Part 14
Quoting from the New York _Tribune_ of January 18, 1855, we have a very interesting account of the conditions which were then prevalent that brought about this later variation of the wooden frame structure. The conditions there described seem almost like our modern difficulties with labor and materials.
“Mr. Robinson said: ... I would saw all my timbers for a frame house, or ordinary frame outbuilding, of the following dimensions: 2 × 8 inches; 2 × 4; 2 × 1. I have, however, built them, when I lived on the Grand Prairie of Indiana, many miles from sawmills, nearly all of split and hewed stuff, making use of rails or round poles, reduced to straight lines and even thickness on two sides, for studs and rafters. But sawed stuff is much the easiest, though in a timber country the other is far the cheapest. First, level your foundation, and lay down two of the 2 × 8 pieces, flatwise, for side-walls. Upon these set the floor-sleepers, on edge, 32 inches apart. Fasten one at each end, and perhaps one or two in the middle, if the building is large, with a wooden pin. These end-sleepers are the end-sills. Now lay the floor, unless you design to have one that would be likely to be injured by the weather before you get on the roof. It is a great saving, though, of labor to begin at the bottom of a house and build up. In laying the floor first, you have no studs to cut and fit around, and can let your boards run out over the ends, just as it happens, and afterward saw them off smooth by the sill. Now set up a corner-post, which is nothing but one of the 2 × 4 studs, fastening the bottom by four nails; make it plumb, and stay it each way. Set another at the other corner, and then mark off your door and window places and set up the side-studs and put in the frames. Fill up with studs between, 16 inches apart, supporting the top by a line or strip of board from corner to corner, or stayed studs between. Now cover that side with rough sheeting boards, unless you intend to side-up with clapboards on the studs, which I never would do, except for a small, common building. Make no calculation about the top of your studs; wait till you get up that high. You may use them of any length, with broken or stub-shot ends, no matter. When you have got this side boarded as high as you can reach, proceed to set up another. In the meantime other workmen can be lathing the first side. When you have got the sides all up, fix upon the height of your upper floor, and strike a line upon the studs for the under side of the joist. Cut out a joist 4 inches wide, half inch deep, and nail on firmly one of the inch strips. Upon these strips rest the chamber floor-joist. Cut out a joist 1 inch deep, in the lower edge, and lock it on the strip, and nail each joist to each stud. Now lay this floor, and go on to build the upper story, as you did the lower one; splicing on and lengthening out studs wherever needed, until you get high enough for the plate. Splice studs or joists by simply butting the ends together, and nailing strips on each side. Strike a line and saw off the top of the studs even upon each side—not the ends—and nail on one of the inch strips. That is the plate. Cut the ends of the upper joist the bevel of the pitch of the roof, and nail them fast to the plate, placing the end ones inside the studs, which you will let run up promiscuously, to be cut off by the rafter. Now lay the garret floor by all means before you put on the roof, and you will find that you have saved 50 per cent of hard labor. The rafters, if supported so as not to be over 10 feet long, will be strong enough of the 2 × 4 stuff. Bevel the ends and nail fast to the joist. Then there is no strain upon the sides by the weight of the roof, which may be covered with shingles or other materials—the cheapest being composition or cement roofs. To make one of this kind, take soft, spongy, thick paper, and tack it upon the boards in courses like shingles. Commence at the top with hot tar and saturate the paper, upon which sift evenly fine gravel, pressing it in while hot—that is, while tar and gravel are both hot. One coat will make a tight roof; two coats will make it more durable. Put up your partitions of stuff 1 × 4, unless where you want to support the upper joist—then use stuff 2 × 4, with strips nailed on top, for the joist to rest upon, fastening all together by nails, wherever timbers touch. Thus you will have a frame without a tenon or mortise, or brace, and yet it is far cheaper, and incalculably stronger when finished, than though it were composed of timbers 10 inches square, with a thousand auger holes and a hundred days’ work with the chisel and adze, making holes and pins to fill them.
