jfi^iiaBiii^isi p. HOUSE 5T' ir iir III J I §¥5 IH %ldL lllii.^ •^Vv, ALLEN W- JACKS ON THE COUNTRY HOUSE LIBRARY BUNGALOWS Hy Henry II. Sayhr THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE By AlUn W. Jackion CONCRETE AND STUCCO HOUSES By Oawald C. Ilering ARCHITECTURAL STYLES FOR COUNTRY HOMES A symponum by promitunl archittcti IN PREPARATION RECLAIMING THE OLD HOUSE By Charles Edward Hooper THE DUTCH COLONIAL HOUSE By Aymar Embury, II. FURNISHING THE HOME OF GOOD TASTE By Lucy Abbot Throop THE COLONIAL HOUSE By Joseph Everett Chandler HOMES THAT ARCHITECTS HAVE BUILT FOR THEMSELVES By the Archlteett and Others McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS MW^ Hftll-limbcr work «*; i , ,.ist in tunjurn-lion \w[|i olher malenals, where the contrasting pattern between the plaster and the wood work is kept very simple, or restricted to use for features of the building that need accent. THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE ITS ORIGIN, DESIGN, MODERN PLAN, AND CONSTRUCTION ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLD EXAMPLES AND AMERICAN ADAPTATIONS OF THE STYLE BY ALLEN W. JACKSON NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1912 Copyright, 191i,by McBhidk, Nast & Co. Published March, 191« /?/z TO ALL THOSE WHO OWN CASTLES IN SPAIN Contents Page Preface xi Introduction xv History of English Domestic Architecture .... 1 The Half-timber House in England 9 Is THE Half-timber Style Suited to Our Needs To-day? 18 The Charm of Old Work and How We May Obtain It 24 The Choice of Styles 31 English and American House Plans 37 How TO Plan the House 43 Methods of Construction 63 Exterior Details 84 Interior Details 100 T'he Illustrations A modem half-timber house showing admirable restraint in the timbering Frontispiece Facing Page " The Gables," Thelwall, England xvi Symmetry in half-timber work xvii A brick and half-timber house at Bryn Mawr, Pa xviii French half-timber buildings 1 A survival of the earliest form of half-timber construction 4 The Hall, " Compton Wynyates " 5 Gateway, St. John's Hospital, Canterbury 8 A gate house, Stokesay, Shropshire 9 The charm of weather-worn surfaces 12 The use of closely spaced vertical timbers 13 Half-timber work with brick filling 14 The overhang of upper stories and an old house in Rouen 15 The projecting pins in half-timber work 16 Quatrefoil pattern in timbering 17 " Stonecroft," a modem English house 18 The charm of an English village street 19 A stone and half-timber house near Philadelphia and an American example of Enghsh craftsmanship revived 20 A modern American half-timber house expressing its plan 21 A typical Enghsh town house front 22 An English cottage that seems to have grown in its setting 23 Grouped windows 24 A small English manor and a charming example of composition ... 25 Wide spacing of timbers 26 A successful attempt to soften the roof lines 27 Unpainted American half-timbering 28 Restraint in the employment of half-timbering 29 The softening influences of time and weather 80 The half-timber house developed in a flat country 81 An English gardener's lodge in America 84 Half-timber work on a stone base 85 X THE ILLUSTRATIONS Faoixo Paob A contrast of half-timber patterns 42 The long, low, rambling tv-pe 43 The Hall, " Seal Hollow," Sevenoaks, Kent 46 An American dining-room 47 A house built with second-hand timbering 60 New houses at Port Sunlight, England 61 A garage in a half-timber house 58 A half-timber house in Cambridge, Mass 59 Half-timber embellishment with restraint 64 Half-timbering against plain walls as a foil 65 A deUil of " The Gables," Thelwall, England 72 "The Gables," ThelwaU, England 73 True half-timber work in process of construction 76 " Stonecroft," Appleton, Cheshire 77 Half-timber work is seen at its best where the strong black-and-white contrasts are limited to a few points of accent 81 Half-timbering spread evenly over the walls of a house 82 Enrichment of detail on an old English cottage 83 Flat red tile on a modern house 86 Graduated roof slates 87 The chimney as an important element in the design 88 Elaborate chimney designs 89 Casement windows and small panes 90 Small panes as an inevitable feature of half-timber work 91 The sheltered doorway of an English house 94 A new doorway and an old one 95 The terrace 98 Rain-water heads 99 A living-room and its fireplace 102 A modem dining-room 103 Plastered ceiling and car\'ed paneling 106 A modem English Uving-room 107 A room in King's Head Inn 110 Two carved mantelpieces Ill The stair hall in an American half -timber house 112 A living-room with gallery in an American home 113 Preface THIS book is not intended as a technical treatise. It has not been written with the professional reader in mind and is without pretention to be a serious contribution to the history of architecture. It is addressed primarily to the general reader having an interest in house building or to those who have in mind building for themselves. If it serves to call the attention of any such to this English work or to arouse their interest in the matter as a whole, it will have fulfilled its purpose. In the mind of the author it is further meant to be at once a protest against the stereotyped use of cer- tain historical styles for contemporary use, and a plea for a greater freslaness and virility than is often found in the work of to-day. It would be impossible to acknowledge all the sources of in- formation drawn upon, but mention should be made of S. O. Aldy's The Evolution of the English House, J. A. Gotch's His- tory of the Early Renaissance in England, and the various works of P. H. Litchfield. Nor must the author omit to express his thanks to the Publishers of Country Life (London), The Archi- tectural Review and B. T. Batsford, for the use of illustrations owned by them. Chapter III. is largely taken from a previous article which appeared in House and Garden. After much hesitation the author has illustrated some of his own work. He has been led to do this not because of its supposed merit, but rather because it happened to illustrate certain points which he wished to make, better than any other work of which illustrations were available. Allen W. Jackson 909 Brattle St., Ca>irriix}I November 30, 1911 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE Introduction THE whole question of so-called " style " in architecture is an interesting one for the student. There exists an intel- hgent opinion that the architectural styles of the past are dead, and that it is a servile and barren archaism to persist in work- ing over old forms; which, because the causes of their being have ceased to operate, have