Building to the weather - Part 2 of 7: Creating a sun pocket

Here is the main facade of the Park-McCullough House Carriage Barn.

As I wrote in the previous post, it faces east, away from prevailing winds and into the morning sun. Notice that the door - a huge door wide enough for carriages and horses - is set back. This is partly so that the hay door above is easily accessible for hay wagons - they can be parked underneath and unloaded. The recessed space also protects against the wind and gathers the sun, making a pocket of warmth. Gardeners know that sheltered sunny nook where the first daffodils will bloom; this recessed entry creates a sheltered sunny place for horses and people.

Many buildings have a double entry that functions like an air lock: one enters through a set of doors into a little vestibule, closes those doors, then opens another set of doors to enter the main space. It's a way to keep cold air out of a warm space (and vice versa when there is air-conditioning.)


A double entry on a barn is not practical. Imagine how big the airlock would need to be for a carriage with horses! This recessed entry is a pretty good substitute - the doors can be opened without the wind rushing in, and on a sunny day in winter, heat may even come in.



Here is the whole series:

Part 1 - http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/04/building-to-weather.html

Part 2 - How does the carriage house work with the sun to minimize wind chill?
              http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/04/building-to-weather-2.html

Part 3 - Why bother with a cupola?
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/05/thats-pretty-amazing-cupola-with-all.html

Part 4 - Eaves? they're important?
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/05/eaves-for-work-and-play.html

Part 5 - How a floor plan makes a difference:
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/06/no-tech-warmth-with-low-tech-aid.html

Part 6 -  A look at how these concepts were used at the Big House:
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/09/big-house-is-green-too.html

Part 7 - Shutters:            
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/03/shutters-ok-i-know-that-they-were-for.ht

Building to the weather - Part 1 of 7: Maximizing sun exposure

What does it mean to 'build to the weather'?

Look at this 1864 barn, the Park-McCullough House Carriage House, designed by an architect for a very wealthy family. A working stable - people and horses lived in it year round. It had very little heat: a stove in the tack room, another in the living quarters. However, its use of natural forces for winter warmth and summer cooling were quite effective. The techniques can be seen in many other barns built for ordinary farmers.

There was plenty of land - the barn could have been sited and organized in many different ways. Architecturally, it was placed visually to compliment the House, sitting just beyond it and framing the lawn. The main facade looked back to the House (and the flower garden and pond, which are no longer there). add another photograph of the House and barn together

The architect considered the climate. He understood how to work with the sun. He set the long side of the barn to face due south for maximum sunshine - technically called 'solar gain'. The east end, the front, would get morning sun; the south side, sun all day; the west side, afternoon sun; and the north side, a brief bit of sun only in mid-summer. He knew that in this part of western Vermont the wind blows mainly from the west, sometimes from the north. Wind is good for cooling in the summer, but makes things colder in the winter - technically called 'wind chill'.

Here's the whole series:

Part 1 - http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/04/building-to-weather.html

Part 2 - How does the carriage house work with the sun to minimize wind chill?
              http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/04/building-to-weather-2.html

Part 3 - Why bother with a cupola?
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/05/thats-pretty-amazing-cupola-with-all.html

Part 4 - Eaves? they're important?
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/05/eaves-for-work-and-play.html

Part 5 - How a floor plan makes a difference:
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/06/no-tech-warmth-with-low-tech-aid.html

Part 6 -  A look at how these concepts were used at the Big House:
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/09/big-house-is-green-too.html

Part 7 - Shutters:            
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/03/shutters-ok-i-know-that-they-were-for.ht

Buildings of interest 1: Norton-Fenton House, Pleasant St, Bennington VT

In 1838, Luman Norton, owner of the Norton Pottery, moved down the hill from the Old Center of Bennington to live on Pleasant Street, to be near his factory on the Wolloomsac River. He now needed a 2 family house. He had recently been appointed a judge, and opened a second factory to manufacture firebrick (the kind used in the backs of fireplaces and in refractories). His son-in-law, Christopher Fenton, ran the pottery factory, so it made sense that the two families live side by side. However, the new house needed to be more than just a 2 family house with its multiple doors and chimneys. Norton required a residence worthy of a successful manufacturer, and a judge.

Here is what he built: a brick house with a grand, 2 story tall, porch framed by columns and a pediment (the triangle that sits above the columns), with a broad frieze board across the top, right up under the roof, bright white against the red brick . The columns he used are ‘ionic’, the style favored in the Old Center of Bennington. Ionic capitals, with those curved horns on the top, were seen as symbols for virtue and wisdom. His front doors and sidelights - now almost invisible under the little porches - repeat the details.

