Track 3, Presentation 2
Then and Now: Specifications for Two Houses
Judith Capen
Principal, architrave p.c., architects
Robert Weinstein
Principal, architrave p.c., architects
All our built environments surround us with vernacular structures having minimal or no written records about them or the people who built and used them. This project is on a pair of houses in a historic district of 24,000 contributing structures. These houses, unlike most of their neighbors, have an extraordinary written record.
In 1885 a clarinet player in John Philip Sousa’s Marine Corps band contracted with a builder in Washington, DC, to build a pair of investment houses. The houses were built and occupied by renters until the death of the clarinet player’s granddaughter at age 105 in 2019.
Contacts with a neighbor, the clarinet player’s granddaughter, and a grandson of the builder brought me copies of some of the houses’ original construction documents:
· copy of the Spencerian script handwritten specification, transcribed into Times New Roman
· three sheets of drawings
· the houses
· a fully executed preprinted Contract for Construction between the same parties, musician and builder, for an earlier project
Using these primary sources, I am translating the 19th c. language and decoding construction specifics in the context of 1888: all with the houses themselves as resultant artifacts.
This specification governing a project between a builder and owner from over a century ago is both so familiar to an architect practicing today while being so inexplicable.
A current member of the Construction Specifications Institute would recognize the general order of the specification, basically that of construction, beginning with general provisions, proceeding with excavation and foundations, all the way through painting including gilding the house numbers on the front door transoms and a final section on plumbing.
A user of AIA MasterSpec would recognize the prescriptive language on compliance with local regulations. But the use of adjectives, like brick that is good hard burnt bricks and good red brick contrasts with our modern reliance on quantifiable testing standards to establish ‘good’ numerically.
Anyone in the construction industry would understand the attempt of the documents to describe the project fully, including annotations and insertions on the documents.
But few of us would know that a trimmer arch is. Or would recognize brand names of Sextus or Bibbs stoves as standards of quality. And why ‘wrot star anchors’ in new construction? And what quality is ‘best quality I.C. leaded charcoal roofing tin’? What is a ‘planished’ finish?
I have pulled 63 provisions from the specification for explanation, elaboration, or discussion. This presentation would introduce the documents and the houses and present several of the elaborated provisions in detail appropriate to a 20-minute presentation:
· Thermal comfort: heating systems (active) and architectural responses (passive)
· Metals specified: Iron, cast, plate, enameled, galvanized, and ’wrot’; ‘iron’ that’s really steel; planished copper; tin; bronze; and brass
· Gasification in Washington
Much of the detail in this specification can be applied throughout the country, reflecting a time of national population growth, doubling in the second half of the 19th c., and galloping industrialization. Some of the specifics bring us to this city just below the continental fall line on a tidal river, a characteristic shared with all the United States’ east coast colonial cities: geology shaping construction history.
In addition to the light cast on 19th c. construction, methods, and materials, this specification opens windows into the lives of working-class Americans in a retardataire city.
Finally, the elements of the houses that have survived is instructive as are the historic but not original elements.
Many changes to the buildings reflect technology, both development and adoption:
· a kitchen with appliances totally unknown in 1888
· electrical power
· a hydronic heating system
· fixture shuffling in bath and powder room including the original exterior WC moved indoors
· loss of common Victorian-era elements subject to requirements for annoying maintenance (windows, original front door, original wood front stoop and steps, pocket doors.)
Equally interesting are elements from the original construction, still functional:
· the old growth wood sill at the back door, solid after 130 years
· pivotting transoms at original second-floor doors
· highly ornamental bronze door hardware at front and vestibule doors
· wood trim throughout
Access to these documents allows a detailed look at modest, not pedigreed, late 19th c. construction.
Judith Capen is a registered architect and founding principal of award-winning architrave pc architects in Washington, DC. Her work, buildings, design, research, and art, have all received awards. She has taught, lectured on, and published extensively on architectural design, historic preservation, and energy.
Robert Weinstein is a registered architect, founding principal, and longtime CEO of recognized architrave pc architects in Washington, DC, specializing in historic preservation. He is an award-winning photographer and has lectured and published extensively on historic preservation, both technical issues and case studies.