become lifeless material, and the result moribund and an obstruction to real advance in architecture and esthetics. While it is true that the conditions which gave birth to, and differentiated, the architectural styles have lost their force, they have at the same time become so broadened and made free that any of the styles may now be properly used where their characteristics do not render them impracticable from the utili- tarian i^oint of view. This is the only excuse for the eclecticism of the present day. The differences and peculiarities of the various styles were due to climate, to materials at hand, and to the pecuharities of the civilization under which they came into existence. Let us con- sider briefly a typical Italian farmhouse. The material is stone, both because that was the material easiest to be had and because it would keep out the heat of summer. The windows are small, the cornices overhang widely — to keep out the excessive light of a southern sun. The result, if we go no farther, is a certain type of house, the logical outgrowth of fulfilling the require- ments in the easiest way. With an English farm we find the same logical result. In the stone country of the north the build- ings are of stone; in the timber country of the south, of timber; and because of the many dull gray days they all, unlike the Itahan houses, coax the sun with plenty of windows and little or no cornice with its accompanying shadow. Thus working along the lines pointed out by necessity and convenience, each arrived xvi INTRODUCTION at a perfect arcliitectural expression of his own condition, re- quirements, and point of view. Tliis development was still fur- ther kept a mirror of the peculiar genius and environment of the builders by their ignorance of what others were doing. The English carpenter never saw the Italian roof or the Spanish patio, and was not tempted to experiment in these things. His building was unaffected. His very limitations were a source of strength, and the difference in the result correctly measures the racial differences between one country and another. This is as it should be, and a real style is the inevitable result. In tliis way only can an architectural style be formed. Now let us look at the case in this country. Can we have a United States style of architecture? Our architecture will differ- entiate itself from that of other countries, in just so much as our type and degree of civilization is different from theirs. It will be as individual and peculiar as the demands, and our ability to fulfill them, are peculiar and individual. In the twentieth century such differences are all very slight among the more highly civilized nations. Not only is there a similarity in requirement and an equal facility in building skill, but the building materials of the world are equally accessible to all. The requirements of the life led by a gentleman in New York, London, Paris, and Vienna nowadays are much the same. All desire to live on the same kind of well policed street. Their business and social lives are much alike. All wear the same sort of clothes, heat their houses in the same way; modern sani- tary appliances are common to all ; all have electric light ; all live secure and peaceful lives. The powerful families of New York do not need a fortified tower into which to gather their households when the hirelings of a rival house come charging around the cor- ner. The gentleman on the Champs Elysees does not need a moat and drawbridge, or contrivances to greet the guest with molten lead. The Viennese citizen no longer builds his house with a watchtower, on the top of a precipitous rock. Any of these gentlemen can build of what material he pleases or can afford -2 Si 6 5 C 5 = — ^ -3 _■ y i I H J3 O B B 1^ S c o o £ J5 - ic ■i s o j: ■5 »■: = s s "5 t: * INTRODUCTION . xvii — wood, stone, brick, tile or steel are equally wnthin the reach of all. Structurally then their houses will be much alike, and as decoration should be the direct outgrowth of structure, and clothe the skeleton with grace and beauty without denying the exist- ence of the bones, there is no reason for any logical difference in appearances. Such differences as exist are the measure of the distance we have still to travel to reach the perfect cosmopoli- tanism. The local inherited forms and motives of decoration are nowadays no better known to the builders of any locality than are those of all the rest of the world, since the labors of !Mr. Daguerre and JNIr. Thomas Cook have made us all so wise. There will be perforce, much interchange and borrowing ac- cording to individual preference, and it becomes a question of individual taste in style rather than a rigidly imposed national one. Another great source of freedom is the gain in structural material. In the old days of brick, stone, mortar, wood and tile, the ambitions of him who would soar were held do^vn by the very limited powers of those materials. A stone will cover but a small opening, and even an arch stretched to the extent of those found in the Roman baths, pays a great price in space and weight for its still limited span. Timber has an even more restricted useful- ness in size and strength, as well as in durabihty. The same is true of columns which hold the superstructure, and even the at- tenuation attained by the Gotliic builders in their most daring work soon reached its limitations. But nowadays, since ]\Ir. Car- negie has put a wand of steel into the hands of the builder, he has become something very like a magician, and if he does not quite build castles in the air, he at least api)roaclies very near it, and is daily growing to have less and less respect for the old-fashioned law of gravitation. Chimneys and towers which formerly had to start from the ground, may now begin in tiie attic and are not allowed below stairs where they get in tlie way. Great audi- toriums may be placed in the centre of buildings, with a dozen floors of offices over the ceiling. Supports are in disgrace and xvui INTRODUCTION are either done away with or relegated to out-of-the-way corners. And as for height, who shall say ? With all the world, then, having equal access to all the mate- rials of building, with housing reciuirements varying but little, with each builder perfectly familiar with the architectural monu- ments and history of the world, there seems but a sorry chance of any United States style. It would require a new, radical, unheard-of departure in our mode of living to bring forward demands so novel that they could be met only by fresh discoveries in materials or methods to really constitute a new style. It would