Creole floor plans

A while back I was rambling on about Creole houses and how interesting they are. Now Carnival is right around the corner and it put in mind of New Orleans and Mardi Gras and I'm right back at those lovely Creole houses. Since I already posted some pictures, I might as well post some floor plans so you can get an idea of how they are (or were) inside:

Porte-Cochere Creole townhouse

Prudhomme House

Laura Plantation

It must have great bones...

It must have great bones to have survived all this time in one piece... more or less. At the time of the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1953, the house had been empty for a while and was in poor shape: the roof was sagging, the wood was in bad condition and the maple tree at the back of the house was not doing it any favours. The roots were messing with the foundation and the low branches scraping the roof probably weren't helping either. You can see some of the problems in early 20th century pictures of the house and in the survey's photos:

Early 20th century postcard and Historical American Buildings Survey photo

In the postcard you can see the roof sagging and in the 1950s photo, the maple tree had practically engulfed the house. Fortunately, it has since been restaured and it now looks as pretty as a picture.
And speaking of pictures, I found a lot of them from the outside, but none showing the interior. The only clue I have about that is from the survey's drawings. See everything here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/ma0323/. The survey's floor plan can be a little confusing because of all the details, so I made a cleaner version:

Inside Auld Lang Syne

The kitchen and lean-to walls were unfinished and had no ceilings, you could see straight to the roof. It had no staircase, but a ladder leading to the attic space. And I take it that by the time of the survey, the partition wall was gone. I don't know which parts of the house were the original 17th century shack. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the recommended literature about the development of the house. Shame... I would really like to know.

WARNING: entering Dreamland!!
Obviously, I imagined what it would be like to live in this little cottage. So, imagining that the cottage would be as in the survey's floor plan, it would have to be slightly modified (nothing that couldn't be undone) to fit basic modern life. The kitchen and lean-to walls would have to be finished in the same way as the rest of the house. A ceiling could be installed, but since the kitchen is so small, it could use the height to give it a sense of space, so... no ceiling. The old partition wall would have to go back up and a second wall would be built, dividing the new big room into two. The problem here is that one of the chambers would have no window, but unless you'd be willing to mess with the house's structure and install one, you' just have to use lamps. The doors separating the living room and the kitchen from the tiny hallway would be removed, opening up the space a bit and allowing more light in the kitchen. The dorrs would be reused in the new chambers. Some basic plumbing and wiring later, the cottage would look like this:

An hypothetical floor plan of Auld Lang Syne

Now, it's a tiny cottage, so you'd have to be careful when decorating it. I suppose the best way to go would be to opt for simplicity: simple furniture and light colours. Here are some ideas:

And some details: beachy wall art, some colourful pillows, your beach treasures, of course, candle holders with a nautical feel, and a bold shower curtain to liven the bathroom. Just a suggestion...

There, I'm done dessecrating Auld Lang Syne. It's just a day dream anyway, no harm done...

Lovely Savannah

The movie is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, with John Cusack and Kevin Spacey. The book is by John Berendt. The location is Savannah, Georgia. The house is Mercer House, where Jim Williams DID live, and his assistant WAS killed, and where Jim Williams DID die, but NOT in the same spot as his assistant, as the story goes. Story also goes that it's haunted. I don't know...

I thought the house was lovely and it made take a closer look at this town. The historic district is packed full of lovely old houses, like these:

And lovely squares and gardens, like these:

And, if you're still stuck on the 'haunted' thing, there's Bonaventure Cemetery, which is also haunted:

The Bird Girl statue used to be there, but it gained a lot of popularity after being the cover of the book and it was since removed to the Telfair Museum of Art to avoid mishaps. But moving on...
Some years after seeing the movie, while searching for old houses on the net, I came across this old floor plan of a post American Civil War house that put me in mind of the Savannah houses. Here's the drawing:

Nothing in the drawing or the description of the house links it to Savannah in particular, it's just a fancy of mine. There were probably many similar houses throughout the South, but for some reason, I looked at that porch and thought 'Savannah'. It could be, just look at the pictures above.
Apparently, the house was built in 1868 for a mechanic with means, but it doesn't say where. I only assume it's in the South because it's called a Civil War Reconstruction Home (and the South did undergo a major reconstruction effort after the war) and it's part of this catalogue:

Inside, it would have looked like this:

And, of course, in my mind I immediatly started wondering how it would be like to live in it...

