Luykas Van Alen House, 1737, Kinderhook, NY, Part 4 of 4

In January and February, 2012, I wrote about the geometry of the Luykas Van Alen House.
The daisy wheel of circle geometry fit the plan and elevations - mostly. The right hand side didn't work. Or rather, I didn't see a consistent geometry.
To see the earlier posts, search using 'Van Alen'. 

Since then I have toured the house twice.

Once arriving early, I had a private  tour with a knowledgeable docent. After the tour she handed me a 2" thick report on the house and left me happily engaged as she gave the next tour.

The house has been measured at least 2 more times since the HABS  documentation in 1934, and the field notes of Gerald Watland and MC Hopping in 1958. Each time the chimney configuration  on the north end of the house - the right end in the drawings - is slightly different. Recently the exterior chimney visible in the field notes has been removed along with the English fireplace.
The drawing here is from Watland and Hopping's field notes reproduced in John Steven's Dutch Vernacular Architecture in North  America, 1640-1830.
Note that it shows a traditional Dutch fireplace whereas the HABS drawing shows the later, remodeled English fireplace.

 Click on the drawings to enlarge them.

So.
Where might the original wall have been?

I have 2 suggestions. Both are shown on the second drawing.
1) The circle geometry - shown in red - used for the first wing (see Part 1) if rotated 90* could have been used to determine the north foundation wall before the firebox was rebuilt.
2) A 3-4-5 triangle - shown in green - might also have been used. It fits quite well.


The family history says the north wing was added or rebuilt to be living space when the son and his family joined the father. If the foundation was already here, as shed space, then the fireplace and flue would have been added to the existing masonry.
If the wing dates from the arrival of the son, the questions are: How did the builder make it square? How did he fix the proportions when the left wing was already there? To use the same circle geometry he would have had to set the radius. He could have done that by locating the center of the circle from the corners of the existing foundation. The length of that wall is the radius.
Or he could have relied on the 3-4-5 triangle to get his corners square.

Once the foundation is in place the next step is the first floor framing.
Here is the geometry:
Shown in red: The circles based on the interior width of the house determine the wall between the hall and the parlor, the north wall and the location of the floor beam in the hall.  The center lines -'a' and 'c' - locate the wall between the left and right wings and the wall at the parlor. The intersections - 'b' and 'd' - locate the hall floor beam and the edge of the exterior wall.
Shown in green: -The parlor needed closer framing. The space, a 3-4-5 rectangle, is divided in 4 parts which determine the beam locations - 'e' .
.

Finally the window placement:

Here the 3-4-5 triangle determines the size of the space, the location of the windows and door, maybe even the depth of the side walls of the English hearth. That may be later. If so not a valid dimension. Here the red lines show the 3-4-5 triangles, the green: a right triangle (half a square). The dotted black line is the center line through the wing.

The Dutch House at Bucksteep Manor by Laurie Smith

 Laurie Smith's book, The Dutch House at Bucksteep Manor, A Geometric Design and 18th Century Hand Tool Workshop covers the workshop he gave in Massachusetts in 2009 for the Timber Framers Guild.  Laurie Smith is a timber framer, historian, and researcher of the use of geometric design in medieval England.
His workshop with Jack Sobon brought together "geometrical design methods and the use of 18th century hand tool techniques for the major timbers". (quote from the foreword of his book, p.iv)

Laurie Smith begins with analysis of the geometry used to design and frame 6 colonial Dutch houses in the Hudson River valley of New York. That understanding, based on measured drawings, became the basis for the frame built at the workshop.

Following the workshop Laurie Smith spoke at TFG's Eastern Conference in Saratoga Springs, NY. The frame of the Dutch house had been erected in the hotel auditorium, but Laurie did not refer directly to it, the course, or the research he had done to prepare. Instead he spoke about his work in England and Wales. It was fascinating.

I attended the conference specifically for his talk as I had read his articles in Timber Framing, the TFG  journal. Later we began to correspond by e-mail. Our latest conversations have been about the Old First Church and the Luykas Van Alen House, both of which I have written about in this blog.