seem, then, that if we are to have new styles of architecture, they will be world-wide and mark new advances in building material, or new and extraordinary housing problems. Meanwhile there is plenty of room for individual genius to exercise itself with the creation of beauty in building, and to this there is no end, for if there are nine and sixty methods of con- structing tribal lays, there are certainly as many of conceiving each of nine and sixty different sorts of buildings. If we are sometimes tempted to complain that we are born too late and that all the changes have been rung on four walls and a roof, we may find some comfort in Sir Joshua Reynolds' remark that " Art comes by a kind of felicity and not bj' rule," in which case we need not fear of exliausting its possibihties. All old farmhouse at Chaumont A royal playhouse, Versailles. While the French h.ilf-timber work is interesting, it does not belong to us in the way that the half-tiraber houses of England do History of English Domestic Architecture WHILE what are known as " Half-timber " buildings are equally indigenous to England, France and Germany, it is with the work in England that we shall chiefly concern oursehes. AVhile the French and German work is of just as higli a type and of equal interest to the student of architectm-e, for us it is a " foreign " style in a sense in wliich the more ethnic work of England is not. In the half-timber houses of England were born, lived and died our own great-grandfathers; these houses were conceived and wrought out by our own progenitors; they are our architectural heritage, our homesteads, and hold an important place in our building history. This is not true of the German and French work, which is strange and foreign to us in its motives and feeling, with notliing in common with the Island work but the name. It has had no influence on our own work, and is entirely outside the story of the English and American home with which we purpose to con- cern ourselves in this book. This timber work of the Continent is in fact an excellent example of how the same materials used for the same end, in the hands of men of diff'erent genius, pro- duce a result that in each case takes its color from the mind of its creator — it is a subtle document, a bit of racial evidence of the atmosi)here that surrounds it. Half-timber work, or, as it is often called, " black-and-white," is sometimes deflned by English writers as that sort of building in which the first story is of masonry and of which the second story only is timbered; when the whole building is timbered it is properly called " all-timbered." This is not the commonly accepted idea of most architects, who understand by the term " half-timber " that the whole or part of tiic buililing is con- structed with a timber frame filled \\\ with brick, mortar, or some- 2 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE thing of the sort, that produces the effect of " black " stripes on a white wall. This is " black-and-white " work, or, if looked at from the builder's point of view, half timber and half filling. This method of building is very old. It is easy to see how it came into being as an outgrowth of the more primitive work which preceded it, and was the natural outcome of following the lines of least resistance, with no thought of what it would look like or where it would lead. It is evident that it did not become the vogue because stripes happened to be the fashion, but for the much more satisfactory reason that it was the simplest, easiest, and quickest way of getting a house, and fulfilled the few neces- sary requirements. Although there are probably not standing to-day any half- timber houses older than the fifteenth century, there is no doubt that houses of this character were being built for a hundred years before that time. The oldest half-timber houses we have left to-day are often disguised in a strange dress and are made to pass themselves off as having tile walls, or are boarded in with wide horizontal deal boards. The reason for this is not a desire to de- ceive, but because " it prolongs the life, and is just as good," as benzoate of soda is used with old fruit. In cases of this sort it is ugliness that is only skin deep, and our honest great timbers, sil- vered with age, are just beneath the surface. The frames were ordinarily of oak, which as it first shrunk and then decayed, not only pulled away from the mortar filling but opened up mortises and presented gaping joints to the weather, racking the building and making it in course of time uninhabitable. To make the walls tight without rebuilding, the expedient was adopted of strapping them and hanging on tile, or boarding the surface, and in this way continuing the life and usefulness of the structure. This type of work is not found all over England, but only in the timbered districts, or what formerly were the timbered dis- tricts — roughly speaking, in the central, western, and southern portions. In the north, stone has always been the first thing at hand and was universally used for both walls and roofing, even ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE in the small cottages. In the south, with timber went excellent clay for making tile and brick, and these were both much used, although at a later date, as we find no mention of brick before 1400, and tile was probably coeval with it. Before considering the half-timber work proper, let us see what preceded it and of what it was the outgrowth and legitimate successor. The earliest houses of which we have any real knowl- edge, were formed by the placing of great crucks, which were the naturally curved trunks of trees, with their bases some distance Fig. 1. The frames of the earliest houses, formed with the curved trunks of trees Fig. 2. The next step was to put a wall under this roof, gaining au attic apart, and sloping them toward each other until the tops met. The tops were fastened together and the pair braced by what we should now call a collar beam, the whole forming a letter A (see I'ig. 1). A similar frame was set up at a convenient distance, and the two joined with purlins, the outside of these sloping walls or roof — for they were both one and the other — being further braced and joined with smaller structural filling, and then entirely covered and made tight against the weather by thatch, slates or whatever came to hand. Sometimes transepts called " shots " were constructed at right angles to gain more space. An ordinary building consisted of several of these bays. The determination of the pro])er spacing of these j)airs of crucks forming bays is inter- esting, and typical of the