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
Historic houses are not just old structures with good bones. Their ownership stories explain how a building changed, survived, and stayed meaningful across generations. For owners, buyers, and preservation-minded readers, that history is often the difference between treating a house as a commodity and understanding it as a living record of craftsmanship, use, and care. […]
Determining the architectural style of an old house is equal parts detective work and pattern recognition. The most reliable approach is to read the building’s overall form first—its massing, roof shape, and symmetry—and only then narrow the field by examining windows, porch details, materials, and ornament. Guessing from a single decorative flourish is the fastest […]
Every old house carries a timeline in its walls, floors, and repairs. If you know where to look, you can read that timeline and separate the original building from later changes, which is the key to understanding what the house is, what it has survived, and what kind of restoration it actually needs.
Why a […]
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
