AN ELECTRIFYING CENTURY

Victorian-era water closet: Eventually, it was
allowed into the room with the bathtub.
(Image courtesy of Plumbing Geek)

Like me, you probably don’t think twice about being able to switch on a light, draw a hot bath, turn up the heat, or call a friend on your land line. Yet just 140 years ago—a mere blip in the long history of domestic architecture—none of these things was possible.  Technologically, housing was still mired in the Middle Ages.

While it’s remarkable enough that these conveniences have only been with us for the last hundred forty years, it's even more amazing that all of them harken from the last three decades of the Victorian era, between 1870 and the end of the nineteenth century.  It was a time of explosive technical progress in domestic technology—the equivalent of our own end-of-the-century digital revolution.

A host of innovations, including piped-in hot and cold water, indoor bathrooms, central heating, electricity, and telephone all entered the modern home during this brief span of decades.

Central heating was a huge step forward, freeing floor plans
from their age-old tether to the fireplace chimney. Since
these furnaces worked by gravity alone, they had to be
located beneath the living area in a basement.

Gas lighting, known in Europe as early as the 1830s, was widely introduced in the U.S. just after the Civil War. Although it was sooty, noxious, and produced a feeble, unsteady light, it proved a harbinger of great progress during the remainder of the century.

The introduction of pressurized water systems by about 1870 set the stage for running hot and cold water and the advent of indoor plumbing. By 1880, most homes had an indoor toilet, although at first the Victorians, who were obsessed by fears of “deadly sewer gas”, confined it to its own little room—hence the term “water closet”. Later, however, the water closet was annexed to the room containing the bathtub—eventually yielding the now-familiar "bathroom".

By the end of the nineteenth century, light came at the mere
push of a button—a big improvement over lighting
a gas mantel, let alone a candle.

Although central heating was known as early as the 1820s, most middle-class homeowners couldn’t afford it, and instead relied on coal-burning fireplace grates for heat. This meant that every heated room had to adjoin a chimney, dictating compact, boxy floor plans clustered around one chimney for economy. By 1880, though, coal-fired central heating systems were becoming more commonplace. Aside from the obvious improvement in comfort and convenience over the fireplace, central heating freed room arrangements from their historical tether to the central chimney, encouraging the rambling, asymmetrical floor plans of late Victorian home styles such as Queen Anne.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell spoke the famous words, “Watson, come here; I want you,” through his experimental transceiver and, for better or worse, unleashed the telephone on society. By 1900, it was already quite commonplace in homes across America. 

Early electric lighting fixture intentionally flaunted
naked bulbs fo that they couldn't possibly be mistaken
for old-school gaslights.

Gas lighting made a big leap forward with the1887 introduction of the Welsbach gas mantel, which produced a brighter, soot-free flame. But by that time the fate of gas lighting was already sealed: Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, had seen to that when he invented the incandescent lamp in lamp in 1879. By the mid-1890s, the electrification of the United States was already well underway. Electric lighting was such a powerful symbol of progress that early lighting fixtures proudly flaunted bare bulbs, so that no one could mistake them for gas lamps.  It wouldn’t be long before each room in the house had an incandescent ceiling fixture and—wonder of wonders—a single electrical outlet.

Think about that the next time you plug in your computer, monitor, backup drive, printer, phone charger, desk lamp, and shredder.

MANSARD, M’SIEUR?

The Mansard roof has become synonymous
with the streetscapes of Paris.

If you want proof that architectural styles are cyclical, just look at houses with mansard roofs.  They’re easy to pick out, because their curious roofs have two pitches—a steeply-sloped lower one and an upper one that’s nearly flat. Unlike many residential styles we've looked at in these little essays, Mansard-roofed houses aren’t confined to a single era; in fact, they’ve recurred many times over the centuries, often with little more than their eye-catching roofs to relate them.

The mansard roof first appeared in France early in the 16th century, when Parisian flats were taxed on the number of stories they contained. Legend has it that the steep front slope was used to hide an additional story, thereby duping the taxman. However humble its origin, the mansard soon appeared uptown as well, where it graced such Gallic landmarks as the Palace of the Louvre.