kind of pressing utilitarian requirements which dictate the direction and mold the growth of architec- 4 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE tural style. It has been observed of them that they were always spaced about sixteen feet apart. This distance is exactly that required for the stabling of a double yoke of oxen, which was the team commonly used in plowing at the time these houses were built. The projection of the cruck into the room would naturally indicate the place for a division or partition. As a further bit of evidence that these bays were a proper width for the stabling of cattle we find that the Latin writers on agriculture lay it down as a rule that a pair of oxen should occupy what is the equivalent of eight feet, and it is interesting to see that in a far distant country, and after an interval of a thousand years, the thickness of an ox has not changed; so that if he is evolving at all it must be in the direction of his length. The houses of tliis ])eriod are always spoken of in the old deeds in terms of bays, that is, as being six bays, or four and one-half bays and so on. It might also be noted in passing that our field measure, the rod, is derived in the same waj', and is the space taken up by four oxen plowing abreast. To make our farms produce not onlj^ all material things necessary to life, but an abstract system of men- suration as well, is keeping our feet on the groimd pretty consist- ently. There is something typically Anglo-Saxon about deriving our system of measures from the size of oxen and the tillage of the soil, just as the logical and scientific mind of the Gaul is seen in his taking the mathematically determined circumference of the earth as his unit of measurement. This matter of the si)acing of the crucks to form baj's in these early stables is of interest because the architectural influence of the ox persists long after the time when the Englishman's house was not only his castle but his stable as well. Even when this primitive arrangement was outgroAVTi and the man separated from his beast, the old sixteen-foot spacing of the baj's continued in the great halls of the nobility and gentry, even into the large and luxurious manors which sprang up all over the land during the sixteenth century, and as late as the end of the Tudor Period A ('ottii);<-' lit IlrtluTiii);ti>n, lyCicosliTsliirc, wliii li is |>.irtu iil.trl\ iiitiTisliu^; Ntirviviil (if till- ciirlk-st form of tiiiilM-r coiistnictiuii ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 5 — the hej'day of the building arts in England. At a time when your carpenter would have scratched his head in vain if asked why he si)aced his bays this particular width, it had passed into a building tradition and become one of the rule-of-thumb methods of laying out a building. This curious detail only disappears when the unaffected indigenous Anglo- Saxon method of building was itself crushed out of existence forever by the superimposi- tion of the alien style from Italy which had been making its influ- ence felt from its first appearance in the time of Henry VIII. down to its complete ascendancy at the hands of Inigo Jones in the earlj' part of the seventeenth century. Up to the time of the appearance of this exotic fashion the cause of native art had marched on in an uninterrupted course, having a natural, logical development, keeping pace with the advancing civilization and solving its new problems as they arose, in the light of the accu- mulated experience inherited from past ages. But to return to our building, half house, half barn and stable, with its sixteen-foot bays. In the larger ones the cattle stood down either side for more than half the length, facing out, as one sees them to-day in our New England barns. In the middle near the end, and blocking up the aisle, was the fireplace, and behind that the master's rooms, the " bower " and often another room or two. For a long time the " fireplace " was that and nothing more, merely a s})ot in the centre of the aisle where the fire which served for heat and where all the cooking was done, blazed away on a few flat stones innocent of any such effete contrivance as back, sides or flue. To be sure, a hole in the roof was made as a concession to the smoke, but it was expected to find it un- assisted, which, unless smoke has changed its habits, one may believe it did in a somewhat leisurely and roundabout fashion. Chimneys, in the sense we now understand the word, were hardly known in England until the fourteenth century. Even the larger halls and manors iiad their fires in the centre of the room and allowed the smoke to find its way out througli an opening in the roof, which was when necessary guarded against the en- 6 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE trance of the weather bj^ lomTes. Later the fires were built against the stone walls of the room and covered by a great pro- jecting hood, sometimes of stone, sometimes of metal, and often of " daub " or mud plaster on wickerwork. This collected the smoke which was carried off by a flue set against the wall and running up through the roof. This flue was built of the same materials, and undoubtedly one of the reasons why so few traces of flues in the old buildings are found is because of their con- struction of such inflanmiable material. Laws were finally passed forbidding flues to be built having any wood about them. Up to this point the building is all roof, or at least wall and roof are one, whichever we choose to call it, but as skill in building increased and the demands were for something more elaborate, it was easy to put a wall under this roof and raise it into the air and th\is gain an attic (Fig. 2), also to add a shed roof on either side parallel to the centre aisle like the transepts of a basilican church, and so gain in width as well. The servants slept in lofts over the cattle, the men on one side, the maids on the other. In such an intimate gathering of man and beast under one roof the all-pervading wood smoke must have been a real blessing, serving as it undoubtedly did in a great measure as a deodorizer and insecticide. Even after the cattle had been given a building to themselves and the lords of the manor had begun to live with some pomp and circumstance in their own houses, the servants of both sexes slept on the floor of the great hall of the manor, which was the dining- room and general meeting-place during the day. This promis- cuity was the cause of much ribald wit in the song and story of the Middle Ages. While for the purpose of planning our buildings to-day it is perhaps of little practical assistance to