“To lay out and frame a building so that all its parts will come together requires the skill of a master mechanic, and a host of men and a deal of hard work to lift the great sticks of timber into position. To erect a balloon building requires about as much mechanical skill as it does to build a board fence. Any farmer who is handy with the saw, iron square, and hammer, with one of his boys or a common laborer to assist him, can go to work and put up a frame for an outbuilding, and finish it off with his own labor, just as well as to hire a carpenter to score and hew great oak sticks and fill them full of mortises, all by the science of the ‘square rule.’ It is a waste of labor that we should all lend our aid to put a stop to. Besides, it will enable many a farmer to improve his place with new buildings, who, though he has long needed them, has shuddered at the thought of cutting down half of the best trees in his wood-lot, and then giving half a year’s work to hauling it home and paying for what I do know is the wholly useless labor of framing. If it had not been for the knowledge of balloon frames, Chicago and San Francisco could never have arisen, as they did, from little villages to great cities in a single year. It is not alone city buildings, which are supported by one another, that may be thus erected, but those upon the open prairie, where the wind has a sweep from Mackinaw to the Mississippi, for there they are built, and stand as firm as any of the old frames of New England, with posts and beams 16 inches square.”
The above address, which was delivered before the American Institute Farmers’ Club, has been quoted in detail because of the interesting point of view of the days of 1855 which it reveals. When Mr. Robinson had finished there were other comments, especially one by Mr. Youmans, in which he described early conditions of building in San Francisco. He also said that he had adopted this plan of building on his farm in Saratoga County, where he found great difficulty in getting carpenters that would do as he wished. They could not give up tenons and mortises, and braces and big timbers, for the light ribs, 2 by 4 inches, of a balloon frame. Does this not remind the modern reader of comments he has heard upon all sides these days concerning labor which will not do what is wanted but insists on doing things in the old way?
Some pertinent remarks were also made by a Mr. Stillman, who testified that he had seen whole blocks of houses built in two weeks at San Francisco, and better frames he never saw. He said they were put up a story at a time, the first two floors often being framed and sided in and lived in before the upper part of the house was up. Have we any such housing crisis as this, in these days, or did we do any quicker building of war villages than that described above?
And now we read from the Preliminary Report on the Building Code Committee of the United States Department of Commerce the crystallized tradition of this system of wooden frame construction which was evolved so many years ago that we sometimes forget the conditions of its making:
“_Exterior Walls._—1. Wood studding shall be 2 × 4 inches nominal size or larger, and spaced not to exceed 16 inches on centres. All walls shall be securely braced at corners. The minimum sizes specified in these requirements shall in all cases be understood as referring to nominal sizes of such timbers.
2. Exterior walls, except those of dwellings or parts thereof not more than one story high, shall be sheathed with boards not less than ⅞ inch thick. Sheathing-boards shall be laid tight and properly nailed to each stud with not less than 2 tenpenny nails. Where the sheathing is omitted all corners shall be diagonally braced and such other measures taken to secure rigidity as may be necessary.
3. Wood sheathing may be omitted when other types of construction are used that are proven of adequate strength and stability by tests conducted by recognized authorities.
4. When joists are supported on ledger or ribbon boards, such boards shall not be less than 1 × 4 inches, shall be laid into the studs and securely nailed with not less than 2 nails to each stud. The floor-joists shall be well spiked to the sides of the studs.”
XX TRADITIONS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF DOORS AND WINDOWS
_Windows_
What are the elements of design in the elevations of the small house? Surely they are not the five classical orders, as commonly used in monumental architecture, but rather they are the doors and windows. The successful placing and careful detailing of the doors and windows of a small house will have more to do with the architectural attractiveness of the structure than anything else, for, after all, the most important part of any elevation is the treatment of the holes in it. The walls would be plain and uninteresting but for the holes where the doors and windows are placed. The fenestration cannot be too large or too small, and here is the problem. We desire plenty of light and air, but we must also recognize that windows which are too large leave little wall space in the rooms, are cold in winter, and appear less homelike than smaller and snugger appearing ones. Then, too, windows which are of plain, clear glass in very large sheets make these holes appear open and black, and this is quite contrary to our traditions of the windows of a home, which should be safe and cosey. The omission of muntins from the windows of small houses is a great mistake in design, even though these small panes require a little more work to wash.
Our traditions of door and window construction come, as do other structural traditions, from England. Undoubtedly the earliest structures had no windows at all, but were lighted by the openings through the defective construction of the walls and also through the door. Our ancestors of those days were more interested in protecting themselves from outside intruders than they were in fresh air and sunshine in their rooms. When it was safe to build windows they were only holes in the walls. Some of the old huts, built on crucks, a construction previously described, had holes in the roofs for windows, which served the double purpose of letting in light and letting out the smoke of the fire. We get an inkling of what a window was from the very derivation of the word itself, which comes from the old Norse word “wind-auga” or wind-eye. This does not sound like a glazed sash, nor does the other Anglo-Saxon term for window, “wind-dur,” meaning wind-door, suggest a closed aperture. Of course these windows were undoubtedly closed in some way or other in stormy weather or when danger was outside. Probably a wooden board or shutter was used, which had a small peep-hole cut in it. These were hung from the top, and when opened were held in position with a prop on the outside.
