RUMFORDESQUE FIREPLACE

 

  This is a photo of the kitchen fireplace, woodbox, and bake oven in the Standish House, of which the original section (see previous posts) was built in 1690. The fireplace itself cannot be older than 1720. This is why and also why it was likely ahead of its time.

  When the house was originally built in 1690, it was a two-room cabin; located in what was then a nearly complete wilderness, it may have had a fireplace, but it certainly wasn't this one. Fireplaces at that time were likely crude things built of stone mortared with whatever was at hand. Brick was available only where there was clay and lime mortar where there was limestone, neither which exist in quantity around Preston, Connecticut. This is granite, basalt, gneiss and schist country. It is possible that mortar was available from the seacoast twelve miles away, where huge oyster beds sporting oysters the size of Volkswagens lined the bays and inlets. Their shells were often burned and slaked for lime.

  But the house was abandoned and reinvested, then raised and a cellar dug under it, when a proper fireplace was built. Which is the problem.

  Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, designed the Rumford Fireplace in the late 18^th century. Before his design, most fireplaces were deep rectangular things that used enormous amounts of wood, hardly heated a room, and often spit smoke back into the house. His design incorporated a taller, shallower firebox with angled sides and a nearly nonexistent rear wall. This allowed for smaller fires that radiated a lot more heat into the room.

  The firebox at the Standish House has a wider rear wall than an official Rumford fireplace, so it is not authentic (and so dubbed ('Rumfordesque’). And though I have no idea just how old it actually is (the stone hearth and structure in the cellar is said to be 1720 or thereabouts), if it is older than the 1790s, it predates Rumford’s design and utilizes nearly the same angles and height. I believe it is authentic to the 1720s, as the rest of the house was built around it and the lines haven't really changed.

   All I know is that a small fire really heats the room to a toasty degree. The dogs like it, anyway.

  
                            And that’s what really matters, isn’t it?

 

 

MY FIRST POST IN MONTHS

AND AN EXPLANANTION AS TO WHY

 

 

 

 

 

 

   This is the Standish House as of the day after I closed. I just HAD to remove the 1960s topiary; it didn't go.
   Actually, it did. Once Me and my Stihl were through.
   If you look closely, you can see the storm windows are open. This was taken in Late October. They are tightly shut now.
   This is why.

   I arrived with no water, heat, hot water, working kitchen, shower, or working toilet. It took me until just after Thanksgiving to resolve all of those issues, but I'm very comfy now, as are the dogs.

                                                    
                                                                        Puppies Happy in Front of the Fire

   I still have no internet to speak of, unless the stars are right. Tonight they are, but all weekend they were not. Alas, I will break down and get a landline (there's no phone, either, and no TeeVee) and pipe in DSL or Broadband or whatever ridiculously expensive type of soon-to-be-obsolete technology all of you are using at this time.
   So my best wishes to all of you until I get that hard wire, probably next week. All I can say is that it's nice to have the stars right for once. I'll have a nice post on that Rumford Fireplace of mine next time.
   Right now I'm going to post, because the internet around here is likely to crap out in the middle of wh

I SEEMA BE BUSY

Sorry for not posting in a while, and it might be a bit before I get to the next one. All those trips to southeastern Connecticut have paid off; I will be moving into my new house in three weeks. "New" is perhaps the wrong term here.

The Standish House, located in Preston, Connecticut (about four miles east of Norwich), was built as a two-room home with a dual central fireplace in 1690 by one of the sons of that famous Massachussett's Bay Colonist Myles Standish. Apparently his sons spread out across southern New England to seek their fortunes elsewhere, building small houses known locally as 'Standish Homesteads' throughout eastern Connecticut and across Rhode Island. This is the only one known to still be standing in Connecticut. It appears to have had an expansion around 1720 to achieve its present Cape Cod style shape (squarish footprint with a gable roof), and the small wing additions on the north and south were added at different times in the 20th century. The second story (such as it is) is floored with chestnut, which also underlays the heart pine on the first floor. Most doors are original to the 1720 expansion, and they measure all of 7/8" thick. The original hardware can be seen throughout the house.

Much will need to be done on the property, but I expect to enjoy every bit of the restoration. The timber-framed barn will be first; a new roof, putting in some sort of footers to support the verical timbers, and stripping the asphalt from the outside are good for starters. It also looks to be made of chestnut and heart pine. Probably why it's lived almost three hundred years. Nix that being first; first I will remove the goofy shutters, stupid shrubbery, and will build a picket fence.

