Face the future: it's time to stop looking backward for construction materials and methods

Residential Architect, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Michael McDonough

Nostalgia is a thing of the future," say the Irish. Nostalgia for a nonexistent golden age of building looms large among a considerable segment of the construction industry as we move into the 21st century. And it is a diverse segment, too: old-timers who wax poetical about the way things were "in the day"; youngsters starting-out-with-stars-in-their-eyes who sense something is awry; bed-and-breakfast charm consumers; cut-stone garden wall lovers--they all chime in. "Everything was better then," and "good old-fashioned this and that," and "they just don't make 'em the way they used to."

And, fair enough, in many ways they are not wrong. It needs to be noted right up front that a lot of really bad building exists out there. Hit-and-run contractors, shoddy work that falls apart beginning the moment the warranty runs out, poor labor practices, repetitive "out-of-the-drawer" designs, products that over-promise and under-deliver, building materials so bad that building codes had to be dumbed down so they could be installed, and so forth ad nauseam.

And believe me, I know. I watched my grandfather mix paint from linseed oil and pigment. I watched my father excavate, frame, plumb, wire, heat, roof, and finish houses. Heck, I started assisting the old man as a cabinetmaker when I was 12. And that was before I went to architecture school and traveled the world looking longingly at buildings that had stood the test of time for thousands of years. Ah, the masonry plinth block, the old-growth heartwood cove siding, the hand-forged hardware, the slate roofing tiles, the ink-on-linen plans ... I know, dear reader, I know.

So, in many ways, the nostalgic among us are not wrong. But they are wrong in a fundamental way that ultimately counts the most. Consider: Nostalgia, and that is what we are getting at here, is a longing for the past characterized by sentimentality, wishful thinking, and the desire for something that can never be recovered. And therein lies the rub: It isn't going to happen and wouldn't work if it did. And worse, it prevents us from tracking a course that can happen and will work. It is both a grand illusion and a time wasting distraction because real solutions do exist.

the not-so-charming house

"Nests." That is what the old-timer-who-has-constructed -and-reconstructed-buildings-for-well-over-30-years was saying. The old Dutch Colonial farmhouses of Ulster County, N.Y., were the subject of our conversation. Beautiful things--drywall foundations; timber trusses; lower stories of wide-mortar, semi-coursed, site-sourced fieldstone; upper stories of hand-cut clapboards; and handmade windows throughout. The doors were solid plank with hardware from the blacksmith down the road. The fireplaces were stone with oak mantle-trees and bluestone hearthstones. These beauties date from more than 200 years ago and are the result of homegrown inventiveness; no precedent exists for them in Europe. They are literally a product of this particular land (the stone is unique to Ulster County) and its bounty. These are the houses on postcards, the country inns, rich men's weekend homes, and three-star restaurants. To me, they seem a wonderful legacy. But my guy, who, it must also be noted, has lived in one of the things his entire life, calls them "nests."

The subject came up when we were discussing how old houses had 10 times more air infiltration than new houses and how this was, in some ways, a real benefit. "Yeah, sure," he said. "You get in there and you have rotting beams, blown-out footings, rats, bats, squirrels, mice, ants, termites, and spiders. Spiders like to make their webs where there's moving air, and in those old places there's moving air everywhere. At least the spiders eat some of the wasps. The fireplaces were so poorly built that they filled the places with smoke, which is a carcinogen, and they created creosote that led to chimney fires, which burned the houses down. And the fireplaces had to be big because the places had no insulation, and the windows rattled around in their frames. The wells were hand dug, rarely more than 35 feet, and so were full of runoff from the fields and forests. That's why they drank wine and beer; it didn't have bear fecal matter (he didn't actually say 'fecal matter') in it. Then there's the mold and mildew."

OK, he was a bit cranky, but I had to respect his experience. He had actually gotten in there and done the heavy lifting. In living in and rebuilding the things, he had learned where the battlelines were drawn; he had crossed them and taken fire. Mr. "Cranky-But-Correct" went on a bit longer. "Even with the 20th-century 'improvements,' the aluminum wiring was a fire hazard, the potable water supply plumbing was soldered with lead, and the waste lines were hand-tamped with oakum and lead. The paint had lead in it." (I do recall my grandfather adding lead to the oil and pigment.) "At one point, every tree in Ulster County was cut down, streams diverted, polluted, and filled with turbidity and runoff, fish killed off, animal species made extinct. You aren't seeing the whole picture."