The Preservationist's Guide to Technological Change and the American Home 1600-1900

By Lee Perry

Book Description:
This work is an exploration of American building technologies as they evolved during the period between colonial times and nineteen hundred. The manuscript consists of six chapters and an historical glossary of building construction related terms. The chapters cover technological developments in house framing, masonry materials and techniques, plumbing, heating, lighting, and architectural details and finishes. The glossary of terms follows the meanings of building terminology as it developed over the course of three centuries.

The intent of this work is to create a detailed, if not utterly comprehensive, body of information tracing the way in which our homes changed as they mirrored the impact of technological change on all aspects of the American condition. We are and have been from the start, a nation of ardent techno junkies. The technological evolution of our homes offers a useful and clear metaphor through which to trace the evolution of our technological development and related national character, through primary focus on the concrete and practical aspects of the technologies of residential architecture.

Author Bio:
Lee comes from a New England background and has both a lifetime of building experience with historic structures and a formal advanced education in the field of historic preservation. For the past ten years he has worked as a project manager on a variety of high profile museum projects.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 11, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462099344

Lee Perry

Lee Comes from a New England background and has both a life time of building experience with historic structures and a formal advanced education in the field of historic preservation. For the past ten years he has worked as a project manager on avariety of high profile museum projects.

Book preview

© 2000 by Lee J Perry

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any

information storage or retrieval system, without the

permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Writer’s Showcase presented by Writer’s Digest

an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse.com, Inc.

620 North 48th Street

Suite 201

Lincoln, NE 68504-3467

www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 0-595-01083-0

ISBN: 978-1-462-09934-4 (eBook)

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Early Structural Methodology

Chapter 2

Masonry

Chapter 3

Plumbing

Chapter 4

Heating

Chapter 5

Lighting

Chapter 6

Architectural Details and

Finishes

A Comparative Glossary of

Architectural Terms

Glossary

Appendix A

Appendix B

About the Author

Bibliography

This work is dedicated to Professor (retired) Donald Disbrow of Eastern Michigan University who many years ago exposed to me the human in the humanities.

Preface

This work is an exploration of American building technologies as they evolved during the period between colonial times and nineteen hundred. The manuscript consists of six chapters and an historical glossary of building construction related terms. The chapters cover technological developments in house framing, masonry materials and techniques, plumbing, heating, lighting, and architectural details and finishes. The glossary of terms follows the meanings of building terminology as it developed over the course of three centuries.

The intent of this work is to create a detailed, if not utterly comprehensive, body of information tracing the way in which our homes changed as they mirrored the impact of technological change on all aspects of the American condition. A significant number of current fields of study including architecture, sociology, history and history of technology, historic preservation, and material culture, at least in part, deal with the culmination and consequence of nearly four centuries of American technological enthusiasm. We are and have been from the start, a nation of ardent technojunkies. The technological evolution of our homes offers a useful and clear metaphor through which to trace the evolution of our technological development and related national character, through primary focus on the concrete and practical aspects of the technologies of residential architecture.

The information contained here was gathered largely from contemporary 17th, 18th and 19thcentury sources (popular technical and architectural publications, technical manuals, encyclopedias, cyclopedias, dictionaries, advertising, local histories and guide books etc.) which mostly exclude academic studies in order to create a more vernacular and practical work than that which is usual in this field. This study attempts to achieve accessibility to a broad audience while still retaining intellectual respectability. My goal has been to provide material of usefulness to those who study the broader consequences of technological change, information of practical use and interest to mid level students and teachers of preservation, museum studies, and material culture disciplines, and material of interest to the larger and more general audience involved in historic preservation related activities. The glossary of terms should make the work useful, long term, as a reference to architects, preservationists, managers of historic houses and other similar sites, and students of technological history.

Each chapter is organized in roughly the same way; i.e., a given technique or technology is described in its earliest state, discussed in view of specific technological change[s], described with a variety of contemporary images, the manner of its popularization examined and its impact on the home noted. Finally, the glossary of terms is organized so as to be useful to members of any of the above disciplines who are often faced with the task of determining the appropriate meaning for building terminology though those meanings might vary subtly or even very considerably from place to place and time to time.