I'll have to update my bio, I guess, as I'll be working for Early New England Restorations of Stonington/Pawcatuck. This last stint in Arkansas, which lasted eight years, has been enough. I'm ready for some cold weather.

So, I hear you ask, why did the Standish boys run off just when things were getting hot and heavy in Massachusetts? Were they witches (it WAS 1690, you know; and the height of the Salem Witch Trials was two years away)? I doubt it. New England is rife with stories of people running off to find more likeable accommodations elsewhere.

When I first moved to Connecticut in 1982, I delved deeply into its fascinating history with both hands and brain. I discovered that many towns of a common name are located close to one another, with that name changed slightly in neighboring towns. For instance, Cornwall is a stone's throw from North Cornwall, which is adjacent to Cornwall Hollow and West Cornwall, and all are north of Cornwall Bridge. Why so many Cornwalls? Simple. One town became too cloistered for the population, which splintered and splintered and splintered again because of arguments, economic conditions and other opportunities. But they stayed within shouting distance.

The settlement of New England went the same way. When the Puritans decided the Church of England was just to liberal for them, they skedaddled across the pond to America and settled around Boston and Salem. When those towns became too stuck-up for the more forward thinking people, those liberal thinkers jumped boats and sailed south until they found Narragansett Bay, and so founded the Providence Colony. When Providence seemed too conservative, some other folks sailed down the coast to find a better place, but even that short trip split the group into two. One settled at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River and founded the New Haven Colony and the other sailed up this big river they found coming from the north. These were the most liberal thinkers of all, and the colony they Founded, the Connecticut Colony, was and still is one of the most progressive cities in America today. Though some say the first town was Wethersfield and some say it's Windsor, the city known as Hartford is a s blue as they come.

THE CADDEN.

NORWICH CONNECTICUT

 

I like this storefront in the heart of Norwich’s historic downtown. It remains very close to original, with its wood panels and indented doorway. Even the door itself looks original. The transom windows remain; many times commercial transoms have been covered over with metal, giving a great storefront a black eye. Sure, the upper windows are likely replacements, but I like the signage. There’s something comforting about windows festooned with information about what goes on inside. I imagine the gallery folks below the BAIL BONDS sign cringe a bit when they see it, though. A little more subtle lettering and an archaic font would suit it better. But then jailbirds can’t be choosebirds I guess.

I’d personally like to see a more diverse color scheme; the two grayish blues are too alike for me. The magnificent pressed-steel cornice is the finest feature of the building, and should be painted in such a way as to stand out and say ‘Look at me!’ I can envision a three tiered color scheme on that, including the little wreaths painted to stand out more.

Apparently Cadden got around quite a bit in this burg, what with the Plaut-Cadden building I featured a few posts ago. I’m not sure just what makes this THE Cadden, though. It is decidedly older than the multi-storied Plaut-Cadden.

This one is also spelled with a period.

BANK

NORWICH CONNECTICUT

This is apparently no longer a bank, if the missing lettering is to be believed. It’s hard to read in my photo, but it looks to have been The Thames National Bank when I blow it up. The giant vault alarm must have made one hell of a noise when it went off, though by the look of the structure, only a meteor impact or direct hit with a cobalt bomb would scratch the thing. Banks used to be designed to reflect strength and permanence, but given the state of the economy and the financial world, they now often festoon their exteriors with mirrored windows. Or smoky glass. How appropriate.

I have no idea what the building is used for today. There is a tiny sign in the door’s window, but I can’t read it from here in Arkansaw.

CHRISTOPHER HUNTINGTON HOUSE GUTTER

NORWICHTOWN, CONNECTICUT

 

It’s not that this house is remarkable; in fact, for ancient Norwichtown, it’s rather austere. None of the classical Connecticut pediments I’ll feature in the next few posts; even the doorway seems to shrink back from itself. No scrollwork or multi-tiered cornices, the front doorway is straight, flat, and only different in that it has two narrow sidelites framing the door. More Federal-looking than Colonial. But it was built around 1720, so pay attention.

What caught my eye was the gutter.

Made from a couple of one-by-sixes (actually a misnomer; they are not one anything by six anythings at all) attached at a ninety-degree angle with triangular end caps, this is a gutter that reflects the past. It is quite authentic in its design.

