Homes
Custom timber-frame homes, built the old way with modern precision: a pegged frame of green timber sawn to size by local mills, every piece modelled and cut to fit, raised as a kit. The first house is being designed now; its frame appears here as the other buildings do.
- Homestead, Concept A — the whole homestead: its drawings, its systems and the site in 3D
- The starter — a single-storey house of 2020, 48 by 36 feet, modelled as built: three bedrooms and two baths off a short hall, and the living room, dining and kitchen together under a 5/12 vault. Walk it room by room.
- A stick-built garage, finished inside — a 32 by 40 foot steel-sided garage with a loft, modelled as built and finished as planned: knotty pine, white paint, red oak, before and after a design review, and what the materials cost. Walk it from the big door to the loft.
- The Hinckley House and its grounds — the Queen Anne house of 1886, framed from its measured drawings and turned onto its lot inside a planting after Frank J. Scott, in 3D as it grows over sixty years.
- Homestead House, Concept A — the first house, a concept design · materials
- Homestead Shop, Concept A — the garage and timber shop a crew raises first · materials
- Homestead Greenhouse, Concept A — the greenhouse over a sunken orchard, with its bath house · materials
- Homestead Hub, Concept A — three shipping containers under one timber roof, a covered works between · materials
- Homestead Outdoor Kitchen, Concept A — an open pavilion over the cook wall and oven · materials
- Homestead Walkway and Woodshed, Concept A — the enclosed walkway from the house to the greenhouse, and the woodshed · materials
- Homestead Bunkers, Concept A — the tunnels, stair shafts and cellar below grade: containers inside concrete shells
Grounds
Northern plant palette
Sixty plants: shade and shelterbelt trees, the shrubs of a screen, the orchards' apples, pears, plums and cherries, the greenhouse's trees and its basket strawberries.
Jekyll’s main flower border
Gertrude Jekyll’s border at Munstead Wood, traced drift by drift from her published plan, then replanted for zone 4a: what she grew that is hardy here stays, and what is not gives way to a plant of the same colour and height.
Scott’s Plate XIII
Frank J. Scott’s 1870 plan for a commodious house on a deep lot, redrawn from the plate and set round the Hinckley House of 1886 as the Historic American Buildings Survey measured it.
The master garden
Five classic gardens at their true sizes on one lawn: the monastery gardens of the Plan of St Gall, La Quintinie’s kitchen garden at Versailles, Scott’s villa lot, Jekyll’s main border and her garden at Millmead.
Frames we learned from
Historic buildings framed from their measured survey drawings, each pulled apart in raising order, each with a mill order.
Houses — timber frame
Pennsylvania
- Plain farmhouse
A simple two-story Pennsylvania farmhouse in the same pegged timber frame as the barn — stone cellar, summer beams, a front porch and the Dawdi Haus, the grandparents' wing. Proportioned from the Historic American Buildings Survey's measured drawings; the slider raises it.
New England
- Thoreau’s house at Walden
The ten-by-fifteen-foot frame Henry Thoreau hewed from white pines by Walden Pond in 1845, every stick “carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump.” From his own account in Walden; the roof’s slope from the 1854 title page.
- Comfort Starr House
A New England saltbox from its measured drawings, framed and pegged in oak: a two-story frame round a great stone chimney, a principal-and-purlin roof with wind braces, and a lean-to added behind under a long, flatter roof.
- Atwood-Higgins House
A Cape Cod house from its measured drawings: one story and an attic under a steep roof, walls of vertical pine planks spiked to sill and plate with no studs behind them, and a roof of pine trusses with purlins let into their backs.
Dutch
- Foster-Armstrong House
The wood-frame part of a 1790s New Jersey house from its measured drawings, framed and pegged under a Dutch gambrel: the rafters butted on a purlin that stands on a braced knee wall in the attic, a tie beam beside every pair.
French colonial
- The Louis Bolduc House
The Louis Bolduc House at Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, built about 1792: hewn oak posts standing on a sill with clay and straw between them, six king-post trusses, and a roof that breaks to a flatter pitch and runs out over a gallery on all four sides. Framed from the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Georgian
- Wanton-Hunter House
A Newport house of about 1746 from its measured drawings, framed and pegged under a gambrel roof: a center hall between two bents, two chimney stacks the floors and roof are framed around, a stair round an open well to both upper floors.
- John Imlay Mansion
A Georgian house of 1790 from its measured drawings, framed and pegged: a center hall, a spine of posts under the ridge, two chimney stacks the floors and roof are framed around, a garret with three dormers, a dog-leg stair, and a kitchen and an office wing, each with its own chimney.
Greek Revival
- Mason Farmhouse
A Greek Revival farmhouse from its measured drawings: a story-and-a-half upright with its gable to the road, a one-story wing beside it with a porch set in behind two square columns, and a kitchen ell whose roof meets the wing's in valleys.
- Chester Moffett House
A Greek Revival farmhouse from its measured drawings: a two-story centre with its pediment to the road and a story-and-a-half wing either side, a porch set into the back of each wing.
- Benjamin Church House
A Greek Revival temple-front cottage in Milwaukee, from its measured drawings: one story, a portico of four fluted Doric columns under a roof hipped over it, and a hipped bedroom wing either side.
- Inge-Stoneham House
A Texas Greek Revival house of the 1850s from its measured drawings: one story under a hipped roof, a gabled portico on two columns, and a wing of plank walls — box construction — behind, the roofs run together along valleys.
- William Hadwen House
A Nantucket Greek Revival house of 1844–45 from its measured drawings: two stories under a hipped roof carried on a ring of purlin plates, and a portico of four columns two stories tall whose pediment runs back into the roof.