Chapter 1

Early Structural Methodology

Introduction

At the dawn of the nineteenth century the term, American house, owed much more of its definition to European house building traditions than to indigenous architectural forms or concepts. The typical American house, if one will concede the existence of such a structure, looked suspiciously like an English house in one of its several guises. The settled America of 1800 was a relatively narrow strip of land running along the Atlantic coast from what is now Maine southward to what is now northern Florida. Population was most dense along the immediate coast and thinned considerably inland toward the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. Though including enclaves of Germans, Swedes, Dutch, French, Scots-Irish and others, the overwhelming majority of the population was of English origin. Likewise, early American architecture, outside of the log cabin tradition that owes much to the Germans and Scots-Irish, is primarily the result of an English legacy. This legacy found its American expression largely in terms of wood construction. While brick and stone buildings were built in many places, the majority of colonial houses were built from wood—the most abundant material available.

Upon arrival on the North American continent, the new colonist faced a set of environmental imperatives for which his European background had not prepared him. Foremost among these was the challenge posed to the early English settlers by the realities of a New World winter. The typical range from the depth of winter to the height of summer in southern England was 63 degrees compared with a range of over 110 degrees and lows in the minus double digit range found in central New England (Condit, 1982.) Substantial shelter became a very high priority.

After a short period in which a variety of dugout constructions, adaptations of Indian shelters, stick and mud shelters, and in some places, log cabins were utilized, the colonists began to build the timberframed or post and beam structures with which they were familiar. The skills needed in this type of building which had its origins in the even more ancient cruck construction, though considerable, were largely traditional, developed over the course of the previous three centuries.

Hugh Morrison, in his Early American Architecture, notes that no new architectural techniques were developed, [colonial practice] was entirely traditional and used the available materials in a way that was naturally and frankly expressive of those materials. Given the enormous difficulties faced by the colonists, their reliance on these traditional conservative building methods seems an appropriate risk avoidance technique; and under the circumstances, the development of new building techniques would have been a surprising development. However lacking the timber framing method may have been in terms of novelty or technological innovation, it certainly offered a familiar and comfortably strong framework on which to build a variety of colonial building types. The strength of this frame work is derived first from the great size of the wood beams; secondly from the joinery techniques that hold the various wood members together; and thirdly from the geometry of the framework that allows the weight of the building and its contents to be transferred laterally to the posts and then vertically down to sill and foundation.

The timber used in these frames by the early builder was usually of marvelous quality whatever the variety of tree from which it came. Since the North American forest was virtually unexploited by its native inhabitants, it was a primeval forest comprised of very tall and very straight trees. Hardwoods, like oak, might be one hundred and thirty feet high with no branches for the first eighty feet. Softwoods could grow to a height of one hundred and eighty feet with few branches for the bottom two thirds of its height. Since these trees grew in a forest with a high dense canopy that let in little light, most of a tree’s energy was expended in seeking height to reach the light. Consequently, trees grew straight up and gained girth only slowly, resulting in very dense and thus strong timber. Further, since taper increases in a tree that grows subsequent to sequential limb growth, those early trees had little taper because limbs were unable to develop on their lower shaded portions (Sobon and Schemer, 1989.).

Even as late as 1806, the available timber was remarkable in its size and quality. An early American botanist reportedly saw pine 154’ in length and 54" in girth and others over 140’ in length similarly proportioned. (Defebaugh, 1906.). Since it was estimated that up to ninety percent of the area of the original thirteen colonies was wooded, there was clearly a vast amount of high quality raw material available for building purposes.

Given the quality of this raw material and given the fact that colonial craftsmen sized their timbers according to traditional standards developed in a time and place of mediocre timber, the strength of early American timber framing is not surprising. The size of the principle framing members varied according to the size of the structure and the distances that had to be spanned but could be very large indeed. An 1800 pricing guide for carpenters, The Rules of Work of the Carpenters in the Town of Boston, calculates some of its framing prices assuming beam sizes of 10 to 12 inches and post sizes of 7 to 10 inches square. In the absence of power saws, most of this timber was turned into usable beams by the process of hand hewing which, though arduous, was considerably easier than hand sawing with the primitive two man saws then available. These traditional framing techniques along with their variations were used continuously in this country for over two and one half centuries. Indeed, they are still in use in revivals of various kinds today. The post-and-beam frame was used in many house types and in a variety of house styles. Because of its mass, strength, and consequential lack of design flexibility, this framing method found its most aesthetically satisfying expression in buildings of substantially rectangular mass.

The familiar colonial house types include the two room hall and parlor cottage, the New England large, the salt box, the Cape Cod, the four over four, center hall Georgian, numerous gable end, and gable end and ell combinations. Styles ranged from English cottage through Georgian, Federalist, Classic and Greek revival, and even early Gothic revival. The basic framing design in conjunction with chimney placement plays a principle role along with decorative elements in the definition of what these terms meant as translated into the reality of a structure in which people lived.