trace the history of Eng- lish house planning, it is of some interest to the student of domes- tic architecture to follow the development of the plan and note how each step is in answer to some developed need, and to fulfil ENGLISH DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE 7 and meet some condition that has arisen. As tliis logical and in- evitable growth and change are the blood and bones of our archi- tectural style, or rather are the style, we shall not arrive at a clear and correct understanding of half-timber work as we see it to-day in England unless we do look somewhat into the conditions under which it was produced. While tliis will be done more fully elsewhere, it should not be uninteresting or uninstructive to follow the development of the plan a little further than the half barn, half house of the yeoman and franklin, and see how their betters fared. In the turbulent times of the Middle Ages it was necessary that every man's house should be a fortress as well. We see even to-day the crags and hilltops of Euroi)e capped with castles or ruins of former strongholds which relied largely on their inacces- sibihty for immunity from attack. They were usually built sur- rounding a courtj'ard, so that in time of siege the defenders might have some place to take the air. When, however, we leave the mountainous countries and come to France and England — flat lands with no strategic height on which to perch a fortress- dweUing, we find men surrounding their houses with water in lieu of precipitous and rocky cliffs, as a means of keeping off the marauder. The fosse, or moat, as we know it in England, made the insular Britain still more insular, and gave him an excellent substitute for the lofty perch of his Continental brother. Like him, however, and for the same reason, he keeps the courtyard in the centre. As time goes on, and a more peaceable era succeeds the earlier riotous conditions, the first movement toward the disarmament of the house is the knocking out of the front side of the rec- tangular building so that the court is exposed, and the U-shaped building ai)pcars. From the usual fact of a small porch in tiie centre of the cross wing, forming a slight projection in plan, it is more often spoken of as the E type of plan. The pretty theory that this was an architectural compliment to Queen Elizabeth, in whose reign many houses of this sort first appeared, will not 8 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE stand the test of historic research, and a staple in matter-of-fact evohition can hardly be turned to such sycophantic account. The corners of the typical old rectangle often ^vere marked hy towers which remained to accent the ends of the U when the front side of the rectangle was removed. Now the sides of the U, or wings of the house, disappear, or at least give place to a mere fence or wall, and the towers remain standing at some dis- tance from the house, while in the effete times of long-continued I^eace they became merely garden or tool houses. To complete the dwindling of the old pile, the towers finally follow the rest, and we have nothing but a slender fence to mark where the em- battled walls once stood. Thus we shear our castle till there is left but a simple home with an enfenced yard in front; and it is this memory of medieval usage that our forefathers brought to this country in the fenced and gate-posted front yards of the Colonial dwellings which we see still standing, up and down the Atlantic seaboard. This then, in brief, is the typical course taken by the cottage on the one hand and the castle on the other, down through the ^liddle Ages in England, as they were acted upon by Time with his train of attendant circumstance, all the products of a changing condition of men and things. Responding truly to the logic of events it continued, by the force of such adaptation, to keep ahve and to be a growing, living organism, until fashion roughly super- ceded it with an imported alien style. Tin- jjiitfw.iy ot'St. Jiiliii's Ilos|)iliil, Canterbury slii>wiii(; llif sliirilv anliiU-iturc that was produced witliinil striviu); aftiT pictiirfsqMfiii-.ss '■V X 'The Half-timber House in England Now let us suppose that a small but prosperous farmer of the year loOO wishes to build a comfortable house for him- self and his family somewhere in the south of England. He will scorn the idea of admitting cattle under the same roof, as his forefathers did, and is able to afford a house of some com- fort, even luxury. He will have a large room for hving and eat- ing, with great fireplace and ingle, window-seat and row of glazed and leaded windows, a low, heavily beamed ceiling and a floor of tile or flags. In the old work the firejjlaces, after they had retreated from the middle of the floor in the fourteenth century and backed up against the wall, adopted the luxury of a flue to collect and guide the smoke in a straight and narrow way out of the room and house. Thej^ were big honest affairs, bespeaking plenty of dry split logs in the shed; glorious great smoked caverns, which were kitchen range, hot-water boiler and heating system all in one and the centre and heart of the house as they deserved to be. There is nothing more pleasant, wholesome and hearty than the way in which in Sf)ng and story, art and history, the English " hearth " and " home " are linked together. 'J'he chimney corner was the lounging-room, library, study, and smoking-room, and the history of English house-planning swings about this as a pivot. It is the anchor of the whole. The farmer will have an entry-way and stairs near the centre; buttery, kitchen and pantries to one side. On the second floor, under the roof, he will have bedrooms with their windows close under the eaves, or higher, so that the eaves must sweep up over them. The hall or corridor from which bedrooms may lead was an idea tliat waited long before it came crashing into tlie mind of some thoughtful pUuuier — one of those simple expedients that 10 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE it takes a great man to discover and for the lack of which all sorts of inconveniences in social intercourse were endured, and human progress in social adjustment itself held back. The inventor of the corridor deserves a statue as much as does Eli Whitney or James Watt, instead of filling an unknown grave. It was not only the humble farmer who must pass through some one else's room to get out of his own in those days, but lords in their castles The chimney-comer was from the first the centre and heart of the English Home and kings in their palaces put up with having their suites of rooms turned