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NOWHERE_VICTORIANS

                                           October 30, 2001
"The Geography of Nowhere"
(1993) by James Howard Kunstler
has a very good summary of
architechtural history.                           NOWHERE_MAN


History of the Victorian:

   "The revolution started with what was at
   first mockingly called the 'balloon
   frame.'  Prior to this time, all wooden
   houses-- whether Georgian, Greek,
   Federal, Gothic, or vernacular
   farmhouse-- were supported by
   post-and-beam frames.  Massive timbers
   were connected by joints, such as the
   mortise-and-tenon, and secured with
   wooden pegs called 'trunnels' (from tree
   nails).  Hand-wrought iron nials
   existed, but they were mainly used for
   finish work, and were so terribly
   expensive that families leaving New
   England to settle western New York and
   Ohio knocked apart the insides of their
   old farmhouse in order to salvage
   precious nails for the next homestead.
   [...]  By the 1840s this began to
   change."

                     p.161

And so on.

He touches on:

White pine forests in upper Michigan.

Canal shipping.

Factory-made steel-wire nails.

At one point, he suggests
baloon-frame houses rot and      That would not seem to be the San
sag after roughly a lifetime.    Francisco experience, but then,
Meaning what, 50 years, 100?     maybe SF has the weather gauge.
                                 And the Victorian's do need to
                                 have dry rot repaired on occasion.

More:

   "The light and versatile wooden frame
   made possible all those turrets,
   balconies, bays, cupolas and porte
   cocheres of the Victorian styles. ..."

   "At the same time, factories
   mass-produced wooden mill-work --
   brackets, spindles, balusters, shutters,
   moldings, and all manner of decorative
   items --  ..."

   "These houses became such exercises in
   wretched excess that the next generation
   ran shrieking back into neoclassicism."
                         p. 163


   "Discusses a book by Downing and Davis
   called _Cottage Residences_, published
   in 1842:  'The plans offered by Davis
   and Downing formed a schematic basis for
   the orgy of styles that followed, which
   came to be bundled under the rubric
   ''Victorian.'' ' "       p. 159


All of this is from Chapter 9, "A Place
Called Home", and it left me puzzled.

It's a history of American building
styles, and I get the sense it's
supposed to be a tale of decline.
Myself, I have trouble perceiving where
things are supposed to shift from good
to bad.

One remark:

   "The tragic thing is that there
   existed in America a fine
   heritage of regional
   home-building traditions, rich
   with values and meanings, and
   we threw it all away." p. 149

Is his concept that everything *after*
the invention of the baloon frame
sucks?  That would be *extremely*
reactionary, in my opinion, but he          Funny: does he
does appear to be sneering at               loathe *both*
Victorians in places ("frippery",           "Modern", and
"orgy of styles").                          "Victorian"        AGES
                                            Architcture?

   If baloon-frame Victorians                  In his TED talk,
   are okay, when did things stop              he states the          3/2009
   being okay?                                 conventional New
                                               Urban opinion that
                                               the United States
                                               went the wrong
                                               direction after WWII.
                                               But the picture he
                                               uses for the pre-WWII
                                               golden era is
On page 168, he talks                          actually a line
about the lack of charm,                       drawing of a
and charm being related                        horse-and-buggy era.
to connectedness, and the
car is the villain that                             What about, say,
produces the                 Possibly he            New York in the
disconnect...                envisions a            1930s?
                             steady
                             collapse                  The Jane Jacobs
   If Victorians are         proportional              take on these
   Not Okay, you             to technical              issues is much
   can't blame that          advance,                  more reasonable:
   on the invention          with the car              it isn't the car
   of cars.                  as the                    that's at fault,
                             capstone?                 but the roads.



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