The fact that large numbers of these structures ranging in age from less than one hundred to over three hundred years of age still exist is a tribute to the materials, the builders, and to the underlying structural methodology. To one who is sensitive to the aesthetics of the form and respectful of its long history, the post-and-beam building attains the status of art. One preservationist notes,

.. .there is…nothing to equal the feel and patina of well worn wood. It is amazing what abuse a framed building will put up with as long as it joints hold.(Charles, 1984 p.7.). Another architectural theorist says, The wood skeleton.is difficult, cranky, inflexible, and will not absorb the mechanical trades easily. Its one asset is its nobility (Kennedy, 1953,p.494).

The story behind the evolution of the familiar colonial and early nineteenth century house types and styles into twentieth century homes represents one facet of the American Industrial Revolution. The earliest homes were one kind of a physical construct consisting of certain kinds of materials and a specific structural methodology assembled by people operating within a defined work organizational structure. The modern house differs profoundly from its early ancestors in all of these respects.

Though the Industrial Revolution was under way in England by early in the eighteenth century, the American colonial experience was essentially a pre-industrial and an early industrial experience. The colonist typically had limited resources and thus limited access to technology either at the time of his leaving England or later after settling in the new land. Consequently, houses were for many years mostly the product of hand labor and the building materials capable of being produced by such labor. The framework for houses consisted initially of huge beams hewn from the log by time consuming and arduous hand labor. Tradition required the use of oak even though it was extremely difficult to work, and unlike the case in England, there were many available and better alternatives available to the North American colonist (Kelly. 1924.).

The trenail fasteners which held the framework together were likewise hand fashioned from the available hardwoods, again usually oak. Any boards and smaller framing pieces that were used were produced at first by great expenditures of the labor of two man saw teams. Slow water powered sawmills appeared fairly early but did not completely replace hand labor for many years due to transportation difficulties. Shingles were sawn or split from log bolts by hand. Nails, which were extremely expensive and used sparingly, were hand wrought. In short, the early American experience was typical of that of a pre-industrial society in that labor was cheap compared to the products of the limited available technology and industry; and, therefore, larger expenditures of labor often were used in lieu of manufactured products. Structural methodology was based upon the theory that,

In combining and uniting the materials in the construction of an edifice, there are three distinct principles brought into use, namely, simple repose, equipoise, and tie. The object in all these three distinct principles is to produce such a state of quietude in the materials of the building, that their weight shall not produce any fracture or displacement. The principle of simple repose…is where the materials are merely piled perpendicularly, so as to form piers with beams across,.. .pressing downwardly with the gravity of the materials, without any thrust…to destroy the position of any part of the arrangement. Equipoise is required in the construction of buildings where materials are over laid, and from thence carried upon the principle of the arch, spring from piers or columns..the principle of tying [is] obtained through confining the thrusting powers, not by external abutments and equipoise, but by internal restraint. (Brown, Richard. 1841, pp.134-135)

The builder, in giving the theory physical presence, usually commenced work by arranging his sill timbers on a dry laid stone foundation. The foundation might be fully excavated, partially excavated, or merely a frost wall to get the timbers up off ground level. Next came the assembly of the basic framing unit or bent which consisted of two vertical posts whose length was equal to the full height of the structure’s end wall and two or more lateral beams known as girts and plates equal in length to the full width of the house. All of the timbers were assembled together using, not metal fasteners, but a variety of carved joints held together with wooden pegs or trenails and with wooden wedges.

Image502.JPG

The basic joint, which existed in countless variations, was the mortise and tenon joint. In its simplest form, this joint consists of a cavity carved in one beam into which fit the carefully sized end of another beam. The two pieces would be snugly drawn together by a wooden peg driven through off set holes which passed through the entire joint While the basic joint is simple in concept, a number of its variations and other joints designed to resist incredibly complex combinations of stresses are very difficult to execute to the required tolerances. For example, the thrust forces were often overcome through the use of tie beams that were fastened to the plates with variants of the dovetail joint, a sophisticated joint designed to resist forces tending to pull apart structural members. Given the relative crudity of the traditional carpentry tools, little changed over several centuries, it is amazing that work of such quality could be accomplished. This time consuming craftsmanship combined with the requirement for a great deal of help in raising the bents in place to make this a very labor intensive process.

These joinery techniques and structural methods allowed the construction of buildings of considerable length which could be obtained by the erection of one bent after another with mortise and tenon joints into the sills. Since each bent was a semi-autonomous construct designed to transfer weight to the sills and foundation over a given width, a series of plates tying the bents together laterally and providing a mechanism to transmit roof stresses to the posts, allowed for a rather large structure. The distinguishing characteristic of this framing method was the transmittal of all of the structures own weight and the entire weight of the building’s contents downward to the sills though the posts only. The walls in such a building served only as weather shields and locations for doors and windows and did not play any structural role in the transmission of weight or stress.