New England was and still is rich in trees, so anything that could be made of wood, well, was. Metal gutters would have been accompanied by a tax, because smelting metal in the New World was illegal. So you bought it as sheet metal from a England and the supplier that paid enormous taxes on it, passed on the cost to you, and the Crown got the dough.

We had a little war because of this. Tea in Boston Harbor and all that. No taxation without representation. Power to the people. Off the pigs.

Sorry, I digressed.

But enterprising craftsmen (of which there were positively scads in Connecticut) put together water drainage systems like this one, though it is not original. Duh. Lined with a simple sheet of lead, it would easily keep the gathered water from the roof from disintegrating the side of your house, which was also built from wood.

This particular gutter is likely lined with galvanized steel or sheet copper, has one hell of a fall, and it does a fine job of keeping the siding and windows intact. As well as keeping the rain off your head. And it can be repaired as opposed to replaced. Keep the craftsmen employed and your home cared for by an individual that cares.

More on that in the next few posts.

COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

NORWICH, CONNECTICUT

Downtown Norwich is rife with great architecture. It positively OOZES cool buildings. Some date from colonial times.

 

Some are from more modern times.

 

Norwich has also suffered from what much of the industrial Northeast has experienced; changes in economic conditions. What started as a shipping center in the 18^th and 19^th centuries morphed into a center of specialty manufacturing by the turn of the 20^th century. The might and profit of the mills birthed many beautiful multi-storied commercial buildings in the hilly downtown, and place positively buzzed with commercial life.

Alas, as happened with the steel, furniture, and clothing businesses in other parts of the country, the expansion of overseas trade ended much of the manufacturing done by the local mills. Some mills have been converted to other uses, some sit empty. Their future is uncertain, but it is likely many will be put to other uses at some time.

It’s just too expensive to knock the damn things down; they’re all built like brick chickenhouses. Hopefully they’ll have a fabulous reuse.

               Abandoned Textile Mill, Taftville, Connecticut, a few miles from Norwich

And where there are successful mills, the commercial districts are fairly opulent. So it is with downtown Norwich. Sadly, though, many of the buildings sit idle, vacant, and unused. Great bones, few tenants. The Norwich Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit that advocates for the restoration and reuse of the commercial district structures, has a plethora of economic incentives and programs to help investors make profitable use of these buildings.

But there are a lot of them, and some owners are more responsible than others.

My featured building for this post is the Plaut-Cadden Building.

 

The storefront was boarded up when this picture was taken in September of 2012, and it likely still is. At five stories, it is of middling height for this town of 40,000 souls, but it has some absolutely wonderful features. I only wish I took better pictures of them.

I’m sure the building is unoccupied, and several aspects have been altered. I have no idea if the weathered wood window frames are original (probably) but the vertical planks above the awning are undoubtedly an addition. Either that, or they are the backing for a veneer long since gone, perhaps enameled sheet metal as in Young’s Block. The weathered condition of the window frames saddens me, but as all the window designs are uniform, I imagine they are original (or all replaced at the same time, which I doubt). The transoms are all pretty much uniform through the second and third floors, though on the second story they are divided and on the third they are not.

The horizontal brown stripe above the second story window is hardly decorative, but appears to be a large piece of steel that spans the larger windows below and carries the weight of the building above. I just wonder if it had another covering at an earlier time.

But it is the semi-rococo masonry above the third floor that..floors me. The interior detail is nearly Greek, with its squared designs, but the Egyptian seems to shine through as well. The whole thing, when viewed from a distance, lends itself to Morocco or Algiers.

 

Then the builders topped the whole thing with a magnificent molded cornice made from pressed sheet copper and sent me reeling.

See what there is in the city if you just look around? I wonder how many people walk by this building every day without noticing those elements. I nearly got run over just trying to photograph them.

Downtown Norwich is a treasure just waiting to be discovered. To be invested in. To be turned into a go-to destination. It reminds me of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, a town like no other. Built upon a steep mountainside, this healing-water city from the 1880s was built from local carved stone and baked brick, with each two-story building growing to five on the lower slope. It enjoyed a booming economy until the patent-medicine/healing waters craze of the early 20^th century faded. Then the buildings sat empty until groups of hippies came through in the 1960s and pretty much bought up the town. They opened artist’s studios and small restaurants. They dressed up the town with flowerbeds and made sure the word got out among the Hippie Elite. And they came. And they stayed.

