Re: Floorplans


Ric Locke <warlocke@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:m48yv1xwngkk.1wo3jy3feg8az$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:54:57 -0600, Suzanne A Blom wrote:
>
> > That was great, but, damn, when I did my rough sketch from it, even tho
you
> > say square, I still did the Milwaukee narrow-fronted house.--& that was
the
> > one thing I already knew was different from the few pictures I'd found.
This
> > is why I needed a plan to start from, to start to undo my
preconceptions.
> > Thanks again.
>
> Narrow houses are older than what you specified. The typical plan there is
> only one room wide, upstairs and downstairs, and the chimneys are on the
> extreme ends, with entries near the middle of the long walls. If the
> builder was saving money, porches go across the lower floor level; if he
> wanted to be pretentious, the porch roof is at upper level, with tall
> columns. The reason for it is ventilation -- one can open windows on both
> sides of the room for a breeze. Davy Crockett's house, in Missouri, is
like
> that. The style was on its way out about the time of the Civil War.
>
> Of course, in Milwaukee it was street frontage that controlled. You find
> the same in New Orleans, the so-called "shotgun" plan, three or four rooms
> in a row with entrances on the short side. Those are po'folks houses,
> though.
>
> In the plan I was describing, the kitchen flue is on the inside wall,
> between kitchen and dining room, near the outside of the house. It isn't a
> "chimney" because it doesn't serve a fireplace, only stoves: cookstove
> below, bedroom stove above. The "big" fireplace between parlor and dining
> room is closer to the outside of the house than to the hall, but there's
> room between it and the outside wall for (on the parlor side) a small
> closet, and (on the dining room side) the china closet. The big double
> doors are on the hall side of the closet.
>
> Note that in master bedroom and all the upstairs bedrooms the fireplaces,
> as such, have been closed off; the chimneys now serve as flues for bedroom
> stoves.
>
> The "small" fireplace, between "sitting room" and master bedroom, is
closer
> to the hall, again with room for a small closet there (the only remaining
> closet after the bathroom was added). There were once big closets on the
> outside wall side, but they went away when the bathroom went in.
>
> What I have been describing is a house belonging to the prosperous owner
of
> a foundry and machine shop in a small town. Around 1952 the wall between
> the entry hall and the sitting room came down, opening sitting room + hall
> space into a "living room" suitable for TV watching :-) The owner died in
> the mid-seventies, and the house is now a funeral parlor. It has been
added
> onto considerably. A smaller version, with only the lower floor, was my
> grandmother Warrick's house (built 1911). Grandmother Locke's house (built
> around 1922) did away with half of the hall, from front door to the wall
> between kitchen and dining room, and pushed the back out a bit to allow
for
> two bedrooms back there.
>
> Windows. One word: lots. Before air conditioning, ventilation was at an
> absolute premium. Across the front porch, four big windows facing the
> street, one facing the carriage portico (and a door there). The windows
> look quite odd to us, nowadays -- the bottom of the sash is only a foot or
> less off the floor, and the windows are six feet high and two and a half
> wide. Both upper and lower sashes open. Each sash is a single large pane
of
> glass, conspicuous consumption in those days (mullioned windows are a
relic
> of expensive glassmaking). Only the bathroom windows are up high. Each
> upstairs bedroom has two such windows on each outside wall. The master
> bedroom has three on the carriageway side and two on the back wall, one of
> which has been turned into a door for access to the "conservatory" porch.
>
> Ceilings are ten feet on the lower floor, nine on the upper.
>
> All the door facings are a full 6" wide except those of the front door,
> which are 8", and an inch thick. The upper crossbar of the facings is
> longer; it's cut off at an angle and milled lengthwise, giving an effect
> rather like the wings of the German eagle. Parlor wallpaper is heavy, a
> dark-tan background with dark-green and maroonish (dried-blood-color)
> velvet flower patterns. The dining room is paneled in mahogany, boards set
> vertical with milled beading. The sitting room is mostly bookshelves, but
a
> lighter version of the parlor wallpaper is visible...
>
> I can noodle this for hours :-)
>
Love it. I do believe I've got enough now. Anymore & I won't be able to put
any of myself (or Bessie Lee) into it. Thanks again.


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