“There is no place like home” said Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz, and I tend to agree. Of course, Dorothy’s cliché was full of sentiment and romance. Having spent five years selling building materials in between my museum jobs, I’ve developed a more pragmatic perspective.
Homes around here (and everywhere, for that matter) say something about the time that they were constructed, and the people who built and occupied them. They are physical manifestations that survive their creators, and to know how they were made is to better understand the generations that came before us.
The first non-native American settlers in this region mostly lived in log cabins, as this was the only practical option at the time. Hand-hewn logs created from locally-felled trees were the main building material. Set directly on the ground with dirt floors, it’s no surprise that few original cabins survive today. They were built to fill an immediate need, and not so much to stand the test of time.
Improved manufacturing techniques changed home construction after the American Revolution. The advent of water- and steam-powered mills made it possible to create consistent dimensional lumber, thus ending reliance on rough logs or the only other option—brick—out on the western frontier. Wild, unsettled regions like our Mohawk Valley.
In the 19th century the ‘balloon frame’ home was widespread; I’m familiar with this type, living in such a house which was built in 1897. The balloon frame used long pieces of 2” x 4” lumber, 20 to almost 30 feet long, to create the walls of two- and three-story dwellings. Foundations were stacked stone; while concrete has been around for thousands of years its revival wouldn’t occur until the 1900s.
A majority of these 1800s homes had to be retrofitted to accommodate two services we take for granted today: electrical service and indoor plumbing. Neither one of which were readily available until a century ago.
The housing boom after World War I saw a shift toward ‘stick built’ homes. Gone was the ready supply of extra-long lumber; deforestation had taken care of that. Shorter 2 x 4s, eight to ten feet long, formed one story on which a second floor was built. This is how homes are made today; none of the lumber comes from our local area. Another product—plywood—came around in the 1930s and ended the reliance on extra-wide boards to serve as wall and roof sheathing.
Today, products like oriented strand board (OSB) has largely replace plywood for sheathing. Builders increasingly use ‘laminated veneer lumber’ (LVLs—think of super-thick plywood) for load-bearing beams. Stick built homes are made with 2 x 6 lumber to accommodate thicker insulation. A move toward pre-fabricated homes is also afoot, where large sections are built at a factory, then trucked to the job site and fastened together like a puzzle.
Knowing what to look for makes it easy to assess the age of a home. They are time machines that one can use to develop a better appreciation for a neighborhood, a city, or a whole area. Duplexes near the old New York Mills? That’s no surprise. Mansions on Genesee Street in Utica? No surprise there, either. Happy hunting. :>)