The feed-back from my post on the regulating lines of Lorenzo has been considerable. So I am putting forward for your consideration what I know about geometry and pre-Industrial Revolution design. Mainly:
Regulating lines are not mystical or mythical. They are not magic.They are simply geometry applied to design and construction.
They began as an accurate way to measure and layout design when people had only simple tools: a point, a line, and something to mark with. The line could have been string, a rope, a chain. The marker could have been chalk, charcoal, a stylus on wax or wet clay.
Find some wet sand, a beach perhaps. Make a knot in a length of string. Tie a stick to the other end. Use your thumb on the knot to hold the end of the string on the sand. With your other hand pull the string taut and trace an arc in the sand with the stick. You have begun to use geometry to design.
Geometry can be read by 'illiterate' people, or rather: People can be literate in geometry without knowing numbers or letters. It is a separate language which, like music, does not need translation.
I will list the sources I know of in art and architecture. I hope there is more I just haven't found, yet.
Interesting - the place to buy a compass these days is in a quilting shop.
I wanted a good one, not the flimsy kind I had in elementary school. I wanted to see and touch it, so buying it on-line was not an option. I am still looking for a bigger one.
So, now I am playing! This morning I added circles to the sketch of Lorenzo.
The results are interesting. The radius for the arc of the fan light over the door has its center in the center of the door. The circle encloses the entry as it did for the 1795 entrance I just rebuilt.
The same circle fits the curve over the windows that unites the pilasters. The ellipse is the same curve as the fanlight coming back upon itself.
I know I like this. It is so simple, so straightforward: no wonder the house feels so right! The elements reinforce the important places. The parts speaks to each other, they're related.
It's also how architects and contractors on the job actually work. Imagine the mason thinking about the arch he needs to build over the door. He makes a wood frame to set in the opening so he can lay up the bricks from one side to the other. (Once the bricks are mortared in place the frame is removed.) Then he needs to span the spaces above, which happen to be the same width. So, use the same frame - obvious!
In 1800, masons did not have stone lintels to use over door and window openings. The brick arch spanned the distance. Here the arch transferred the roof load to the brick pilasters, leaving much less weight to be carried over the windows - structurally a smart idea. The arch, which had to be there, was not hidden. It generated the graceful design that still resonated today - art and science intertwined.
I also know I am working with a drawing based on a photograph and the scale is about 1 inch= 10 feet. Lots of margin for error. Still, it does please me.
The back cover of the brochure for Lorenzo, shows this picture accompanied by a good discussion of Vitruvius and his principles.
Unfortunately no one signed the article. I would like to discuss the ideas, especially 'regulating lines', with the author, but I haven't yet found a way. So I am posting this here.
I don't think the star shows the regulating lines used to design the house. The star is not regular in shape. Shutters like the ones on the house in the photograph were not in use until about 20 years after the house was built, so those points are not important elements of the design. The pediment was also added later.
My sketch shows the basic elements of the original house: the shape of the facade, the pilasters which sit on brick pedestals that are part of the foundation, the arches which join the pilasters, the door with its sidelights and fan. The windows sit quietly between the columns.
Here are the regulating lines - superimposed in red - that I think were probably used to determine the proportion, rhythm, and details of the house. These lines were easily drawn with a compass ( or dividers), one of the tools we know house wrights owned in the early 1800's. The center block of the house is a square. The width of the wings on each side is determined by the diagonal of the square used as a radius. The three bays in the center box are also the same width as the wings, and are delineated by the pilasters. The importance of the pilasters is emphasized by the pedestals in the foundation wall, the arches which join them, and the placement of the posts topped by urns in the roof balustrade. Curves, circles, ellipses draw the eye: here to the 5 bays, the door.
The height of the entrance is determined by the center of the square. When the pediment was added, its height was determined by extending the arc of the diagonal. Its ellipse is the same curve as the fan light. Pretty simple: each piece is determined by the whole. The curves reinforce the concept.
I played with the arch over the windows. Hmmm. It was a structurally sound way to finish the brick pilasters and create a frieze. It emphasizes the bays and formal composition. But the curve? The photograph is too small to figure out where the radius of that arc originates.
Lorenzo was open and quiet when I stopped by in September. That was good. I wanted to look again at the kitchen fireplace and see if it really did have Rumford boilers. The tour guides were gracious, welcoming, and as curious as I was. One had given me the tour last year. It was fun to continue our conversation as we investigated.
The Lorenzo kitchen fireplace has brick work to the right of the firebox itself with holes for pots to sit in, and openings below where coals could be set under the pots. The flue above the pots belongs to the beehive oven. There is none behind the boilers as Rumford suggests. The system is built very close to the floor, not at 'counter height' as shown in the drawings in Asher Benjamin's pattern book.
The fireplace itself now serves as the alcove for a cook stove. It's been bricked in and is covered up.
Of course, this just leads to more questions: Did John Lincklaen know of Rumford's writings? If not, why are the boilers there? What instructions did he give to his masons? How well did the system work? Did other homeowners around Lorenzo copy this fireplace?
I find I am as interested in the spread of knowledge as in the use of new technology.
A Rumford Roaster is a combined stove and oven, built out of brick with iron inserts. It was invented in about 1800 by Count Rumford (born American Benjamin Thompson in Woburn MA, 1753). Rumford worked for many years in Bavaria (where he was named "Count of the Holy Roman Empire" and thus picked up his trade name) and his design was most likely inspired by the German masonry stoves he saw there. German immigrants to the United States also built masonry stove here - you can see one in the German exhibit of the Frontier Culture Museum, in Staunton, VA.
Recently I was at Lorenzo (built in 1807), an estate on the end of Lake Cazenovia. The estate is a NY Historic Site, and the house has what I think is a Rumford Roaster in its kitchen. The owner of Lorenzo, John Lincklaen, was an agent for the Holland Land Company, and traveled back and forth to the Continent on business. Count Rumford had lived in England and France - where he was well known as a scientist and inventor - and his stoves, fireplaces and roasters were well received in England. So perhaps Lincklaen had seen one in his travels, and brought the idea back home to Lorenzo.
But the only other Rumford Roaster I have seen is in Lynnfield, Massachusetts (it looks just like this picture). The Lorenzo kitchen fireplace has the same lower holes for pots and flues, but I'm not sure the roaster on the side is there.
This got me thinking - why aren't there more Rumford stoves like this? Rumford fireplaces were widely built from the late 1790's until 1840, when cast-iron stoves became available. The fireplaces of many homes were retrofitted with the new Rumford shape because it threw heat and drafted so much better than the earlier fireboxes. So why didn't the Roaster enjoy similar success? Perhaps because it wasn't just a matter of an easy retrofit, but would have entailed a reconstruction of the kitchen fireplace?
Rumford's work was published in the States in 1804. In 1811, Asher Benjamin, author of one of the most popular pattern books of its time, devoted 2 plates to a description of the Roaster in his Builder's Companion, so people had to be aware of the concept. Even though the cast iron fittings (the round object in the etching) for the roaster were not cheap, the masonry stove - with holes to set pots in, fire boxes below, and a flue connecting them to the rear (the rectangles on the right side in the illustration) - would have been pretty easy to construct. But I have read of only a few Rumford stoves, and they're in grand houses: Gore Place in Waltham, MA, the Rundlet-May House in Portsmouth, NH. In all the years I've been working on old houses, I've only come across two. Are there more?
Maybe they are hidden in plain sight, like the one at Lorenzo - there, but unrecognized. Please, let me know if you see one!
Note: Both Gore Place and the Rundlet-May House are now museums open to the public in season.