Beginning in the 1620s, the French architect Francois Mansart (1598-1666) made such prolific use of this roof style that posterity eventually linked it with a corrupted form of his name: mansard. The charismatic shape remained a staple of French architecture throughout the Renaissance, when it was used in ever more elaborate forms.

The mansard very quickly moved upscale, as can be seen
at the Palace of the Louvre (designed by a whole series
of architects over the centuries, though culminating
 in I.M. Pei's very un-Mansartian glass pyramid).

The mansard roof returned again in the 1860s, this time as the latest craze in the succession of revivalist styles we call Victorian. Architects and builders of this era were no less creative with the mansard than their predecessors. The profile of the steep portion might be flat, concave or convex; some even boasted an exuberant S-curve.  The roof’s surfaces were often adorned with various combinations of “fishscale” and other shingle patterns; some even sported polychrome decoration. Cresting—lacy iron fencing defining the roof’s perimeter—formed the icing on this mansard confection. Alas, most Victorian houses lost their original cresting to World War II scrap metal drives. 

During the Modernist era, a mansard roof
signified a style that was fusty, outdated,
and, well, a little creepy—such as
Norman Bates's house in "Psycho".

 After a hundred years of slumber, mansard roofs returned for yet another encore in the mid-1960s, eventually flowering into one of the biggest architectural fads of 1970s. As such, mansards adorned a vast array of new homes and apartment buildings, not to mention donut shops, gas stations, and hamburger joints. The mansard roof was an easy way to make any building—old or new—look different.  Architects grafted them onto all kind of existing buildings as well. One manufacturer even offered a prefabricated mansard that could be literally bolted onto an existing two-story building, thus miraculously updating its look. And alas, many folks took him up on it.

Got a 60s or 70’s-era mansard on your house?  If so, you should feel privileged— you’ve got an architectural feature that traces its lineage all the way back to the Louvre.

The mansard roof made yet another comeback, peaking
as the red-hot style of the 1970s. Some examples worked,
some didn't.

Of course, mansards do have drawbacks.  Functionally, they combine the worst of both worlds: they have both a steep, hard-to-reroof portion, as well as a flat, leak-prone portion. The high visibility of the steep part makes it especially crucial to choose a decent roof material—composition shingle just won’t stand up to this kind of in-your-face scrutiny. On the other hand, many mansards aren’t sturdy enough to support heavyweight roof materials such as slate or concrete tile.  Now you know why McDonald’s used to put sheet metal shingles on their mansards.

Incidentally, a few highfalutin’ academics like to use the term “Second Empire” for Victorian homes with mansard roofs—a reference to the roughly-commensurate reign of Napoleon III.
Don’t be fooled.  It’s the same old roof with a fancier name.

"MODERNIZE" IF YOU MUST—BUT MAKE SURE IT'S 100% REVERSIBLE

"Pa, that new sliding window sure looks good."
Apologies to Grant Wood.

In the field of art restoration, there’s a thing called “the priniciple of reversibility”. It decrees that a restorer should never make any alteration to a work of art—regardless of how well-meaning—that can’t be undone again at some later date.   


The world of architecture would be better off if so-called “modernizations” followed this rule too, and for many of the same reasons. In architecture, as in art, aging is a natural process to be prized, not something to be frantically concealed.  Just as the aged and crackled surface of a Rembrandt doesn’t detract from its beauty, we should regard the effects of time on a building as part of its charisma.  But, please, somebody pinch me—I’m dreaming. 

Once upon a time, someone thought
acoustic ceiling tile was a great idea.
If only they hadn't glued it on. . .

Alas, the reality is that most homeowners eventually become bored with their homes, no matter how wonderful they are, and develop an itch for something new, different, and more fashionable. Conceding that people will always yearn for such “modernizations”, the least I can do is to invoke the principle of reversibility:  Always be able to undo what you’ve done in the name of fashion.  