Shaker
- Watervliet Brothers’ Dormitory
The Shakers' Brothers’ Dormitory at Watervliet, New York, from its measured drawings: two stories of plain frame on a stone cellar, two front doors each into its own stair hall, and an attic behind a knee wall where one king-post truss stands on the attic floor.
Finnish
- Finnish log house
A Finnish settler’s hewn-log house from the cutover of northern Wisconsin: 18 by 24 ft, a story and a half of hemlock logs dovetailed flush at the corners and log to the ridge. The Matt Johnson Log House, 1898, from its National Register nomination and one photograph.
Houses — stick frame
- NLMA House, 1929
The model house the lumber manufacturers drew in 1929 to show how a frame house goes together: two stories and an attic under a hipped roof, framed western — each story on its own floor platform — in the dimension lumber of the day.
- John C. Cowing House
An Illinois farmhouse of about 1855, surveyed to show balloon framing: studs one length from the sill to the plate, a ribbon let into them carrying the upper floor, joists nailed to the studs.
- The Lace House
A Carpenter Gothic cottage of 1863 in a Colorado mining town: a gable to the street, a wing under a cross gable, a story and a half under steep roofs, framed as the balloon frames of its day were.
- The Chisholm House
An early Foursquare of 1889–90 in a Maryland railroad suburb: a square house under a hipped roof with three dormers, a two-story bay with a canted corner and a sun room built into one corner, and a porch across the front, balloon framed.
- The Hinckley House
A Queen Anne house of 1886 in Hinsdale, Illinois, from its measured drawings: a hipped roof with cross gables, a corner turret (a canted bay under a round top story and a cone) and a wraparound porch on Ionic columns, balloon framed.
- The House of the Seasons
An Italianate villa of about 1872 in Jefferson, Texas, named for the cupola on its roof, each side glazed in the colour of a season: a truncated hip behind a parapet, a captain’s walk, a portico and a gallery, balloon framed.
- The Gamble House
The Gamble House in Pasadena, framed as Greene & Greene drew it in February 1908: a platform frame on redwood sills, a second story overhanging the first, roofs at four ridge heights on deep eaves, and a billiard room astride the main ridge.
Barns
- Pennsylvania bank barn
A timber-framed barn on a stone stable level, banked into the slope with a forebay overhang — proportioned from the Historic American Buildings Survey's measured drawings of a real Pennsylvania barn. The slider is the barn raising: bents stand up one at a time, then the plates, purlins and rafters.
- Watervliet Shaker Cow and Hay Barn
The Shakers' cow and hay barn at Watervliet, New York, from its measured drawings: ten bays over a stone cellar, hay mows two floors deep, and a driveway on the top floor that a loaded wagon reaches by a ramp, so the hay only ever goes down.
- Shawver Plank-Frame Dairy Barn
A 100 by 40 ft dairy barn framed entirely of 2-in lumberyard plank on John L. Shawver's system of 1904: an 8-ft plank basement for the cows, a gambrel loft for the hay held up by Shawver's truss — an arch of single planks bolted through doubled posts — with no interior posts to get in the way of the hay fork, and no plank longer than 24 ft.
- Johannes Decker Barn
A New World Dutch barn from the Hudson Valley: six H-shaped bents, each a pair of tall posts locked together by a great anchor beam whose tenons run through the posts and out past them, wedged. A threshing floor down the middle under a high hay loft; the animals in low aisles either side. Framed from the Historic American Buildings Survey.
- De Clerque Barn
A New World Dutch barn from Bergen County, New Jersey: five H-shaped bents, each a pair of tall posts joined at the eaves by an anchor beam whose tenons run through the posts and are cut off flush and pinned. A board threshing floor between the posts; the wagon doors in both gables; the aisles either side low and narrow. Framed from the Historic American Buildings Survey.
Workshops
- The West Family Workshop (the Broom Shop)
The Watervliet Shakers' West Family broom shop: four floors of brick over a stone cellar, and inside them the timber of its floors and roof and the hoist that lifted work through a well in every floor, drawn part by part in 1941.
Bridges and meeting houses
- Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge
Two spans of Town lattice truss across the Connecticut River, 450 ft, built in 1866 from squared spruce notched and bolted at every crossing — the last bridge in the country framed that way. From its measured drawings, as built.
- Shaker Meeting House, Mount Lebanon
The Shakers' 1824 meeting house: a 63 ft room with no post in it under seven arched trusses, each principal rafter four planks bent and laminated, pinned by radiating prince posts to a double tie beam and a curved ceiling rafter. From its measured drawings.
Mills
- Betz's Mill
A Pennsylvania German gristmill of about 1770: an overshot wheel drives two pairs of millstones through a train of wooden gears — a 60-cog face wheel, a 24-round lantern, a 54-cog face wheel and a 13-round lantern — mounted in an oak hurst frame. From the Historic American Engineering Record, which found the gearing intact.
- Peirce Mill
The gristmill in Rock Creek Park, Washington: an overshot wheel drives two pairs of millstones through the classic English train — a pit wheel, a lantern wallower, an upright shaft and a great spur wheel driving two stone nuts — in an oak hurst. Modelled with its whole site from the 2014 lidar: the race, the flume and its gate, the tailrace and the creek, the gears turning to the water let through the gate and slowed by the tail water. From the Historic American Buildings Survey's drawings of 1990.
Frames — pergola and trusses
- Pergola bay
Four posts, two beams, knee braces and rafters in timber-frame joinery; the model comes apart in the order it is raised.
- Timber roof trusses
King post, queen post, scissor, hammerbeam, cruck and arch-braced collar in one generator — every joint a catalogue row, pegged, and the frame comes apart in the order it was assembled. Proportions are illustrative, not engineered.