into passageways. It is the same in France, Germany and Italy. We find sumptuous suites of rooms in great houses, but all strung together in a way that the modern flat -hunting yomig couple would pronounce " impossible." That it was felt to be a great inconvenience is shown by the clumsy expedient, in many of the old houses, of having a number of staircases both inside and out to serve as a sort of dignified ladder by which one might leave his bedroom without embarrassing his neighbors. THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN EXGLAXD 11 However, our canny farmer at least puts this inconvenience to some practical use, for he and his gudewife take for themselves the room at the head of the stairs, with maids on one side and the men on the other, so that he commands the junction, and can keep strict watch of the comings and goings. His first floor will be perhaps of earth, not even stopping to remove the top loam, and this will pack down and make a sur- face not too smooth, to be sure, and certainly none too clean. If the ground should prove to be damp he will have a foul place to live in, at least according to modern notions. It is certainly a long way from waxed oak, and a vaciumi cleaner. If he wishes some- thing more pretentious he will have for flooring uncut stone laid without mortar and fitted together as closely as possible. For the second floor he must needs use boards to span the joists, and he will use wide oak ones; planks they migiit more properly be called, from their thickness. First tliick reeds will be laid across the joists, then the boards on top nailed down through the reeds. Xow he can plaster the ceiling between the joists, the reeds forming the lath, and he will have not only a tight floor but one with some pretense to being sound-proof. In some districts it has been found that they have gone one step further and left off the board flooring, and, instead, covered the reeds as they lay across the joists, above and below, thoroughly embedding tliem in a four-inch or five-inch sheet of plaster that attains the hardness of cement. We thus see our ferro-concrete methods anticipated by half a millenary, for if the reeds were iron rods we should have the very latest American invention in reinforced fireproof flooring. The roof he will probably cover with thatch a foot or two in thickness, made of rye straw, and if he is afraid of fire he may give it a coat of whitewash, the lime affording considerable pro- tection against the flames. Fire is the great enemy of thatch, for in a prolonged drought the straw becomes like tinder and shrinks away from the dirt, moss, etc., which perforce are present, form- ing a sort of tinder, and rendering it an even more easy prey to 12 THE HALF-Ti:\IBER HOUSE fire. At an early period in London it was one of the building laws that all thatch must be kept whitewashed, and it became so com- mon throughout England that the villages witli their white roofs sparkling in the sun must have presented a very different jiicture from ^vhat we see to-day in the hamlets where thatch is still to be found. Let us suppose, however, that the farmer does not wish to use thatch for the roof. He may use tile made bj"^ hand, of an excel- lent quality and burnt to a pleasant red of varying shades. In the districts where the proper clays were to be foimd, tile was a very popular method of covering not only roofs but walls. Often when the oak beams of a half-timber house had so shrunk or rotted from the effects of age and weather that the filling had disinte- grated and the whole structure was no longer proof against wind and weather, instead of repairing along the same lines, which would be a difficult thing to do, they hung the walls with tile, and many a Kent and Surrey tile-covered farmhouse of to-day is really an old half-timber building in a new dress. These tile were, of course, hand-made, and as a consequence possessed a cer- tain unevenness of texture, which when added to the fact that the hanging holes were far from being punched with mathematical exactness, gave the wall on which they were hung a softness of siu'face which was most jileasing, accidental and fortuitous though it was. These tile were thicker than those we get to-day, and, as was to be expected along with the other imperfect methods of manufacture, came in a great variety of color, produced by the uneven burning in the kiln. The tile were often cut with a rounded or curved butt, so that the builders were fond of getting variety by laying first several rows of the cur\^ed, and then several rows of straight ends. These tile, like the slate, were hung with wooden pins which of course in time rotted and gave way, but could be easily replaced, and in a country where there was no severe frost or heavy snowfall, they were i)erfectly suited to their purpose. If, however, the builder has an objection to tile, he may, if he -^ All luliniralili' rxaiiipli' of the cliiirrn of soft tcxturo tliiit rrsultcil in thi" old wi>rk from the fart that it was not built with inatheiiiatical I'xaitncss The sticks are vertical in the earlier work and rather close together, there being about as much plaster showing as wood THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN ENGLAND 13 happens to live in the right district, cover his roofs with slate or other flat stone, rouglily split, heavy but durable, defying fire and frost, and presenting a fine, substantial appearance. To be sure he must make the rafters strong and tie thcni well, for this roof will never sleep, but its constant pressure will need stout work below to keep it in the air. However, there will be no lack of heavy timber of solid oak. Two-by-four-inch spruce studs are an invention of a more architecturally anaemic age. The pitch of the roof was determined empirically by striking a medium be- tween a flatness that threw the great weight of the stone full on the rafters and called for great strength in them, and the steeper roof that caused the stones to drag heavily on their wooden pins and in time i)ull loose and fall to the ground. As a result of these conflicting problems we usually find as a matter of fact that the roofs which are, or were meant to be, covered with stone are flatter than the tile or thatch roofs. The stone was laid over a layer of straw. The ridge was formed either with a saddle board of rolled lead, or often with a continuous row of overlapping half-roll tiles embedded in nu)rtar. The use of flashing (thin sheet metal used to make tight the edges and joints with chimneys, end walls, etc.) is really a confession of weakness, and the old builders got along Avith surprisingly little