Here are a few guidelines:

•  Be wary of adding  “quick spruce-up” materials such as acoustic ceiling tile, flimsy paneling, and the like unless you’re absolutely sure you can remove them later without damaging the original stuff underneath. Enthusiasm for such materials usually has a notoriously short lifespan, but the installations themselves often don’t. Case in point: the living room of my brother’s Colonial cottage, which was cursed with walls of ghastly 70-era diagonal cedar planks for twenty years after they’d gone out of fashion, all because the installer had affixed them with a permanent mastic that removed the plaster along with the planking.

Well, it seemed like a good idea in 1978.

•  Don’t paint over surfaces that weren’t painted to begin with. Every few decades, decorating fads swing back toward their cyclical infatuation with paint; it wasn’t so long ago that owners were busily painting over the gleaming hardwood interiors of their Victorians in an effort to make them more “modern”.  Those who resisted the incessant pull of faddism were ultimately rewarded with beautiful (and original) showplace interiors; those who didn’t became very intimate with paint remover.  That, by the way, is not what I mean by reversible.  

Recycled lumber is all the rage right now. It's great to be
green, but maybe not this green.

The make-it-reversible-or-leave-it-alone policy goes not just for wood, but for brick, tile, metal, glass, and concrete, not to mention truly irretrievable finishes such as lincrusta (a type of linoleum wainscot that was originally stained and varnished to resemble tooled leather) and—for Pete’s sake—stone and stone veneer. 

For those unswayed by aesthetic arguments, here’s a cold, hard factoid: A house with its original interior finishes intact generally commands a higher price at resale. Not a bad return, considering there’s less effort involved.

•  Lastly, try to get to know your home. Find out when it was built, and check into a few architecture books to learn about the ancestry of its style. Knowing why your house looks the way it does, and appreciating it on its own merits, will go a long way toward relieving the incessant longing for change and “modernity”— whatever that is. 

CONSULTING WITH AN ARCHITECT: Yes, It IS Worth the Money

Rome's Temple of Venus and Roma as it looks today:
The statues did, in fact, get up and walk away.

In the year 121, that fun-loving Roman emperor Hadrian began building himself a grandiose temple to Venus and Roma based on his own design. When it was finished, he proudly sent the plans to the renowned architect Apollodoros, ostensibly to obtain a critique. Actually, Hadrian’s motive was to show the architect (who had once insulted him) that great buildings could be designed without his help. Apollodoros duly responded that the temple should have been built on higher ground, to make it more visible from the Sacred Way. He also made a snarky comment regarding the excessive size of the seated statues, saying they would surely bash their heads on the ceiling if they stood up from their seats.

Hadrian, who reigned over
Rome from 117 to 138:
Now I'm really mad. . .

To Hadrian’s chagrin, he realized that the architect was right on both counts and that, worse yet, it was too late to rectify the blunder. His solution? Simple—he had Apollodoros killed.

It might have turned out better for everyone if Hadrian had consulted a good architect before his mistakes were, as it were, carved in stone. That lesson is just as valid today: Even if you don’t want to hire an architect to draw your plans—and there’s no law that says you must—at least consider hiring one for a few hours to critique your work. Yes, it will cost you a few hundred dollars, but you may well save thousands—even tens of thousands—in return. Here are some of the ways:

Mid-century bathroom: Should you take a
sledgehammer to it, or save some money
and sell it like it is?

•  An architect may be able to save you money using “design by subtraction”.  Surprisingly often, eliminating parts of a project will actually improve it. For example, I recently did some consulting for the rehab of a lovely but poorly-maintained home from the 1950s. Among other things, the owner was planning to rip out an entire bathroom, complete with its original fixtures and tile work, because he
felt its shabby appearance would be a hindrance to resale. In fact, the bathroom just needed some diligent stripping and cleaning to regain its appeal. Moreover, to a buyer interested in a home of that vintage, having the original plumbing and lighting fixtures in place would prove far more attractive than any modern replacement. Net savings: a cool twenty thousand dollars.