The Saltbox

I like old houses. I've said it before when I talked about Cape Cod houses and I'll say it again now. I like houses that have been around a couple of centuries. They've been through things, have stories of their own and that tickles my fancy for some reason. That's why one day I got into my head to research early American houses. I found the Cape Cod house and the Saltbox house. Now, I had heard of the Saltbox, but I didn't quite understand what it was. Let's face it, a Saltbox front the front is not exactly distinct from, say, the Cape Cod:

So I decided to find out exactly what made a Saltbox a Saltbox and here's what I found out:
Like the Cape Cod house, it originated in New England in the 17th century. It most likely started out as a simple hall and parlour house, or hall and parlour, plus two bedrooms above, if it was a two storey house. As the family grew, a lean-to was added to the back of the house, lowering the roof line on that side.

 Here's a cross section of a Saltbox:

The name came about because of the resemblance to a salt box with it's slanted lid:

Saltboxes were mostly timber framed houses, metal being expensive back then and wood abundant in the New World, and the exterior was covered with clapboard or shingles.
Inside, it's not that different from a Cape Cod house: there was a hall and a parlour, and at the back, a keeping room and some extra rooms, depending on the needs of the owner. Upstairs there were two bedrooms directly above the hall and parlour, and maybe some extra storage space. There was a large central chimney surrounded by fireplaces in each room, and the staircase was normally in front of the main door. You can see pictures and floor plans of two original Saltboxes here:

• John Howard Payne Memorial, built in 1660: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ny0775/
• Deborah Sampson house, built in the late 1700s: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma0887/

And since I've been carrying on about Nantucket all this time, I couldn't miss this opportunity to speak of it a little more. The oldest house on Nantucket, still standing in it's original site, is a Saltbox. The Jethro Coffin house was built in 1686 and it's known as the Oldest House. It has a very distinctive design on the chimney, which earned it the nickname Horseshoe House.

You can see the pictures and floor plans of the house here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma0320/
Ok, I'm almost done, just bear with me a little longer. There's two more Saltboxes I would like to show you: one was where John Adams, 2nd president of the United States, was born, and the other is where he lived part of his life and the birthplace of his eldest son, John Quincy Adams, 6th president of the United States. Both houses are just a few feet away from each other.

See the pictures and floor plans here:

• John Adams, built in 1681: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma0554/
• John Quincy Adams, built in 1663: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma0553/

Just to finish off, here's some pictures of 17th century American interiors, just so you can have an idea of how these houses looked like back then.

The Cape Cod house

I've noticed that the information about the Cape Cod houses is a bit spread about, so I'm going to tidy it up a bit. Here's what I've learned about these houses:

They were built in the New England area from the 17th century onwards. That's New Egland in red and the little hook is Cape Cod.

The first houses were small and later became known as 'half Capes'. As families grew, the houses grew, and two other types of Cape Cods came to be: the 'three quarter Cape', and the 'full Cape'. They basically looked like these:

Half Cape                     Three quarter Cape                  Full Cape

You can see some actual examples of these houses here:

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma0049/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ma0057/

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/hh/item/ma0042

As for the inside, the layout was basically a hall and parlour in the first one, plus a keeping room and storage rooms in the other ones. Upstairs you had one or two bedrooms, plus storage in the bigger ones. Each room had a fireplace, which was connected to a large central chimney. Along with the low ceilings, this helped keep the house warm during the cold winters. In the full Capes the staircase was right in front of the door, nestled between the fireplaces. The walls had wainscoting, because of the humidity, and were painted white, and the trimming of doors, cabinets and fireplaces was painted in colours reflecting the Cape seaside: blues for the ocean, beges for the sand and reds for the sunsets. The floors were hardwood, except in the kitchen, where tile was used.

Some examples of how Cape Cod interiors could be

On the outside, Cape Cods had steep roofs to avoid snow acumulation, the walls where clad in clapboard or shingles, unpainted, and the windows had shutters to protect them from the stormy winds. They normally faced south to take advantage of the sunlight and warmth in the winter.

An original 'half Cape'