of it. Now we have our roof and floors; let us consider what kind of wall he will have to hold them up. There is little building stone at hand, and he certainly will not propose to bring material of one sort from a distance when he has another perfectly good sort at hand. IJrick is not yet in common use and not well understood, but what he does have in abundance is tunber. Tlie hills are cov- ered witli fine oak trees, than which no finer building wood has ever existed. Here it is, ready to hand, and here are the axes and broad-axes and men who have the proper handling of them as an inheritance from untold generations. If they are not born with an ax in their hands, one finds itself there very shortly. So then he will begin to chop; now it does not take many hours with 14 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE an ax, squaring up the trunk of a tree, to learn that it is easier to make one's timbers large than small. It is as much, if not more, bother to get out a thin plank, than it is a great stick; and so he will save time and use the big timbers. ^Vith their great size and strength he may well space them some distance apart, and fill in between with something or other not so hard to make as planks. For this purpose he will use a mortar or " daub " made of lime and straw, or clay and twigs, or anything that will stick and harden, and reasonably resist the weather, which is not rigorous or one that makes great demands on building materials. As a groundwork for lathing for this plaster he will weave willow twigs together and make a groove in the sides of his timber to take ROUt hriik lilliii); ImIwicii tlu' tinilM-rs, laid liorizoiitally. Where hriek whs employed it wiis iisii/illy Inid ill n din^onal pattern •= _2 i; c — s ■= k ■ I ■ I ?^ "S THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN ENGLAND 15 is not quite clear why this almost universal overhang was adopted for the upper stories, at least in the country districts. In the cities these successive overhangs as the stories were added one above another formed an excellent shelter from the rain for the Pliiiiilip Brick was frequently used as the material for filling in between the timbers, laid up in a variety of patterns shop front on the street, and it was not uncommon for houses on the opposite sides of city streets to bow gravely to each other in this way until they approached so near that those in the attic win- dows could shake hands across the street. There is no doubt that these offsets gained for the framework a certain amount of stiffness, and it may have been for this reason that they were adojited; whatever the reason, the introduction 16 THE HALF-TI»IBER HOUSE into the design of this horizontal band of shadow and the very marked division of the stories which it represents, added a most pleasing feature to the whole whether or not introduced with that idea. Our ])leasure is largely due, no doubt, to its engaging can- dor in letting us into the secrets of its interior arrangement to that extent. This then is the original method of making these walls, per- fectly logical, following the hues of least resistance, and utilizing what comes to hand. It is like all good arcliitecture in that it is the by-product of honest building. Thus we have the result of our farmer's work in " black-and- white " walls of " half-timber." The sticks are vertical in the earlier work and close together, there being about as much plaster showing as wood. In the later work, where the timbers are placed further apart, we have more " white " and less " black," and then, as they became more facile, the builders amused themselves with arranging the upright timbers and sticks to form diverse and in- genious patterns, so that we get the quatrefoil, cusps, diamonds with concave sides, and an almost infinite variety of arrange- ment, in addition to the more sober placing of the sticks. These timbers are all dowelled, the uprights into the sills and the hori- zontal pieces into the uprights, and pinned with oak pins, the ends of which are left projecting a half -inch or so, that they may be still further driven in should the joints loosen and need to be drawn tighter together. In fact the poorer class of work, the jerry-building of the time, is described as " without augur holes." In some of the work the plaster is kept flush with the face of the timber outside, but as this makes the slightest crack between the two much in evidence, a sinking of the plaster a quarter of an inch or so back of the face not only made this less prominent but gave the whole surface more variety and a more solid and rugged ajj- pearance. The feeling of texture in this old work is of course enormously enhanced by the rough surfaces of the timber as it comes from the ax, for smooth as they must have seemed to the ax man, they were nothing as compared to the product of the buzz riu- tiiiilx rs wtrr all iluWi'lliil Ut^ttlur .iiul luld \>\ u.ik pins, [\iv ciuls >*( wliuh ari" hrrc stfii project in^ >^ The builders soon broke away from the use of vertical timbers alone, introducing diverse and ingenious patterns such as the quatrefoil which is seen here THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE IN ENGLAND 17 saw. This, with the varying widths of these timber faces and a certain amount of crookedness in the sticks themselves, together with the apparent unconcern of those having the spacing in charge, gives the whole wall a very soft and gracious presence. For us as we see it to-day this is all accentuated by the heavy hand of age and accompanying decay, which have still further softened the lines and blunted the angles, while Nature has crept up around the base, leaving her mark in every crannj'. She has laid on her colors with the wind and rain, until the whole with its tim- ber and thatch seems almost to have reverted to the vegetable Idngdom and become some new species of giant plant. The idea that these peojjle were actuated in their work only by the desire to build tight, warm and cheap shelters, with little regard for beauty, cannot be entertained for a moment when we see the amount of carving on molding, barge-boards and wherever there was a chance for enrichment; clearly indicating their love of beauty, their pride in their work, and their willingness to take the time and expense to gi'atify it. The details of doors, with their nailheads and strap hinges, the windows with their patterned bars of lead, the giant chimneys bursting into flower at the top, the generous fireplaces, cunningly jointed paneling, and the accompanying details which these builders wrought, guided and directed in the struggle for beauty by