Eureka Springs is now known worldwide as a cool, hip, fun destination.

All because of a few longhairs, some vision, and hard work.

I think Norwich, with its fine waterfront, great architecture, winding, hilly streets, and great location, could be a far cooler destination than Eureka Springs.

Go there. You’ll see.

JOSEPH CARPENTER STORE

NORWICHTOWN CONNECTICUT

 

Norwichtown is the oldest section of Norwich, Connecticut. Located on a high hill on the west side of town, it’s a living neighborhood with Colonial homes so authentic that you’d expect Myles Standish to come out one of the front doors. Indeed, the huge rectangular town  square, often referred to as a ‘parade ground’ in Connecticut towns, is surrounded by beautifully restored homes, many of which were taverns back in the goodle days.

One of my favorites is the Joseph Carpenter store, built around 1772. This gambrel-roofed beauty has the clapboard siding and vertical plank doors common to homes of that era, but the windows and their treatments are what caught my eye.

 

The side windows are quite typical of this type of house, with nine-over-nine lite double-hung sashes, but in front, the fifteen-lite single sashes are not double hung. Rather, they appear to be of the casement type, with sashes that swing inward on side hinges. It’s possible that they are fixed, but Yankees are a pretty practical lot, and ventilation would seem necessary. Just why one of the sashes is made as a twenty-lite, I have no idea.

This being a store, I imagine (correct me if I’m wrong, Norwichians) that the double entry gave ingress to a residence on one side and a commercial space on the other.

But it is the shutter treatments I like best.

 

Hinged horizontally, they appear to be original, or at least close to the age of the home. Built from nailed planks, the shutters seem sturdy enough to repel an Indian attack, though in 1772, there were few threats from Native Americans in this area. Perhaps because it was a store that the shutters were needed. There was a local war that erupted in Massachusetts in the latter half of the decade, and though I have no knowledge of the British invading Norwich, it was undoubtedly on the minds of the locals at the time.

The hardware that keeps the upper shutter open is definitely hand-forged. Likely right there in the neighborhood.

 

I’ve not seen anything like these shutters or the hardware anywhere else in New England, but I’ll wager they aren’t singular.

YOUNG’S BLOCK

NORWICH CONNECTICUT

Norwich, located in the eastern side of the state, is an ex-mill town at the confluence of the Shetucket, Quinebaug, and Yantic Rivers. The three rivers converge to form the Thames River (pronounced ‘thaymes’ by the locals), a beautiful, wide estuary with towering forested cliffs that run all of fifteen miles to the Atlantic Ocean.

 

The town is quite an architectural treasure, with winding streets that twist and climb the granite and schist hills above the river. The mills have long since been abandoned, though a few have been converted to other uses. But the downtown flourished as the mills prospered, and the buildings there still hold the past out at arm’s length for all to see. It’s worth a visit.

I’ll be featuring some of the best and worst of some of this architecture in some of the following posts.

I’m going to begin with a building that might be in Anytown, U.S.A.

 

Young’s Block is the name on the moniker stone, and I never did find out if Young had more of the block under his thumb or if it was just this building, but it caught my eye as soon as I saw it. I was touring the town for the first time, and became so captivated by the area I decided to move there. It hasn’t happened yet, but give it a few months.

The building looks like a small diner or restaurant or even more like a drugstore with a soda fountain. I like the operating clock (with the correct time, yet), the stainless steel trim around the enameled sheet steel edges and as rocket-jockey (rocky- jocket?) wings around the clock and at the angles. I especially like the modernist flat bricks at the parapet; all these together speak of late 1940s or 50s. I can see the bobby sox, poodle skirts and white leather sleeves on lettered jackets. I can smell the burgers and hot dogs, the yellow mustard, the Brylcreme. I can hear Chuck Berry, Perry Como, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The phone rings, and Murray, the owner, answers.

“Billy, ya maw sez ya gawta get home!”

The façade looks to be mostly original, though the doors look 1960s or 70s. A good look at the moved-over trim on the right side makes me think there were wood doors that did not make it through the years. I wonder about the foundation vents; what could they possibly be ventilating?

I like the retro streetlight (made in Mexico), the flowers (real petunias; how do they water them?), and the ‘chopped’ storefront, which gives the façade its retro charm. I also like that it’s a short-term employment office called “Labor Ready.” There is a place in our culture for these, and the fact that they advertise “Work today, paid today” makes me smile. The few times I worked at Manpower back in my pre-salad days, I had to wait two weeks for a check.