There is no certainty of when the smaller domestic houses of England began to use glazed windows. In 1519 William Horman wrote: “I wyll haue a latesse before the glasse for brekynge.” This would suggest that windows of latticework were preferred because of the cost of glass, and this might have been filled instead with canvas, horn, or tile to let in some light. But another writer in 1562 says: “Lattice keepeth out the light and letteth in the winde.” When glass windows were used, however, the small bits of glass were held in position by lead in diamond-shaped patterns, which probably were adopted from the form of the old lattice windows, although later it was found that rectangular panes were cheaper. But the use of glass in small houses is comparatively modern, for, before the reign of Henry VIII, glass windows were rare except in churches and gentlemen’s houses.
Traditions of stone mullioned windows were very strong, and these brought about a system of building wooden, unglazed sash which had mullions made of oak, set in a heavy oak frame. One of these is shown in the drawings. The word “sash” is derived from the French “chassis,” and its earliest spelling was “shas” or “shash.” In a book, “Mechanick Exercises,” written by Moxon in 1700, he mentions “shas frames and shas lights.” It was these old, unglazed wooden sash which gave birth to the modern double-hung and casement window.
As first made, they opened by sliding in their frames, either horizontally or vertically. If they were built to slide vertically they were not counterbalanced with weights, as in our modern windows, but were held in position with a hook which caught in notches cut in the side of the frame. It is interesting to quote here what William Horman wrote in 1519: “I haue many prety wyndowes shette with louys goynge up and downe.”
It is supposed that the idea of counterbalancing these sash by means of weights, attached by a cord running up over a pulley, came to England from Holland. This type began to be used about the latter half of the seventeenth century, and although the early examples were clumsy and heavy and the groove in which the sash were made to run was worked out in the solid, yet by the process of years of refinement the modern double-hung window was evolved. The traditions of these sliding windows were brought to America in Colonial days, and they proved to be the most suitable types for our rigorous climate, whereas the windows, which swung like doors from their sides, called casement windows, did not prove so weather-resisting.
To hear some individuals talk, one would almost think that the double-hung window was a modern, American invention of artistic atrociousness, and that the casement window was peculiarly English, having the sole right to artistic merit. As a matter of fact, the fashion in England for casement windows was an imported one from the Continent, which never reached certain farm sections of England. In fact, some years ago certain agricultural laborers refused to live in cottages fitted with casement windows which had been built by a district council. The Georgian revival, which had so much influence upon our early Colonial work, and which is also very much alive to-day in this country, brought into fashion again the traditional double-hung window.
Of course there is much to be said against the artistic appearance of the double-hung window as compared with the casement window, but when all is said and done we still go on using more double-hung windows than casement windows, for in the majority of cases they prove to be more substantial in resisting the heavy winds and storms of our climate. Every now and again we hear some prominent architect urging the use of casement windows, and we can find plenty of manufacturers of casement window hardware telling us to use them, and the makers of steel casement sash drum in our ears the practical qualities of steel sash, and one is led to wonder why they are not used more. But traditions are stronger than advertisements.
_Doors_
There is an ancient English expression, “put t’ duur i’ t’ hoile” (put the door in the hole), which comes down from the times when the door was not fastened by hinges and did not swing into place, but had to be lifted up and placed over the door opening. When the door was opened it leaned against two stakes driven into the ground, or some similar support. These old doors were very small, as compared with our modern doors, and were probably made of light wattle, for we read in some old rhymes of throwing doors and windows on the attacking enemy. Even when solid-wood doors were used they were made of one piece of wood. Doors made of a number of planks of wood fastened together by battens or ledges were a later type. It was noticed that these sagged when hung in position and cross bracing was found necessary. These old batten or ledged doors were swung on pivots of wood which rested in sockets bored into the lintel and the sill. These pivots were called harrs, and later were made of iron. The evolution of the hinge idea from the harr is shown in a series of drawings. For many years these great hinges became a very decorative part of the door, and great care was taken with their designing. Our modern butt is quite the opposite in its characteristics, for instead of being a feature upon the face of the door it is completely hidden, except the socket and pin.