On the ends, the brick walls step up above the roof , include the chimneys, and visually enlarge the house. These walls are structural, 3 bricks thick. They are laid in the pattern called Flemish Bond, which is one of the most difficult to lay neatly. The bricks placed on end - called ‘headers’, because when the wall is finished you see the end, or the 'head' of the brick - tie the rows of brick together. In Flemish Bond, every layer has headers. If the work isn’t done with great care, it isn’t neat. This is very neat and handsome work, because Norton could afford the best.

All the parts, the 3 strong columns right there in the center of the front, the white trim, and the tall brick ends make this 2 family house into an imposing residence. Norton used the normal materials of the time - brick, wood, stone - and details well known in the Old Center -Ionic columns, pediments, friezes. His house, one of the first built below the hill by a successful Benningtonian, combined them in a way that had not been done before. Norton built in a new fashion in the new center of Bennington.

Read about other Buildings of Interest: The Park McCullough House.

A note on why I'm blogging

Architecture and construction are governed by changes in technology - style comes about after the change in how we can build. I have seen the changes caused by the end of old growth lumber and the introduction of engineered lumber. I remember when the first machine that could cut granite counter tops was set up in town. I saw how the ability to make inexpensive mouldings out of finger-jointed wood or mdf changed window and door casings, and changed our clients' expectations. So I want to think about how the development of technology we now take for granted (wire screens) or see as eye candy ( shutters) has impacted design. And how people were inventive as they came to understand what the technology could do.

When I give the tour at the Historic Park-McCullough House, and I talk about this stuff, people are fascinated - they love knowing how The House works. So I need to be accurate, not just hypothesizing.

I'm also interested because screens and shutters are examples of green technology and design. They can be made from renewable resources. They don't use fossil fuel to operate. They can be adjusted for the weather. They can be repaired without fancy tools. And they will not be obsolete because 'they' don't make the part anymore.

I also love to learn about how people have interacted with their spaces. I share the enthusiasm of the visitors to The House - I think it's fun to imagine being the first person to turn a sieve upside down and recognize that it could keep flies off the food. Or to realize that, of course, mosquitoes don't bite when there's a breeze, so how do we make a breeze?

Screens - a quick history

As I wrote the first draft for this, the chickens were complaining about the snow. They don't like to step in it, and shake their toes. It covered the ground where they scratch. We are all ready for spring, and screens!

This post on screens is a follow-up to the post on shutters. They are related in that as screens become popular, the use of shutters declined.

The Park-McCullough House has half screens that are a later addition (or at least the fasteners do not date to 1864) to the windows. Trenor Park used the latest technology when he built his house in 1864. Did he specify screens? We haven't seen any references in our archives. The House has a extensive collection of photographs, but I know of no early pictures with screens on windows in the background.

So, when might the family have added screens? My usual first stops are Victorian Interior Decoration, Winkler and Moss, for general history, and then the pattern books, mill work catalogs, and the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. The pattern books may be promoting a new idea; when something is in the catalogs, it's an accepted part of the culture.


VID has a wonderful picture of horrible mosquitoes in an 1885 ad , as well as ads for mosquito netting over beds from the 1840's to the 1890's. The picture of the embroidered screen doors above comes from the 1893 catalog of the Mulliner Box & Planing Co., (republished by Dover in 1995). The 1895 Ward catalog shows similar screen doors and sells screening for do-it-yourself-ers.
I know from my own work (as an architect) that sun porches sprout on houses in great numbers in New England around 1900 - glassed-in new and existing porches, with screens stored close by for summer use. Screen porches are standard features by the 1920's. But they don't appear in the pattern books. Was the public ahead of the designers?

I think technology is a deciding factor. When could we manufacture screening? The research I have found says the English made 'wire gauze' as early as the 1830's. American companies who made screening for sieves, made screens too by the late 1850's. The US made screens were used mainly to cover food from flies - upside down sieves! (The weave was not fine enough to keep out mosquitoes.)

However, the Justin Smith Morril Homestead in Strafford Village, Vermont (built in the early 185o's, enlarged in 1859) has screens which may be original. The early screens were painted because the iron mesh would rust, and may have been used for privacy, rather than to keep out flying things. 'Wire cloth' needed to be finely woven to keep out mosquitoes, then it needed to be inexpensive. That seems to have happened in 1876 when a patent was issued for a power loom to weave screening - to Mr. Wickwire of Cortlandt, NY. (What a great name!) The quantity of screening produced in the US increased more than10 fold in the next 20 years.