Apparently they also sell safety equipment. Good mix; day labor and safety equipment.

LOOM HOUSE

BUSHNELL FARM

OLD SAYBROOK, CONNECTICUT

I’m not sure if this is actually called a ‘loom house,’ but that’s what it was used for, pardon the dangling preposition. The closest outbuilding to the 1678 Bushnell Farm House, it has many features that tweak my brain nicely. I only wish that I’d taken more pictures from the outside. I think I was hot on listening to a program that had already started at the  Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation’s ‘Celebration of Barns’ seminar at the Farm a month ago, and I just forgot to go back to take the rest of the pics I should of.

The first picture you aren’t seeing is the crazily tilted chimney stack that curves like a windblown sapling. But it’s what’s inside that really makes me smile.

 

The first thing I noticed was that the chimney stack stops a short distance below the ridgepole; it’s supported by some stout blocks that sit upon a flying beam below. This isn’t a mistake or a retrofit, either. The proprietor of the Farm explained that the floor space in this particular building was taken up by a large loom and the surrounding workspace was occupied with other furnishings specific to spinning and working with wool and flax, both of which were produced at Bushnell. I know that was a run-on sentence, but like Humpty Dumpty said to Alice, “Who is to be master, you or the word?”

I have seen this abbreviated flue design before, usually in schoolhouses in Arkansas. Stovepipe was cheap, brickmasons were expensive. Anyway, the folks at Bushnell Farm needed the floor space way back in 1702 or thereabouts, when this building was constructed.

So a regular fireplace wasn’t an option. I’m sure there was some sort of stove. If you look carefully, you’ll see that the flue is stuffed with paper to keep debris, squirrels or bats from getting in. If you look even closer, you can see a bent piece of sheet metal below the flue opening to catch debris that might fall out of it. I imagine it wasn’t always stuffed with paper.

Also note the 90-degree angled brace at the bottom left of the beam; it's been carved from the joint of a tree and branch. Natural grain turns at a right angle and makes a stronger brace that something pieced together.

 

The flying beam itself is an interesting feature. Instead of horizontal ceiling joists that tie the walls together (and keep the rafters from pushing them apart), the beam supports angled timbers that, in turn, support the roof. How it helps to keep the walls together, I don’t know. The building has been standing for three hundred years, so I don’t think it’s much of an issue.

But it nonetheless brings out the archaeologist in me. While admiring the beautiful broadaxe marks on the squared timbers, I noticed that the rafters on one side do not match the rafters of the other side. The closest rafters are rounded, with no broadaxe hewing, and the far rafters are squared. Closer examination shows that the far rafters were cannibalized from another structure; note the purlin notches on the sides.

So how did this happen? I’m sure the building was constructed all at one time; was the roof of a different design due to repurposing the building? Was it originally a shed roof for a simple barn, then the Farm became more prosperous and so rebuilt the roof to accommodate a loom? Could there have been a fire that destroyed the original roof and so was rebuilt from second-use wood? Why don’t we have groceries delivered anymore, or get prizes for merely buying gas at certain stations? Cheap steak knives and glass tumblers and the like. Too young to remember those days, are you? You snip of a human, you.

Okay, scratch that last inquiry; inquiring minds don’t need to tax themselves that much.

My last Vestige from this particular property is of the Interior Finish of the End Walls.

 

Being a restorationist, I have seen a lot of lath. My spell Czech didn’t like the word ‘restorationist,’ so I will change my moniker to ‘restorationary.’

Damn. It didn’t like that, either.

But I believe in Humpty Dumpty’s Rule, so we will move on.

Lath is the term for wood strips (sometimes metal in 20^th century buildings) that are nailed to the studs and joists. The purpose of lath (not ‘lathe,’ which is a machine that spins wood for turning) is to give a structural base with open spaces upon which plaster is applied. Plaster, being a plastic mixture of slaked lime or gypsum, water, and sand, needs something rigid but full of spaces that can support it as well as allowing the plaster to ooze through and help it adhere. It’s all too complicated to explain here; I suggest you go back to 9^th grade physical science to get a grip on the principals involved.

I wanted to use the spelling ‘principles,’ but the Czech once again foiled me. I’ll Czech out the proper spelling later and amend it as needs arise.