In building the old ledged doors, the planks were set vertically and held together with battens through which were driven wooden pegs. The ends of these pegs were chamfered, and a curious mark of tradition can be noted in the later doors, which were fastened with iron pins that were also chamfered on the ends, like the wooden pins. Later construction of doors shows the use of weather-stripping over the vertical joints and also the use of various layers of planks, with their grains running at right angles in each alternate layer. The end timber upon which the harr was placed was thicker than the planking, and later the timber upon the opposite side was made heavier in order to strengthen the crude locks. With this change and the moving of the battens to the upper and lower edges of the door, and the introduction of weather-stripping over the cracks between planks, there was created the prototype for the modern panelled door. It was only a slight step from this to frame the styles, top and bottom rails, and lock rails around the panels between them.
Another type of door that was of traditional construction, and from the name of which we derive our word hatch, was the so-called “heck-door.” This door corresponds to the common “dutch-door,” which is familiar to us in Dutch Colonial houses. It was capable of being opened in two halves; the upper half could be swung in without the lower half. This type of door was invented from the necessity of protection against the sudden intrusion of strangers and also small animals, like pigs and hens.
The oldest method of fastening doors was to draw a long bar across them on the inside, very much like the bars which were used in Colonial houses in this country. A hole was cut into the jamb into which this bar could be run when locked, and in the opposite jamb was another hole into which it could be slid out of the way. The disadvantage of this type of door fastening was that it could only be fastened and unfastened from the inside. This led to other devices, such as a bolt that could be operated from the outside and a latch that could be lifted by a string, or a hole was cut in the door through which a small bit of metal could be passed that could be used as a lift for the latch.
To-day we think of locks and bolts and latches as distinct, but this was not so at the time they were being evolved. Our word lock was used in the sense of securing the door in any manner. But gradually, as, step by step, the various mechanisms for locking a door were developed, the word became limited in its meaning, although we sometimes use it to-day in the sense of closing the door.
XXI BUILDING THE SETTING FOR THE HOUSE
_Theoretical Features of Ground Arrangement_
There are five fundamentals which should be considered in finishing the grounds about the small house, for it must not be forgotten that the finest gem of domestic design will be lost unless it is placed in the right setting. These five principles are the production of an intimate relation between house and grounds, the formation of a natural frame about the house, the building of interesting approaches, the planting for seasonal effects, and the growing of interesting and beautiful vistas as viewed from the house.
1.—INTIMATE RELATION BETWEEN HOUSE AND GROUNDS
In considering this part of the problem, the designer must begin at the very outset to solve it. If the plot is level or capable of easy conversion into terraces, then the character of the house itself may be somewhat formal, symmetrical, and dignified; but it would be wrong to build a house of this kind upon a rolling and rollicking site. This latter kind of ground demands the picturesque type of house, and the roof lines should be planned to carry up some of the curves of the hillocks.
In all cases, however, it is generally recognized that the small house can best be tied into the surroundings by making it low, say a story and a half or one story, for one of two stories or even two and a half offers an ungainly elevation for an architectural composition. In rare instances have houses of this proportion been artistically finished. At any rate, the house should be kept as low as possible in the front, and the ugly, stilted foundations should not protrude above the level of the lawn. Nothing is so effective in producing a feeling of intimacy between house and grounds as to keep the level of the first floor only about six inches above the grade. This, of course, makes it difficult to light and ventilate the cellar, since any windows in the foundation-walls would have to open into areas. A compromise can be made by grading the lawn down at the back of the house, so that enough of the foundation can extend above the ground to permit of well-lighted cellar windows.
Another method by which an intimate connection between ground and house can be produced is in the blending of wall materials and foundation-stones. If the walls of the house are of stucco, and the lower part of them built of rubble-stone, then a gradual transition can be made from the stone to the stucco by carrying the stucco down over certain parts of the stone work, so that it flows into the mortar joints—like the waters of a lake flow into the little indentations of a rocky shore. This will eliminate any sharp horizontal line where the foundation-wall of stone ends and upper wall of stucco begins. As the stone has a natural intimacy with the soil, it easily makes the transition with the ground, and its effectiveness is very marked where the site is hilly and parts of the foundation are built upon little rocky juttings. This same easy transition can be made from stone foundation to brick wall. It is not possible to do it with the wooden wall, however.