The drawings in the book of the regulating lines, the circle geometry of the 6 houses are clear and beautiful. For me they are a tutorial.
The measured drawings are also a gift. I am very familiar with colonial houses in eastern New England where I spent most of my life. I do not know as well the Dutch framing used in these 6 houses. It is similar to what I see in the part of the Hudson River watershed where I live today. Drawings such as these are not easy to come by, so I am reading them carefully. My thanks to Jack Sobon for the documentation.

For more information, and some pictures, about Laurie Smith and his work see:
http://www.timberframersguild.org/confs/confeast2011/GEOMETRICAL%20DESIGN%20WEEKEND%202011-A4.pdf

Regulating Lines - at least 3 geometries

This fall and winter I read David Leviatin's articles in Timber Framing, The Journal of the Timber Framers Guild. He beautifully describes a 'regulating line technique' he has documented in England in East Anglia. I got out my atlas to be sure of the location of East Anglia where Leviatin worked with the line technique. No more than 100 miles away across the North Sea are the Netherlands. Did the men who used these lines share their knowledge with the joiners in Holland and vice versa? Did those ideas influence the men who built the Van Alen house in 1737 in Kinderhook, NY?

Today I know of 3 regulating systems:

1) The Daisy Wheel, circle geometry researched by Laurie Smith in Wales and England.

2) The use of the Golden Section as used in New England pre-1850 and later advocated by Jay Hamlin and Le Corbusier

3) The 'regulating line technique' described by David Leviatin in Timber Framing.

However, here is Asher Benjamin in his 1797 pattern book, The Country Builder's Assistant, containing A Collection of New Designs of Carpentry and Architecture Which Will Be Particularly Useful to Country Workmen in General. (his spelling and punctuation)

"To proportion Architraves to doors, Windows, &c. divide the width of your Door or Window, into seven or eight parts, and give one to the width of the Architrave : Divide that into the same number of parts, as are contained in the Architrave you make use of, if a Frieze or Cornice to the Door, give the Frieze equal to the width of the Architrave ; or it may be one forth or one third wider, the Cornice four fifths or five sixths of the Architrave."

An architrave is the header above the door supported by the posts on each side. It supports the frieze. The frieze is underneath the cornice. My post: "Regulating Lines, Asher Benjamin" includes a picture of Benjamin's Plate XVIII. It shows a fireplace with the architrave and cornice and the division into parts.

I find that the systems we know of were fluid, changing not only by new challenges and inventive master craftsmen, but by cross fertilization of ideas that came inevitably as people all over Europe met each other and worked together.

David Leviatin, "The Lordship Barn and Regulating Line Technique", Timber Framing, The Journal of the Timber Framers Guild, p. 4-7, Number 101, September 2011, and

"Topics, Scribe Rule, Square Rule, Democracy and CNC", p. 2-7, Number 102, December 2011.

Luykas Van Alen House, Part 3 of 4

Here are the end elevations of the Van Alen House, c.1737. The left view is of the end of the original house, the right of the renovated barn which is newer. If you refer to the foundation drawing in the last post you will note that the original house has jamless -Dutch - fireplaces, while the remodeled space has an English fireplace in the basement with jams. That would date it about 20 years later.

Here the circles define the finished dimensions of the brick wall, the point where the roof begins, the height of the ridge and the width of the chimney. The use of geometry appears to determine the design of the new wing, not its framing - a change possibly brought on by contact with the builder's English neighbors.

The circles laid over the south elevation of the original house determine where the roof sits on the walls, the height at which the ridge is located - information needed for construction.

These are interesting pictures. But how would these circles have been actually used for construction and design?

Here are some preliminary thoughts.

The circle can easily be scribed on the ground, for layout as in the foundation.

Wood bents - posts and beams - would have been cut and assembled on the ground, marked -'scribed' - and then taken apart, moved to the site and reassembled.

The original house has a wood frame enclosed by a brick skin. The wing appears to have corner posts. The rest of the wood frame is not clear. Most likely the brick walls cover a wood frame. Perhaps one house-wright/mason framed the house and another, the wing.