Image509.PNG

This kind of scheme which isolated the downward forces to only a few spots around the entire perimeter of a structure made great width in a building difficult because the carrying capacity of a wooden beam was limited over great horizontal spans. When greater than usual width was required, it was accomplished by adding intermediate posts and longitudinal interior summer beams along with diagonal bracing and clever splices in the beams. The outside size limits of post-and-beam construction were generally accepted as 50 by 150 feet and three stories in height. The Slater Mill, built in 1793, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as the first American textile mill was somewhat larger than this, however. It stood four stories high and had massive beams designed to carry the weight of a great deal of machinery. Even this did not prove to be the upper size limit of post-and beam construction as two ship houses, one 74 X 210 X 80 feet and another 84 X 210 X 103 feet were built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in the 1820’s (Condit,1982.)

Roof framing schemes of the era mirror the pattern of the wall framework in that there appear to have been a few common patterns with a number of variations all of which were based upon the underlying structural theory. One method was to set a number of substantial rafters on the top plates with their tops fastened together with lap or open mortise and tenon joints. Horizontal sheathing and the shingles were applied over the rafters. Depending on span, the rafters wouldsometimes be supported from below by purlins, in turn, supported on the tie beams and girts below them. Another method involved the use of larger but fewer rafters into which smaller horizontal purlins were set. In this scheme, the sheathing would be vertically applied. In larger, finer, and more complex structures a number of truss types were utilized to span greater distances.

Image518.JPG

Though architects were often engaged to design the more important private dwellings and public buildings, it was, in fact, the carpenter-joiner who was expected to design and construct most ordinary buildings. According to The Panorama of Professions and Trades of 1837,

It is the business of the carpenter to cut out and frame large pieces of timber, and then to join them together.to constitute them the outlines or skeletons of buildings or parts of buildings..The joiner executes the more minute parts of woodworking.the floors, window frames, sashes, doors mantles, &c…Carpentry and joinery, however, are so nearly allied to each other, that they are commonly practiced by the same individual;…Carpentry and joinery, as well as all other trades.are subservient to the architect, when an individual of this particular profession has been employed;

but it most commonly happens, that the master carpenter acts in this capacity…especially…in the erection of common dwellings.Contracts for the erection of buildings are often made with the carpenter, as master-builder or architect (Hazen. p.204.).

The title of Thomas Tregold’s famous work on carpentry reiterates the high level of expertise expected of a carpenter during the era of timber framed buildings. The title reads Elementary Principles of Carpentry; A Treatise On the Pressure and Equilibrium of Timber Framing, The Resistance of Timber, and the Construction of Floors, Roofs, Centres, Bridges, &c. Clearly, a great deal was expected of an ordinary carpenter. Not surprisingly, it required many years of apprenticeship before one attained the status of journeyman and then master carpenter. Though, the construction of an ordinary house required this very high level of expertise on one hand, it also required the utilization of very large amounts of mostly unskilled labor at discrete moments during the construction process. Though the individual bents which comprised the skeletal framework were fabricated piecemeal by the carpenter-joiner and then assembled by him on the ground, the raising of these constructs and the joining of the several bents, one to another, required large numbers of men. This frame raising was a delicate process that required skillful planning and organization of the semi-killed labor force by the master carpenter.

Technological Advance

Almost immediately after a significant level of settlement had been attained on the new continent, the demands for housing created by the growing population combined with the new physical and social realities resulting in modifications o these traditional house-building methods. Early efforts to industrialize the process of creating the materials used in houses resulted in significant changes in the house-building process. Likewise changes in the primary materials gradually lead to the alteration of the basic structural methodology resulting in the building of simpler structures that did not require the high level of expertise possessed by the early carpenters. Consequently, not only did the materials and structural forms change, but so also did the nature and organization of the required labor change. Thus began the classic scenario of the processes of industrialization lowering the cost of a given commodity by simplifying and standardizing its production while simultaneously reducing the cost of other products of which it is a part; and, thereby, reducing at all levels of that product’s existence the skill required in its use or production.