•  A good architect—and I stress the word good—can guide you toward a truly timeless solution. Of-the-moment designs, such as those espoused by many designer magazines, quickly grow stale and result in a loss of resale value over time. A skillful architect can distinguish between the timeless and the trite, and can steer you away from gimmicks that’ll be an embarrassment in a year or two. 

No, this is not a black-and-white photo. Consulting
with an architect might dissuade you from using
faddish color schemes such as this one.

•  An architect’s experience  can often turn design mountains into molehills. While you may already have already spent weeks wrestling with a design problem that seems insoluble—say, an awkward kitchen arrangement—chances are your architect has already dealt with that same problem a hundred times over. He or she may well be able to suggest a solution right on the spot. In particular, you might wish to seek advice before choosing paint colors. Color fads are notoriously short-lived—as the scads of moldering, gray-on-gray-on-gray paint jobs from the Aughts will demonstrate.

•  Lastly, remember that what you build will be standing for a long, long time;  in retrospect,  springing for a few hours of advice will seem like a bargain compared to living with a spate of permanent errors. Just ask Emperor Hadrian.

BACK IN THE DAYS OF DECO

La Maîtrise Pavillon for Galeries Lafayette, among the
fantastical structures that introduced the public to Art Deco
at the Paris Exposition in 1925.

In April 1925, an exposition opened in Paris that was to influence American design for the next twenty years. It carried the unwieldy moniker: L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes . However, the name of the style it gave birth to is short and sweet: Art Deco.

The Exposition was meant to showcase only the most modern European design, whether in architecture or consumer products, so no historically-based decoration was allowed.  Instead one found a gaggle of fresh new motifs based on simple geometry: chevrons, flutes, zigzags and rays, as well as some highly stylized floral forms.

 William Van Alen's Chrysler
Building of 1930, whose pinnacle
is perhaps the best known
Art Deco structure in America.

By 1926, such design—which would not be called Art Deco until long after the fact—was already filtering into the American psyche via shop displays and movie sets. Also that year, architect Timothy Pfleuger wowed San Franciscans with his pointedly non-traditional Pacific Telephone Company building, thereby putting the style on the architectural map as well. In 1930, architect William Van Alen completed perhaps the most famous Art Deco structure around, the Chrysler building. In 1931, Pfleuger doubled down with his spectacular Paramount Theater in Oakland, another acknowledged masterpiece of the Art Deco era.

Art Deco remained a commercial style for the most part, yet residential architecture couldn’t help but be affected by it. For those architects and builders brave enough to break away from the traditional styles of the day, Art Deco brought a whole new look to housing. In many ways, it emulated Bauhaus design, with its flat roofs, curved walls, and bands of windows; yet true Bauhaus adherents would have been aghast at the further addition of strident colors and wild geometric motifs such as ziggurats, sunbursts, and lightning bolts.

The lobby of the Oakland Paramount Theater, designed by
Timothy Pfleuger and completed in 1931,
features the ultra-Deco "Fountain of Light".

In the mid 1930s, Art Deco branched into a related style known as Streamline Moderne. Its features were derived less from the Paris exposition than from industrial designers such as Raymond Leowy, who throughout the decade had been madly reshaping everything from typewriters to steam locomotives to mimic the fluid lines of modern aircraft. In 1935, Leowy painted “speed lines”on the nose of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s new streamlined S1 locomotives, suggesting the streaking of an object in motion. Ironically, this decorative device became a favorite motif on Deco and Moderne homes as well, despite the fact that these houses clearly weren’t going anywhere.

Raymond Loewy poses on the Pennsylvania Railroad's
S1 locomotive of 1939, whose heavily speedlined cowling
gave it a look of motion even when standing still.

By the eve of World War II, the palette of Deco/Moderne was well defined: stucco walls (often curved); glass block (often curved as well); steel casement windows; vitreous tile (an opaque glass wall finish available in various colors, though most commonly found in black);  stainless steel and chrome accents; and the now-familiar geometric ornament in low relief.

