Architectural heritage
Building histories, restoration guidance, and careful notes on the craft of old houses, written for owners and for anyone who stops to look twice at a cornice.
Read the house historiesOne house, six lives
Hand-hewn oak sills and posts, pegged mortise-and-tenon joints, and a massive center chimney that heats every room.
A new front with flat pilasters, a wider entry with sidelights, and six-over-six sash windows in wavy cylinder glass.
A bay window, a porch with turned posts and sawn brackets, and a slate roof replacing the original cedar shingles.
Knob-and-tube wiring and the first indoor plumbing are threaded through plaster and lath, room by room.
Siding over clapboards, dropped ceilings, an enclosed porch. Most of the original fabric survives, hidden rather than lost.
Layers are documented before anything is removed. Windows are reglazed, plaster is reattached, and the frame is left to speak.
From the archive
Реставрация исторического дома — это не только дизайнерское решение, но и решение, продиктованное правилами. В историческом районе даже, казалось бы, незначительная замена перил крыльца, оконной створки, изменение линии крыши, установка нового забора или пристройка могут потребовать официального рассмотрения до того, как на объект завезут материалы. Я не раз видел, как владельцы, вдохновлённые архивными фотографиями, заказывали точные […]
Historic houses reward steady care. Small problems that would be annoying in a newer home can become expensive or irreversible in an older one, especially when moisture, movement, and incompatible repairs are involved.
The safest approach is simple: inspect the house regularly, do the small work on time, and keep a written record of what […]
After fifteen years of walking through old houses, I’ve learned that plaster tells the truth about a building if you know how to listen. A crack running diagonally from a window corner isn’t just a crack — it’s a record of how the framing settled in 1923. A hollow patch above the baseboard might trace back […]
Every old house is a document. Before you repair it, learn to read it, because the most valuable thing a restoration can keep is the evidence of how the house was made.
Catalogue of subjects
