and Estate Planning, with stops along the way covering almost every conceivable old-house care topic from roofs to wallpaper to fire protection. Illustrations are copious and to the point. One of the nicest aspects of this book is that it invites the reader to understand the underlying causes for particular problems, as well as discussing approaches to dealing with them. For instance, in discussing exterior paint, the author makes the link between indoor humidity and exterior paint failure, noting that unless the humidity is first brought under control, new paint will also fail. We were particularly delighted to see Chapter 3, Establishing a Maintenance Program, which in eleven readable pages sets out the reasons for a preventive maintenance program, what it involves, and how to set one up and implement it. Considerations of maintenance--and the consequences of failure to maintain--are a theme running throughout this book. As is inevitable with the symposium format, not all the chapters are uniformly strong--the one on kitchens and bathrooms did not seem to measure up to the standard of the rest of the book--but on the whole, Caring for your Historic House is one amazing publication. We recommend it highly, both for museums and for homeowners. ( Since we wrote the original review, Heritage Preservation has produced two companion volumes, Caring for your Collections, and Caring for your Family Treasures. Both these books follow the same general format as Caring for your Historic House, and between them cover both objects owned by curatorial institutions and those owned by you and me.) Caring for Your Historic House, Caring for your Collections, and Caring for your Family Treasures, price, about $25.00 each in paper, more in hardcover. They are available in bookstores and directly from Heritage Preservation, 888 388 6789, or through the Heritage Preservation website, www.heritagepreservation.org/ Return to contents Copyright 1998-2008 Allen C. Hill |