In years after World War II, a renewed sense of American pride led buyers back to the more home-grown look of Colonials and Ranchers, and the high-voltage era of Deco/Moderne quietly faded out like a dying battery. Since the style never really caught on with tract builders, Art Deco residences are quite rare, often appearing singly among the more popular bungalows and cottages of the era.

A small Art Deco jewel in San Franciso, circa
the late 1930s.
(Image courtesy of decopix.com)

The unique design of Art Deco and Moderne homes brings with it a number of characteristic troubles. The flat roofs and lack of overhangs beloved by this style often translate into maddeningly persistent leaks, as do the often poorly-waterproofed stucco details. Also, the  ubiquitous steel sash found in these houses—the leading-edge window technology of the 1930s—has a propensity to both rusting and sticking shut due to accumulated layers of paint.  

But hey, a Deco jewel is worth a little trouble, oui?

"ARCHITECT-DESIGNED" STUFF: Maybe We Should Stick to Buildings

Architect Gerrit Rietveld designed his iconic chairs—
this one dates from the early 1920s—as sculptural
statements. He didn't consult his butt regarding the design.

Architects, it seems, feel compelled to put their stamp on many things besides buildings. There are architect-designed lamps, architect-designed teapots, toilets, and lighting fixtures, and (heaven help us) architect-designed furniture. Few of these designs are particularly distinguished, despite the enormous publicity they often engender.  

What makes people think an architect is qualified to design everyday, utilitarian objects? You wouldn’t hire a surgeon to rebuild your motor; why expect an architect to excel at designing kitchenware? We architects are trained to design buildings. While many of us would like to think we’re just as dandy at designing other things, the facts don’t seem to bear this out.  

Frank Loyd Wright frequently designed furniture for his
houses; this dining set was for Chicago's famed Robie House
of 1909.  Wright was probably not the only one to be
black and blue from sitting in his furniture.

The architect’s compulsion to design more than just buildings dates way back. Stanford White, the darling of the late-nineteenth-century Vanderbilt crowd, was known to design not only the villas of the rich, but to choose their interior furnishings and decorate their parties as well. The “I-do-it-all” schtick didn’t really get rolling until the Modernists arrived, however. Because of the close alliance between Modernist architects and painters, sculptors, and other artists, early Modernists were early on bitten by the need to create some art and sculpture of their own.  

Wright's original chair design for the
S.C. Johnson Administration Building (1939):
It was redesigned with four legs.

Unfortunately, these works usually took the form of bizarre and unusable furniture that wasn’t much good for anything besides looking at. Architect Gerrit Rietveld's famed chair, designed in 1917 and built in various forms for a number of years afterward, was a stunning piece of sculpture, but a dubious place to park your hiney. More famous yet is Mies van der Rohe's so-called Barcelona Chair, a work of incomparable elegance, but once again an ergonomically unkind object in which to sit.

American Standard's Platner
toilet: Not a moneymaker,
but certainly a conversation piece.

Frank Lloyd Wright was perhaps the king of veering from his lane of expertise. Wright himself is quoted as saying, "I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture." Early in his career, Wright designed the dining table and chairs in his own Oak Park studio, where they engender grimaces from tourists to this day. This experience didn't seem to dissuade him, however, as even in the twilight years of his career, he provided office furniture designs for the S.C. Johnson Administration Building. These included a three-legged chair whose disturbing—if predictable—tendency to tip over required it to be revised into a four-legged version.

One of Katerina Kamprani's "Uncomfortable" items:
Finally, an architect who gets it.
(Image courtesy of Katerina Kamprani)

Despite the less-than stellar history of architect-designed household objects, attaching the names of architects to products continued to hold cachet. Hence, in the late 1980s, American Standard featured a line of plumbing fixtures designed by architect Warren Platner. The rather amorphous toilet and sink designs didn't sell especially well, but are surely collector's items by now.