The first applications of industrial technology to the house-building process came with the introduction into the colonies of sawmills. Charles Howell in his article, Colonial Watermills In the Wooden Age, noted that the probable first use of waterwheels in the colonies was in the powering of sawmills (Hindle. 1975.). Either oxen or horses powered other early sawmills. The first sawmills were probably built in New Hampshire and Massachusetts between 1633 and 1635; and by 1682, there were 24 sawmills in the state of Maine alone. (Defebaugh. 1906.). The establishment of saw mills was such a high colonial priority that bounties were provided to those who would build the mills. Keene, New Hampshire, for example, promoted a sawmill with a land grant in 1736 and later a substantial cash payment (Clark. 1929.).

It is no accident that the first American mechanical patent was given by the colony of Massachusetts in 1646 for improved sawmills and scythes (Hindle. 1975; in Rosenberg, America’s Rise to Leadership. ). These mills all used the reciprocating or up and down type of saw at first as a single blade and later as a gang saw making several cuts along the length of the log simultaneously (Disston.1926). While painfully slow by modern standards, these saws cut at many times the rate of the two man handsaws. Even with the greatly increased speed, however, the mills did not seem to produce many of the larger framing timbers in use, restricting themselves mainly to boards and the smaller framing members. Perhaps, there was more profit in the smaller pieces, or just as likely, the transportation of large sawn beams was just too difficult and expensive. In any case, large numbers of houses were built using hewn timbers and sawn joists and boards during the late eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries.

Image526.JPG

The second quarter of the nineteenth century brought the introduction of the powered circular saw, an innovation in sawmill technology that even further increased the availability of sawn products at even lower costs. Apparently first patented in England, the circular saw’s first use in America is variously credited to Benjamin Cummins of Bentonville, New York in 1814, (Disston. 1926.), to William Kendall of Fairfield, Maine, in 1825 (Builder and Woodworker. April,), and to a number of others. Kendall’s machine was described as a mammoth seven-foot in diameter water powered saw, six inches thick in the middle. The wobble which was a flaw suffered by all early circular saws was controlled in this case by the direction of small streams of water at bothsides of the blade as it rotated. These early circular saws, while faster than reciprocating saws, were very crude and suffered from any number of deficiencies including wobble and the difficulty of keeping the saw teeth in place on the perimeter of the blade. When this later problem was solved in 1859 by using curved sockets for the teeth, the circular saw became almost universally used (Disston. 1926.). Despite the obvious advantages of these kinds of advances, old patterns did not disappear immediately as evidenced by the appearance of old but modified pit saw technology well into the nineteenth century.

By the last quarter of the century, both of these early saw technologies that turned a very large percentage of the log into sawdust had been supplanted by the band saw which was another magnitude faster and much less wasteful. The new technologies combined with the introduction of steam power sources (which began very early in the century but which did not become ubiquitous until near 1850) to create an explosion in the growth of the lumber industry. Since the steam engines were largely fueled by the waste sawdust and not by expensive fuels purchased especially for the purpose, there existed this almost perfect synergy within the industry (EML. 1868.).

The growth of the sawmill industry and the increase in manufactured lumber consumption over the course of the nineteenth century was phenomenal. The 1799 consumption of lumber was estimated to be 300,000 board feet; 1809 consumption, 400,000 board feet; in 1819,550,000; in 1829,850,000; in 1839,1.6 million; and in 1849,5.4 million board feet. There were over 31,000 saw-mills in 1840 with a production value of nearly $13 million. (Hindle. 1975.).

Like the sawn boards of early colonial times, the availability of nails during the entire colonial period was always limited and their cost was very high. Such was the demand for nails and the importance of their supply that in some places convicts that had been sentenced to hard labor …are chiefly employed in the making of nails. (The Boston Directory, 1796 and Meese, 1811, p. 169). The effort to reduce both the scarcity and the cost of nails was reflected in the fact that over twenty patents for nail making machinery had been granted before 1800. The Prairie Farmer of 1847, a Midwestern agricultural journal suggested that, the memory of the inventor of cut nails deserves a place beside that of Fulton, Whitney, and his other American contemporaries. (p.2.) This publication, quoting an upstate New York newspaper, credits the invention of cut nails or brads to one Benjamin Cochran of Batavia, New York. The story is recounted how Cochran who had been a journeyman together with Eli Whitney in the same shop, had invented the nail making process but had not received credit for the invention because it occurred before the advent of patent law.

This article further notes the great importance of the business in 1847, and quotes part of a poem that describes the scene at a nail manufacturing plant "where the machinerythumps away both night and day,

And makes a noise like thunder O

The cranks and cams, and battering rams

Do keep such pelting, pounding, O

That all the ground is shook around,

By reason of the jouncing, O."

[Mech. Jour.]"

One of the more notable officially credited inventions was the machine of Jacob Perkins, patented in 1795 which was capable of turning out 200,000 cut nails a day (Hindle