OBSERVATIONS
22
|
IN THIS ISSUE
A BUILDING HISTORY OF NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND Years ago, when I was still a newcomer to the preservation and architectural-history business, I came upon a series of wonderfully informative magazine articles entitled Merciful Restoration of Old Houses, written by James L. Garvin. Now Jim, who has for years been the New Hampshire State Architectural Historian and a valued friend, has taken the kernel of those articles, added to it two and a half decades worth of additional research, knowledge, and wisdom, and put it all in book form. The result, A Building History of Northern New England, is a triumph. Focusing on New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, the book is divided into but three chapters, dealing with the evolution of building technology ("How a House Is Built"), architectural style ("Why a Building Looks the Way It Does"), and key features such as moldings, doors, windows, and trim ("How to Date a Building"). The language is vivid and evocative, and the illustrations--copious and to the point--include photographs, period illustrations, and best of all, the author's elegant and informative drawings. Perhaps the best thing about this book is the way it combines deep scholarship with accessibility, so that it is enjoyably and profitably readable both by the old-building novice and by the expert. As Jim says in his preface, "This is not a book about restoring old buildings... It is a book about understanding old buildings... It is especially addressed to homeowners, who are often the people most in need of information, the people least equipped to find the needed answers, and, in the aggregate, the people most likely to do harm or good to old buildings." But lest professionals in the field think we were overlooked, the book contains fourteen pages of meaty bibliography, topically coordinated with the main text. A Building History of Northern New England succeeds on many levels, not the least of which is as a handsome example of the contemporary book-maker's craft, but in my opinion, its greatest accomplishment is the way in which it synthesizes technology, style, and culture to show the rich and complex interactions of forces that have shaped the area's buildings over the centuries. I thoroughly enjoyed my first trip through this book, and anticipate returning to it again and again, both for insight and for pleasure.
Back to the top It is a persistent fancy that the sloping woodwork of old houses is an indication that they were constructed by ship's carpenters. It turns out that ship's carpenters were involved in the construction of many old houses, particularly in areas with established shipbuilding industries, but sloping (or more correctly, displaced) woodwork isn't an indicator. Buildings are constructed with flat planes and right angles for a reason: Sloping floors, undulating walls, and oddly-angled corners increase construction costs and conflict with the way buildings are used. The relatively few buildings that have been deliberately constructed with undulating or otherwise non-planar walls and odd corners bear this fact out well. Similarly, ships are built with curving lines for a reason, too: They have to make their way as efficiently as possible through water, all the while resisting the stresses imposed by wave and wind. Smooth curves are the way to do this; planar surfaces and right angles would neither allow the vessel to move readily through the water nor stand up under the sometimes violent and constantly-changing forces to which it is subject. OK, but couldn't ship's carpenters have worked on houses? Of course. Researchers have found lots of evidence that eighteenth-century carpenters worked on both houses and ships, but when working on houses, they built houses, and when working on ships, they built ships. So the next time someone tells you that ship's carpenters worked on the So-and-so House, keep your mind open. They well may have, especially if the house was located near the coast or a significant waterway, but don't be fooled into thinking that the fact that woodwork is displaced out of square is any proof. Blame it on decay, warping, and shallow foundations instead! Back to the top HARDWOODS AND SOFTWOODS IN BUILDING FRAMES Often, when inspecting a hewn building frame, we encounter a mixture of hardwood and softwood species. Sometimes other evidence indicates that the different species were installed at different times, but frequently they all appear to date from the same time. It turns out that different species were used for the simple reason that the builder found one more appropriate for a particular purpose than another. For instance, coniferous (evergreen) trees tend to have straight, tall, slowly-tapering central trunks from which branches extend laterally, while deciduous (broad-leafed) trees tend to fork into many large branches. This fact means that long members such as plates and the binding beams that tie the front and rear eaves to one another tend to be hewn from softwood. Some of these timbers are truly impressive; the original girts and plates of the laundry machine shop at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, MA, for instance, are seventy feet long. Hardwood trees (typically oak or chestnut) do not normally produce such long members, making them more useful for other parts of the building frame, such as posts, rafters, studs, and braces. Local availability was always a major consideration, as was custom, which dictated the woods that were traditionally used for various purposes. Back to the top In Observations 15 we wrote a piece about using nail types as an aid to dating building components. We noted that cut nails were less expensive than wrought nails, and that "by 1800 cut nails were rapidly supplanting wrought nails for most purposes." That statement was basically true, but now needs to be amplified. We recently saw a page from a hardware catalogue published in the 1860s, in which wrought nails were illustrated on the same page as cut nails. In other words, they continued to be sold (and used) much later than most of us had thought--even in structures built around the time of the Civil War. The reason appears to be that cut nails made of iron were brittle, and did not clinch as readily as wrought nails. Wrought nails, therefore, continued to be used in batten doors and other applications where protruding nail tips had to be bent around back into the wood, until readily clinchable (steel) cut nails became available in the latter third of the century. To emphasize this point, the catalogue showed two views of each wrought nail --one straight, and the other coiled up like a snail's shell: Wrought nails were indeed clinchable! The morals of this story are that even the received wisdom occasionally gets shaken up, and that finding a few clinched-over wrought nails in a mid nineteenth-century building doesn't necessarily mean that it was originally built in the eighteenth century. Recommended further reading: "'Mechanic Geniuses and Duckies,' A Revision of New England's Cut Nail Chronology before 1820" and "Mechanic Geniuses and Duckies Redux: Nail Makers and Their Machines," both by Maureen Phillips, and both in APT Bulletin (Vol. XXV no. 3-4, and Vol. XXVII no. 1-2). Back to the top Occasionally we encounter early unplaned machine-sawn wood (boards, joists, studs) where the saw marks stop a few inches short of the end of the member, leaving a rough split face. This turns out to be an artifact of early up-and-down sawmill technology: In order to mill-saw a log, the stick was first secured to a carriage that moved it into the saw blade. Since the log lapped onto the end of the carriage, the saw could not cut it to its end without also damaging the carriage. Consequently, the last few inches of wood could not be sawn away. Instead, the cut pieces had to be split off the butt end of the log. Later refinements in sawmill design made it possible for the saw to cut the whole log from one end to the other. Back to the top For years, John Leeke, a skilled artisan who also writes about his craft, has been practicing out of Portland, Maine. Among his services, he has available a series of short Practical Restoration Reports on wood gutters, exterior epoxy wood repairs, wood columns, windows, and other matters--all compact and readable distillations of Mr. Leeke's experience. The wood gutter report, for instance, covers gutter installations and their problems, and discusses assessing conditions and making repairs. Photographs and detail sketches enhance the report's clarity. Following a case history, the report concludes with recommendations for maintenance, and--most helpfully--sources of products. Practical Restoration Reports are short, non-technical, and well-illustrated. At ten to fifteen dollars, they are also expensive for the casual reader. For the building owner, contractor, or architect with a need for solid working information about both what to do and how to do it, though, they are economical and useful. Further information from John Leeke, Preservation Consultant, 26 Higgins Street, Portland, Maine 04103. Return to contents |