The Park-McCullough House has screen panels in various states of repair in the basement. (The family saved everything.) Maybe they can be dated.

A great resource here was '100 Years of American Commerce, 1795-1895, edited by Chauncey M. Depew which I found reprinted on-line by Google Booksearch.

Building to the weather:Part 7 of 7 - Whys and Wherefores of Shutters

OK, I know that they were for protection - you closed up the house when you went away, or against a coming storm. Or they kept out the cold - 'Indian shutters', which came about after the Revolution, were not to protect against Indians, but for warmth in winter, 'coolth' in the summer, and for visual privacy from the street. And I know that our ancestors closed in their houses because they considered 'night air' dangerous.

I also know that 1) most houses were designed with windows directly opposite each other to encourage air flow, 2) in climates warmer than the north east, the kitchen was completely open in the summer - hence the 'dutch' door, where the bottom part keep animals out and small children in.

But as soon as the circular saw allowed us to make fins, shutters became popular in a way that they hadn't been before - they become standard equipment. And then it's not until the 1920's that they become decorative, with little cut-outs on the upper panels.

Why? Are the reasons I've listed enough? I have read that the shutters protected fabric from fading, that a dark interior was fashionable. I am still skeptical, I think these are secondary benefits. The Park-McCullough House has movable interior shutters on all windows, even in the servants' wing. It also has, as original equipment, louvered doors as second doors from the bedrooms in the main house into the upstairs hall (which is a room about 14' wide and 50' long). The House also has a belvedere, (a tower in the center of the house for surveying the beautiful countryside) which even today in the summer easily cools the House. The scientific principal behind it is called a Venturi.

I was recently reminded that mosquitoes do not bite when there is a breeze. I also know that the technology to make windows screens that could protect against mosquitoes was not really available until the 1890's. ( It has to do with weaving fine wire mesh .)

Then I thought about how in the evening the heat of the day could escape out the top of the house, bringing the cool air in from below, and keep the mosquitoes moving. And provide privacy...

I think I've got it!

References:
Victorian Interior Decoration, Winkler and Moss, Henry Holt, NY,1986
How Night Air Became Good Air,1776-1930, Baldwin,
Environmental History, Vol. 8, Issue 3
and conversations with John Crosby Freeman, "The Color Doctor"


Here is the whole series:

Part 1 - http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/04/building-to-weather.html

Part 2 - How does the carriage house work with the sun to minimize wind chill?
              http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/04/building-to-weather-2.html

Part 3 - Why bother with a cupola?
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/05/thats-pretty-amazing-cupola-with-all.html

Part 4 - Eaves? they're important?
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/05/eaves-for-work-and-play.html

Part 5 - How a floor plan makes a difference:
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/06/no-tech-warmth-with-low-tech-aid.html

Part 6 -  A look at how these concepts were used at the Big House:
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/09/big-house-is-green-too.html

Part 7 - Shutters:            
             http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2008/03/shutters-ok-i-know-that-they-were-for.ht

Neither Batty nor Swan!

This is a photo of the mouldings in my house, which look so much like the ones used in the Robert E. Lee house, in Arlington VA. I thought it would be an easy matter to matching this moulding pattern to an illustration in a pattern book - I assumed that I'd simply look in the books that the American builders (joiners) were using in about 1800, find the right page, and there it would be.

Nope.

The door casings here at the farm and at Lee's house have a simple 1/4 circle curve, as part of a sequence of square edges, beads and flat sections (although not in that order!). But the mouldings in Batty Langley's 'The Builder's Director or Bench-Mate', 1751, and in Abraham Swan's 'The British Architect', 1758, both published in London, are more complicated. Both show reverse curves: Cimarecta, which first curves in before it curves out, and Ogee, which starts the other way, convex before it is concave. But the American casings use 1/4 round or a Scotia, which is a 1/4 round that curves in, not out.

However, Asher Benjamin, in his book 'The Country Builder's Assistant,' published in 1795 while he still was practicing in various towns on the Connecticut River, show an 'architrave' similar to the ones I know. So, was Benjamin inventing? If he was copying, who was his inspiration? Was his book well enough distributed that carpenters 500 miles away from each other would have seen it? Is this an example of different 'styles' (preferring one shape over another), or is a reverse curve moulding harder to make? Or is this something about the tools - the planes, the knives or blades which were available to the builders?