an imagination which took its color from the vigorous, vital, struggling age in which it found itself, are worthy of more than a passing glance. We will now consider whether this is not a style of architecture that is most facile and flexible, and that lends itself most grace- fully to the accommodation of our present-day needs. Is the Half -timber Style Suited to our Needs To-day P I FEAR that most members of the architectural profession will dissent with some heat from the obsei'vation of the mild Thoreau that " There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest." This sounds well enough until we think of some of the stock-jobbers whom we know, having such potentially dangerous things as hanmier and nails thrust into their hands and being sent forth to build their nests. True, as Thoreau continues, " Who knows but if men constructed their own dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universall}' sing when they are so engaged." It is a pretty picture, surely, of these worthy citizens balancing up the dizzy ladder with hods on their shoulders and madrigals on their lips, but I fear that even the " universal development of the poetic faculty " is too high a price for us to pay. Wliile every bird is born an architect, no man is. If, then, it is a difficult, slow and painful task to learn to build properly, if it requires countless experiments with their attend- ant failures to learn to use rightly, wisely and economically the material at hand with the tools at hand, the final result thus arrived at must give it ahnost the force and dignity of a law of nature. When we have followed the thread of common sense in and out and up and down wherever it has led us, without falter- ing or evasion, we may expect to come out at last into the light and find ourselves in the presence of Architecture. For it must be understood that this reflection of the prevailing civilization, this mirror of the customs, manners, lunitations and "Stonecrnlt." a inotlrni Kn^Iish housi* in which the traclilioiis of tiinlurin^ aiui hold rhiTiiiii'v tn-atmrnt art* wrti ohsrrvcd tS a. a. THE HALF-TIMBER STYLE 19 environment of a race, showing the slow, painful process of the growth and development of a people, is what goes to the making of, and has as a result, what we call a " style " of architecture. And even when it becomes no longer possible truthfully to reflect the customs, requirements, and desires of a people in the old in- herited forms — even then we may not talk of a new style, but rather of modifications and adjustments of the present one, the whole problem being one of growth, both in wants and in their fulfillment. It is as impossible for a people to repudiate its architecture as it would be to deny its literature. A people's architecture fits them and no one else can wear it. We may see much to admire in others but only our own is flesh of our flesh. The particular style that tee have been born into, developed by our fathers through the centuries, keeping pace with the slow, painful prog- ress of the race, and always a true index of its contemporarj'^ condition; a perfect, inarticulate measure of its culture and refinement; this style, tliis growing embodiment in stone of a people's dreams and idealism, this for us is the Gothic style of England. The Georgian style, which was brouglit to this country and flourished here with some modifications under the name of " Colo- nial " or, as the redundant phrase has it, " Old Colonial," had nothing Georgian about it unless it be that both the arcloitecture and the dynasty were foreign, for it was not an indigenous style of building like the other. It was an imported fasliion, an alien style, as little at home in catering to British institutions as we might expect such a typically Latin ])ro(luct to be. It was noth- ing but the classic architecture of old Rome revived in Xortli Italy in the fifteenth century and brought into England by tlie devious way of France and Holland, and showing the influence of the countries through which it had passed on its journey. And even if we admit that long custom has served to imbue these bor- rowed forms with sometliing of the Anglo-Saxon temperament, we have still the inherent unsuitableness of what is an essen- 20 THE HALF-TIMBER HOUSE tiallv monumental style of architecture set to serve intimate and domestic uses. Its simplicity and dignity are all very well, but they are bound to a tyrannical synmietry, rigid, cold and immut- able. We all know the work as it was brought over and done in the Colonies — charming, but a little frigid, dignified but hardly intimate, chaste but often timid, too often described as simple by its admirers when stuj)id would be the better word : its vocabu- lary small if select, its canons fixed and rigid, so that its range of effects is of necessity very limited. We all know the Colonial house — the front door in the centre flanked on either side by the paired windows above and below, each wmdow the exact size of every other. It may be there is a guest room in one corner and a bathroom in the other, but such is not api^arent on the surface. We might have liked to have, for comfort and convenience, three windows on one side, and one on the other, some higher or some smaller, but it would be heresy to take such liberties with this austere front. Like the unluckj' traveler in the bed of Procrustes, the poor plan is made to fit the elevations by brute force, either by stretching or lop- ping off. Now, setting the matter of stjde aside for the moment, it is an architectural maxim as apjilicable to a dog kennel as to a palace, since men first piled one stone on another, that the eleva- tions of a building shall express, as best may be, the plan — shall give some inkling not only of what are m a general way the uses of the building, but, further than tliis, shall indicate the uses of the various parts of that building as seen from without. Let us suppose, for example, that we find ourselves in the square of a strange village ; it is not enough that we can tell which building is the public librarj', which the fire-engine house and which the to\vn hall, for the architecture is not vital or organic unless we can also tell, as we look at them, where the reading-room of the library is, where in the engine house the firemen sleep and where the hose is hung, and in the town hall Avhere the assembly room is located. Of course this cannot be carried into too much detail. /)' I'.T ,v It.ili.ll, Aril^<- on l.on^ l.slaiiil \\ lu-rr the true spirit of KiikIisIi < nirtsiiiiiiisliip has bii' nt' tlic town luiuse front, su);i;esting the loving i-arethal was fx|)i-niUd u|>