HA! The Spell Czech was wrong. The word is 'priciples.' So there. Nyah.

Back to the present, which is already in progress, according to Firesign Theater.

Anyone who has tried to hang a picture in a house with plaster should know what lath is. If not, go to my OTHER blog www.oldhousedoctor.blogspot.com to learn about it.

I’ve never seen lath like this. If it is indeed lath. It might have BEEN lath that lost its plaster, or it might have been intended as a substance upon which future plaster would be applied. My guess tends towards the latter explanation.

What is unusual about it is that the oldest lath I’ve ever seen (and I must admit that the earliest building upon which I’ve worked is 1810) is split from larger pieces of wood using a froe or other bladed tool. Wood lath from the mid-1800s until they stopped using it (around 1930) is sawn into 1 ½” x 3/8” strips and nailed to the structure below with 3/8” spaces between the strips. The saw kerf marks on the wood can usually be seen when the plaster is removed.

But this! Oh, my God, what hast thou wrought?

This ‘lath’ (if that’s what it is) has been cut from full-sized logs. Some sawmill back in The Day had the capability and expertise to cut thin strips of not already-split or previously-sawn wood, but to take entire log sections and slice them into strips as thin as ¼”.

Then some craftsman from the past took the time, care, and effort (this is the really cool part) to use a chisel to split those thin sections along their respective grain lines at about 1 ½” spaces. The grain never split completely, mind you; fibers of the wood still held the sections of split wood together. But the result is the same as if the wood was cut and cut and cut again, then nailed to the wall. Stronger, in fact. It creates a structural backing using the natural grain of the wood to add strength to the wall while allowing spaces for the soft plaster to ooze through, making the bond that completes a rigid, flat interior wall surface. Which, it appears, was never applied. Or disintegrated long ago.

If you look carefully, you can see the spaces between the thinly cut log specimens; the split grain lines follow the natural curve of the tree trunk's grain.

I was and still am impressed. I have also learned something from this.

Use your brain to use as little energy and gain as much result as possible, and work with Nature’s gifts. She’s given us SO many.

Follow the Yankee Way. Be frugal, work hard, live well, and pass on what you know. You can’t fail.

WE can’t fail.

HANDMADE ATRIUM WINDOW

 BUSHNELL FARM

OLD SAYBROOK, CONNECTICUT

 

This little ‘bay’ window is more of an atrium than a bay (an atrium window is a bay, but a bay is not necessarily an atrium, so don’t pay any attention to that opening sentence), and it is certainly not original to the house, which dates from 1678. I’m sure the builders grew a lot of things, but plants inside were unlikely included in their cultivars.

Though it’s not original, it is a fine piece of craftsmanship. Just making the curved horizontal muntins seems a formidable task. I like the support brackets cut to fit the clapboards and the copper roof with a copper drip cap. It was built to last. The proprietor of the Farm said it was installed in the mid-1950s, so I doubt it’s a manufactured feature. Probably built by someone local. Yes, there used to be local craftsmen in your neighborhood. I’m about the only one left, I guess.

BUSHNELL FARM PRIVY

OLD SAYBROOK, CONNECTICUT

If you remember the last post, Rocky and Bullwinkle had just taken over the Colorado mountain within which lies the NORAD defense system.

“Bullwinkle, I TOLD you not to push that button!!”

“Well, geez, Rock, it was blinkin’ so red and pretty, I just HAD to do something!”

 

Here is a little Vestige that caught my attention two weekends ago at the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation’s “Celebration of Barns” at the 1638 Bushnell Farm at the mouth of the Connecticut River (see previous post).

The picture is of a simple privy; an outhouse is the most basic, yet one of the most important pieces of architecture on the property. ANY property.

 I mean, what would you do without it?

Well, here down in Arkansaw, we hold a terrible secret of our past in our hearts, and it has to do with privies. Or the lack thereof.

 

A LITTLE HISTORY

The southern rural lifestyle is well documented and just as well parodied, but the living-on-the-land-as-an-animal lifestyle is both apocryphal and truer than you want to know.

Arkansawyers (as well as other southern rural folk) don’t like to discuss hookworms. Be careful of bringing up this particular subject in Razorback Country; they’s a bit sensitive day-own here.