One clever architect, Athens-based Katerina Kamprani, has turned the whole architect-designed-object fiasco on its head by creating what she calls "The Uncomforable"—a series of everyday objects that are deliberately unusable right from the outset. Apparently, Kamprani knows something that most of us haven't figured out yet.

DOMESTIC TECHNOLOGY: Not Rocket Science, But Still A Mystery To Some

Electricity was leaking all over the house.
(With appreciation to James Thurber).

Almost eighty years ago, the humorist James Thurber wrote about an aunt of his who had some profound misconceptions about technology. She was convinced, among other things, that electricity leaked out of empty light sockets. Today we like to think we’re pretty savvy about such things, but judging by some of the questions I get from clients regarding their houses, I suspect we all still have a bit of Thurber’s aunt in us:  

•  If I turn the thermostat way up, will my house heat up faster? Alas, no. The typical thermostat is more like an on/off switch than an accelerator; it’s activated by a bimetallic spring that responds to changes in temperature. Since it can’t do any more than turn the furnace on or off, setting the thermostat to 90° won’t heat the house any faster. However, if your furnace has a variable-speed blower (not all do), it may push the warm air a little faster than normal.

Yes, even the fanciest new thermostat
is still basically just an on/off switch.

• My refrigerator is supposed to cool things, so why is there warm air coming from the back? A refrigerator works by compressing a special gas called refrigerant. The gas gets hotter when it’s compressed, just as the air in a bicycle pump gets hotter. That heat is dissipated into your kitchen by a fan coil, which is where the warm air comes from. But here’s the neat part of the process: when the compressed gas is allowed to expand again, it tries to regain the lost heat by absorbing it from other objects—in this case, the warm six-pack you just put in the fridge. 

A refrigerator works by transferring heat from the inside
to the outside—where these radiator-like coils dissipate it
into your kitchen (most newer refrigerators have the coils
underneath, however).

•  Fuse, circuit breaker, GFCI, AFCI—what’s the difference? A fuse is a device meant to prevent too much current from flowing through a wire of given size, because when that happens the wire gets hot and, as Jesse Jackson might say, hot wires start fires. Fuses are found in most houses predating World War II; they consist of a screw-in socket enclosing a thin strip of metal.  When the metal carries more current than the rating of the fuse, the metal strip melts (or “blows”) and the circuit is broken.  

A ground fault circuit interruptor
may not look like much, but
it can save your life.

The problem with fuses has always been their multifarious ratings—10 amp, 15 amp, and so on. When one blew, no one ever seemed to have the right replacement on hand. So they’d cheat by grabbing a fuse with a higher rating (or worse yet, a copper penny), occasionally burning down the house as a result.

The inconvenience and frequent misuse of fuses brought us the circuit breaker. It’s essentially a switch that serves the same purpose as a fuse, except that when it “blows”, you simply reset it—hopefully after correcting the condition that made it trip. 

GFCIs, or Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters, are amazing little electronic devices that might save your life someday. Suppose you decide that, in order to save time, you’re going to blow-dry your hair while you’re still in the tub. Oops!  You dropped the hair dryer in the suds!  Fortunately, the GFI-protected receptacle you wisely installed in your bathroom senses that 120 volts is about to take a little road trip through your body, and within milliseconds, it shuts of the current. Relatively cheap (especially compared to being dead) and amazingly effective, GFI protection is now required by code for any receptacle within 6’  of sinks, lavatories or other water sources, as well as in garages and at outdoor receptacles. 

Arcs from frayed lamp cords can and do cause lots of fires,
which is why building codes now require AFCI-
protected outlets in bedroom.

AFCIs, or Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters, are similar devices that are now required by code in all sleeping rooms. Unlike GFCIs, they are designed to detect arcs such as those caused by, say, a frayed lamp cord—one of the leading causes of home electrical fires. They are only required in sleeping rooms because, presumably, the occupants of other rooms are awake and are more likely to detect an incipient fire.

•  And by the way, although electricity doesn’t leak out of an empty light socket, you can still fry yourself if you stick your finger in one—so keep a bulb in it for safety’s sake.