Why an early 19th C. architect matters

I've already quoted Asher Benjamin on the difference between the shadow cast by a curve and that cast by an ellipse. He also spent several pages talking about how to combine different sizes and profiles (what a moulding looks like from the side). Here's a brief excerpt: " ...whenever the profile is considerable, or much complicated, ...(it should) be accompanied with one, or more, other principle members; in form and dimensions, calculated to attract the eye; create momentary pauses; and assist in the perception of the beholder." He continues with very specific examples. He is very wordy!

Moldings cover joints, allow buildings to move in the weather without leaking, are a way of fitting pieces together neatly. They give proportion, scale and pattern to spaces and shapes, and by emphasizing a part of the structure, direct our attention.

As far as I can remember, no one ever mentioned those ideas in school. Today I am surprised, but then I didn't know what I was missing. I did not expect to be an architect who took care of old buildings. 'Molding' was not even a word in the lexicon. In the 1960s, we were expected to express the structure of the building by showing it - I don't remember anyone in architecture school, or in my undergraduate architectural history classes discussing how to create ourselves what we saw (except by copying). We loved wonderful buildings, but we did not practice using pattern, proportion, massing, rhythm, symmetry or balance. Those ideas were not in our design tool box.

an update on the possible Rumford fireplace at Lorenzo

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.

Geometry, Taught in 6 Plates

For years I passed over the plates at the front Asher Benjamin's books. At the time, I only wanted to see his buildings, and had no idea why he included plates on geometry and molding profiles.
Now I study them.

The first 5 plates in The American Builder's Companion are instructions on basic geometry because many of his readers were "untaught." Many young men left apprenticeships to seek their fortunes, move west.They still needed to build. Benjamin provided their geometry course.


He begins:

A point is that which has position, but no magnitude nor dimension; neither length, breadth, nor thickness.

Here is Plate 2, the one we might recognize as useful in design. The Figures 3, 4, and 5 describe how to layout perpendicular lines, Figure 12 scribes a square.

By Plate 4 , Figure 3, he is describing "How to find the raking moldings for a pediment" - a semester of academic learning in 6 pages!

It's not just Asher Benjamin who cares about teaching geometry. Peter Nicholson's The Carpenter's New Guide, which ran 13 editions in Britain and the States from 1792 to 1857, spends 126 pages describing what he calls Practical Geometry. He begins with "1. A Point has position but not magnitude." (He's less flowery than Benjamin).

Neither of these pattern-book authors wanted their ideas to only be copied - they wanted their readers to possess the intellectual tools to adapt these designs to their own situations.

Plate 2 above comes from the Dover Publications 1969 reprint of The American Builder's Companion, 6th Edition, published in 1827,

Interlaced, Paired Ribbons: Guiloche

This is the door of the Hiland Knapp House in N. Bennington, VT.




The drawing below of guiloche (paired ribbons flowing in interlaced curves around a series of voids, usually circular) is half of Plate LII from The Architect, or Practical House Carpenter, 1830, by Asher Benjamin.









This close-up - of the frieze below the transom - shows almost the same guiloche on the door as is in the middle drawing:






But the pattern on the door is not an exact copy, and for a good reason. A 'running' pattern (like the one in the drawing) does not have a beginning or an end. But a front door is the visual focus of a house; it's not on its way to someplace because it is the place.

But, adding a curvy piece above the door emphasizes the whole entrance nicely while complimenting the Ionic columns. So what's a builder to do? A simple answer might be to put one circle of the guiloche smack-dab in the center above the door. But it's still a 'running braid': visually it doesn't stand still, it 'runs'.

The builder of this house came up with an admirable solution: the pattern starts from both sides, so that the ribbons meet in the middle, in an open circle. Now your eye traces the pattern to the circle centered above the door - and stops. Voila!

(The design makes me smile.)

Copying and Plagarism

Over the past few months, I've been reading other people's writing and research on Asher Benjamin. One such scholar, architectural historian Abbot Lowell Cummings, has reviewed all the earlier pattern books (mainly English) that Benjamin copied. Yes, just copied - plate after plate. It turns out that Benjamin made direct copies from what can be found in earlier pattern books, most of them published in England. And at the time, no one seems to have said, "Hey! This is plagiarism!"

I find this interesting in light of conversations I've had about my own work and ownership of intellectual property. When I, an architect who works on old houses, design a new wing, I pay a huge amount of attention to how the existing house was designed. I am mining the existing house for visual knowledge that will help my wing compliment what's there. Sometimes I just plain copy.

But who owns the design that I copied? The original building may not have had an architect, so could it be the property of the carpenter, or the owner? Does it belong to me, because I adapted it? And should anyone even own it at all?

I'm pretty sure Asher Benjamin wasn't deliberately stealing the intellectual property of his predecessors - I doubt people even thought in those terms 200 years ago. I do think he really liked the designs he put in his first books, and he wanted to share what he saw. His own writing - like his paragraphs about light and shadow on mouldings - are so genuine and earnest, that I can imagine Benjamin choosing the plates for his book with the same passion.

So I'm glad no one slapped a lawsuit on him!

How Long Is Your Cubit?

I've found another reason for Asher Benjamin's geometry lessons and the proportion diagrams on his plates.

It turns out that in 1800, the various and different measuring systems used in the western world were quite divergent. A cubit seems to have been standard measured: from your outstretched middle finger to your elbow (about 18"). But a yard might be from your finger to your nose, (36") or to your near or opposite shoulder, (30", and 42" respectively).

I think this is great, since I have been measuring with body dimensions for years - using my own body to discretely measure an interesting space without drawing attention to myself by whipping out a tape measure, or helping a client to tell me how big is 'big' by stretching out both arms and saying, "This big?"

In 1793, Napoleon tried to create a standard, a metric system, with some success. And in 1824, the English made a standard yard, also with some success. The process took a good 50 years to take hold, and today we still have lots of regional variations, not to speak of the gulf between inches and centimeters.

Here in the States people measured cloth, grain, lumber using the system they had learned in the 'old country'. A Pennsylvania carpenter who repairs 18th century houses has told me he can tell a house built by a German from one built by a Quaker by its dimensioning.

Measuring - Proportions

How did carpenters measure in 1797?
What does Asher Benjamin assume his readers know when he writes his first pattern book?

Instructions today for building a simple bookcase  - for example - assumes the carpenter will use  a tape measure and a steel carpenter's square.
By comparison, in 1797, a carpenter had a square and perhaps a folding rule.
 He also had dividers and a compass. He used both to determine dimensions.


 Here are Asher Benjamin's  instructions for the moldings around a door (at the end of the descriptions for Plate 1).  Click the picture  to enlarge it - for easier reading!

He gives no dimensions, just ratios:  'seven or eight parts',  'one fourth or one third wide'.
The reader would have used his compass and dividers to  layout the geometry, to divide a door or window width into  7 or 8 parts.


When Asher Benjamin writes his books, we were still making the parts for a house specifically for that house - no buying off the shelf.
When it came to finish work, each molding added at a door opening or chair rail was made to order, regardless of how it was measured.
Uniform measurements for construction were not necessary until people wanted interchangeable parts. If your yard was 36" and mine was 35" it didn't matter.

Benjamin's introduction to geometry - his first plates - and his descriptions of how to draw the profiles of various moldings show his readers to how adapt his patterns to their specific buildings.

The Country Builder's Assistant, by Asher Benjamin, 1797,  shown above,  is a reprint by Applewood Books, Bedford, Massachusetts, 1992.  The originals, (worn. well used and well loved!) are often available in rare book libraries.