Hookworms are an intestinal parasite that are more disgusting than destructive, and they have an interesting and fun life-cycle. They start as eggs in your feces ((David Byrne asks “How did they get there?!” Wait, you’ll be unhappy you asked). Once shat out (can I say that?), they hang out in loose, warm soil (can you say southern Georgia or the Arkansas Delta?) until someone comes walking along without shoes. I won’t ask the last question in parentheses again. This, um, country person is looking for a place to drop a load. Pinch a loaf. Cut a stool.

Go back and listen to Cheech and Chong, for chrissakes.

THEY GOTTA MAKE A DOO-DOO!

But there is no privy! There is only that same stand of woods that the family has used for years, even though they continually move off to the left to avoid their, um, last leavings.

But it cannot be avoided. In three generations, they are treading on the shit they expelled decades ago. But that isn’t where the little worms are. They are in Last Week’s shit. And you just walked over it.

Welll, not you, but someone that lives that way. Unless the shoe fits. Or foo shits, in this case, acuz you ain’t got no shoes.

It’s not that these people are stupid. They know enough to be able to live well off the land, to tune 1954 Chevy pickups, to dig a new well by hand or skin a groundhog. You’ll be wishing one of these guys was your friend after The Big Collapse; they will live, and service professionals like you will die. Because they know how to dress a muskrat.

But I diverge, or something that sort of sounds like that, and that usually smells bad. Back to the country.

These people didn’t always dig huge deep holes and build a little house over it (SEE??! I TOLE you I’d come back to point!), and it wasn’t because they were lazy. Well, they were and are, but that’s because of the heat. It was because the land was so poor that these hillbillies (the better class refers to themselves as Mountain Williams, of course) had no permanent homes. Often tenant farmers or dirt farmers (buy it cheap, work it hard, leave after a few seasons), they moved along often. Moved is slow circles from their, um, movements, as well.

Hey, don't send letters. I come from a long line of dirt farmers from Northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee.

Here’s the disgusting part. Oh, you thought you’d already READ the disgusting part, did you? HaHaHaHAHAHA!

So the state of Arkansas was pretty much infected with hookworms from the get-go; it’s rough country with rough people, and they would walk through the dropping-grounds of yesterday with bare feet. The worm larvae would get onto their feet and enter their bodies by burrowing into their skin (I'm not making this up), following the bloodstream to the heart and lungs, then in a feat worthy of Houdini, would actually migrate to the pharynx (in the throat) to be swallowed into the alimentary canal. Taking up residence in the small intestine (in numbers), they suck blood, cause anemia, and make lots of little hookworm eggs. These are, as described elsewhere, expelled to become a neighbor to their mommas and uncles and brothers. A very successful career often follows for the whole family.

“Don’t Nora Jean look kinder pale an’ sickly, Clem? Whaddaya thank?”

“Oh, I dunno, CindyLou. She’s always looked that way. So do you, an’ me too. You seen the Sears catlog? I gotta go see a man about a dog..”

The saga continues.

I can say these things because I have lived in a mountainside cabin in Carroll County, Arkansas. So there.  Nyah.

Arkansawyers hate to even acknowledge hookworms, and often deny their existence within the state’s history, but it’s all true. Probably worse than I’m telling here. But we are supposedly hookwork-free now, as a state.

Well, some of us are. I know about ME. I haven’t walked in my own less-than-fresh shit for two, maybe three weeks now.

The privy in the picture is unlikely original, but it is old. The exterior sheathing is a 1 x 6 single-bead tongue-in-groove wood, likely longleaf pine, and by the paint layering, bottom-of-the-board deterioration, and exposed stone foundation, I’m guessing that it is likely quite a bit less than two hundred years old. But it may very well be in the same location as the original from 1678. Close to the house so the homeowner could get to it easily and quickly, even in the deep snows of the old days.

Hey, when ya gotta go, ya gotta go.

Hookworms be damned.

I'd love to dig the thing out. Outhouse pits are known to give up some great historic artifacts. No, it's safe and sanitary to dig them, as long as they weren't used recently.

Look for the little glass bay in the background left in the picture. It’ll be the Next Vestige.

BUSHNELL FARM

OLD SAYBROOK, CONNECTICUT

 

The Bushnell farm main house was built in 1678 near Old Saybrook, a town at the mouth of the Connecticut River on the Long Island Sound. It was the location for The Celebration of Barns, a weekend of programs and seminars put on by the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation in June of 2013. I was lucky enough to attend at the invitation of Peter Gulick of Gulick and Spradlin Renovation Contractors in Madison. Peter had the ability to get us a self-guided tour of the house an hour before it opened, so we two historic restoration guys wandered the house like a couple of kids in a candy store.

