Asher Benjamin's pattern books have been an important part of my research library for as long as I can remember. My copies of his 1827 and 1830 editions, reprinted by
Dover Publications, are dog eared from years of use.

I remember when his first book,
The Country Builder's Assistant - originally published in 1797, in a small size that would have fit easily into a carpenter's pocket - was finally reprinted in 1989, and my family members gleefully gave each other copies for Christmas.
Initially, I used his books to study the trends - what builders and owners were thinking in the early 1800s - that I saw on the sea coast north of Boston, where I lived and worked. But I knew of only 2 actual copies of his designs, one in New Hampshire and another in Maine.

Then in the 1990s I happened to tour the Oliver Phelps House in Suffield, Connecticut, a house in which Asher Benjamin actually worked. Soon after that I moved to western Vermont; here I see direct copies of plates from
The American Builder's Companion (first edition published in 1806), and
The Architect, or Practical House Carpentry (1830)
. I've since acquired two later volumes as well -
Practice of Architecture (1833) and
The Builder's Guide (1839).
Want to read more? The
wikipedia entry on Asher Benjamin has recently been updated and is a wonderful resource.
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