Brick walls are laid only once. Handmade brick probably was not always true to size in 1737. The mortar would even out the discrepancies in the coursing if the mason knew how much to apply. If a dimension were constant - as in the distance from one point to the next on a circle array - a pole that length could be used as a template. The distance from the center of the foundation to the edge of the first floor (one length of the hexagon inscribed in the circle) would be easy to establish with a rope, chain, or pole. That pole could then be used much as is a story pole today. If the pole were mislaid, the dimension could easily be re-determined.

Drawings:1934, HABS, Adam Van Alen House, Kinderhook, NY, E. J. Potter, delineator

Luykas Van Alen House, Part 2 of 4

In the summer, when this house is open to the public I will check all this in person and take a good picture to post here. However, in the meantime, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Alen_House has an excellent photograph of the main house and the wing.

The Van Alen House is a simple home, built on the Hudson River by Dutch immigrants in 1737. Its character is not applied; it comes from its material - brick. The brick pattern, Dutch cross bond, ties the brick courses together. The voussoirs are the traditional way to bridge an opening. The saw tooth brick pattern - tumblings - at the edge of the gable allowed the bricks to be turned for a smooth edge.

Its grace comes from its shape and the rhythm created by the doors and windows. I think it is possible that both were a byproduct of how the house was built. Not that the builder and owners didn't see and enjoy what they built, but:

I think the builders here used geometry for construction, not for design parameters.

The circle defines the rectangle. It can be used without dimensions to confirm that the angles laid out are true. So: here is the foundation, laid out within the circle.

It is the inside of the foundation that needs to be true. The stone would have been set with a plumb line on the inner side of the wall. The outer side would have been a buttress wall – sloping down into the ground – wider at the bottom than the top. It would have been covered with fill taken from the foundation hole.

The circle does not seem to fit when the outside dimensions are used. The right wing which was originally a barn does not fit the geometry.

I've done some work on the elevations which also use circles to determine structural dimensions. I will post that next. I am well aware that when I have recorded and studied 20 more, 40 more, houses I may see this in new light.

1934, HABS, Adam Van Alen House, Kinderhook, NY, E. J. Potter, delineator

Luykas Van Alen House, 1737, Kinderhook, NY, Part 1 of 4

The newsletter of The Society for the Preservation of Hudson Valley Vernacular Architecture arrived this week,Vol. 14, No. 10-12. Walter Richard Wheeler described the documentation before the Luykas Van Alen House in Kinderhook, NY, was restored.

Here is a partial view of the HABS drawing reproduced in the newsletter.

(1934, HABS, Adam Van Alen House, Kinderhook, NY, E. J. Potter, delineator. Please see the foot note for explanations and caveats.)

This morning I took out my compass to see what I could learn about the design of the house.

I used the HABS 1934 floor plan for my base drawing. As this house was built by people of Dutch descent who would have known Dutch framing systems from the Continent (NOT England) I was uncertain about what I would find. I looked first at the main house, the 2 rooms with fireplaces on the left. The floor plan fits within the circle.

Then I looked at the wing - the right side beyond the stair. It is thought to be a little later, perhaps beginning as a barn. Here the layout is more complex: (A) is the arc from the length of the wing. It intersects the continuing length of the house at the location of the partition. (B) is the arc of the width of the house and wing. Its length seems to determine the placement of a beam beside the stair. Its diagonal (C) may determine the location of the door and steps into the room on the end (the north room, on the right in the drawing). One would enter the room on the corner of its square, the room itself is the Golden Section.

Footnote: I also found the beams to be located at points determined by circle geometry. However:

The drawing I am using is very small, About 10 ft = 1 inch. As a architect I consider this to be 'schematic' - definitely too small for construction. The elevations in John Stevens' book are only about 1"=20', much too small to be able to identify a relationship between the plan geoemtry and the elevations. The next step is to print out the HABS drawings which are available on-line.

I am also thinking about how the circles were actually used. The builders might have drawn the first circle on the ground where they intended to build. Or maybe not.

2/3/2-12: I am not really comfortable with this analysis. I have decided not to delete it until I have better understanding. But read it with skepticism!

HABS: Historic American Buildings Survey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Alen_House is an excellent introduction to the house. It includes a photograph which shows the main house and the wing.

The best book on Dutch 'Colonial' construction is Dutch Vernacular Architecture in North America, 1640-1830, John R. Stevens, HVVA, NY, 2005
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