The building is so intact to its date of construction that it hurts; the steep stairway to the second floor, the enormous fireplace in the main parlor (almost ten feet across) and the smaller one on the opposite side, the paneling and furnishings of the period made me feel like I’d actually stepped back in time.

 

The house also has some interesting Vestiges that show early changes. In the second floor hallway, we found that the chimney stack had a stone staircase built into it after the chimney was built. I have no evidence as to the date of its construction, but it looks fairly recent as judged by the mortar and manner of stonecutting. It is possible that it originally had a ships’ ladder-type of wood stairs, or even an actual ladder. Or the stone staircase may be hundreds of years old.

 

But what piqued my interest most was what I found when I poked my head through the opening into the attic. Apparently the roof has gone through a major change, probably within the first fifty years of its existence. The 6 x 6 roof rafters on the front of the house (to the right in the picture) are undoubtedly original, but the rafters on the opposite side of the ridgepole have been cut off and replaced by others of similar size. These were set at a less steep angle and so enlarged the living space below; the original gable rafter at the end of the roof still remains, complete with its purlin notches. I especially like the roof sheathing above the horizontal purlins; either ancient pine or chestnut (probably the latter), many are wider than 18”.

This roof adjustment seemed to enlarge the space below only slightly; I would think so much trouble to rebuild the roof would be worth much more space gained, but the old Yankees had their reasons for everything they did, frugal as the results may be.

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I’ll be featuring a few other details from the farm buildings at Bushnell, which was run as a self-sufficient farm from 1678 through the last century.

FACADES

BLYTHEVILLE ARKANSAS

  

   These two storefronts, probably built between 1900 and 1930, are faced with concrete formed to look like stone. Often referred to as ‘stamped,’ it is easily identified from real cut stone by the repetition of the patterns. Despite the two being painted differently, the “A” pattern of cut stone is visible above both sets of windows, though the green side is more obvious.

 

   This pair of storefronts has been treated differently by paint; one has many layers peeling off and the other has one thinner layer with better adhesion.

  

   It appears that the right hand building shares only half of the cobblestone pattern on one block.

 

Tom Little would be proud that his moniker is still there; using both names on a moniker stone is quite unusual.

  

Also unusual is to build a moniker from raised brick.

MANY-GABLED HOUSE

MT. CARMEL, SOUTH CAROLINA

 

I don't know when this thing was built; probably 1880 to 1890. It has gone through many changes in the succeeding years, and I'm going to blather about some of them.

The lines of the house appear to be original, with the numerous gables topped with five-vee metal roofing pointing to the sky on three sides. I doubt that the metal was the original roof; most homes this age and style had either cedar shakes or standing-seam terne metal roofs. I imagine the roof is less than sixty years old.

I especially like the huge front gable, which is supported by four bark-stripped pine tree trunks. The front windows in the gable suggest a large room up there, but the lack of dormers would make this east-facing window bank ineffective anywhere but directly in back of them. There is a tiny triangular vent on the south side, though; undoubtedly to keep the attic-dwelling children from asphyxiating.

I believe the tree-columns and porch are replacements of a more substantial tongue-in-groove deck and turned-column porch that disintegrated somewhere in the dim past; porches are the first architecture to suffer in old houses. The rear window on the south side is also a likely replacement, as it has nine-over-nine lites while the remainder are four-over-fours.

Keeping with Southern tradition, however, are the ubiquitous deepfreeze on the porch and asphalt roll that pretends to be stone as an exterior finish. I really like the lines of the house, though, especially the huge windows so close to the floor.

The front door is rather Craftsmanesque, with its three vertical lites. It is possible that the entire structure was cobbled together from other structures since demolished.

INTERESTING TEXTURES

BOTH LITHIC AND IN MASONRY

Atoka sandstone Morrilton Arkansas

Worn brick pavers Fort Smith Arkansas

 

Crack in brick veneer near Magazine Arkansas

 

Limestone and flat mortar joints Hardy Arkansas

 

Sandblasted brick with new mortar Paragould Arkansas

 

Stone veneer with raised mortar Anderson South Carolina

 

Weathered pegmatite near Anderson South Carolina