News
Bank Records to Identify Photographs, an Untested Strategy
September 2024
New on Website: Untested Strategies
A new tab has been added to this website, called “Untested Strategies.” This will be a place to discuss unorthodox and untried research methods, sometimes of a speculative nature. The first method described is the potential use of banking records to aid in the identification of unidentified photographs.
Anyone who is aware of the actual use of such methods is encouraged to share information about these efforts, by email at rcraig@advancedoldbuildingresearch.com
Demolition Debris Reveals Clues of Saltbox House in NJ
August 1 2024
Scene for the Final Time: a New Jersey “saltbox” house
Many towns lose the tangible reminders of their history gradually, one piece at a time. Worse than the loss itself, however, is losing the buildings without knowing what was lost. Obliviousness leads to oblivion. In a nearby town, this house was demolished earlier this year. It was a peculiar house, never studied by any researcher to my knowledge. It was of a saltbox form that was unusual for central New Jersey but not unheard of, and suggested an early origin. Like other traditional architectural forms, saltbox houses, though reminiscent of New England, were built in New Jersey, though not frequently, between the late seventeenth century and the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
The outward appearance of this house probably dated from the 1870s, when it was moved to the site. Moved? Yes, it turned out to be a house of earlier origin with hewn sills, built on a brick foundation from the third quarter of the nineteenth century. It was given a new clapboard cladding, nineteenth-century 6-over-6 windows, and a Victorian-era front porch supported on heavy, turned posts. Its outer walls were paned with brick, but except for a few pre-industrial examples, these brick were of a uniform shape and size producible only with industrial brick-molding machinery of the nineteenth century.
It's important in such cases to look closely at the results of the demolition. It turns out that what was moved to this site was only the frame of an eighteenth-century house, not the entire house. In the demolition debris there were plenty of framing timbers that reflected construction practices from that period, but no wrought nails, no split lath and early plaster, and no original flooring. There were no early roof shingles and evidence only of replacement chimneys. The presence of painted joists in the debris indicates the lack of plaster ceilings, another construction practice that skews early.
The frame probably dated from the early years of settlement of that locale, in the second half of the eighteenth century, though the house faced a road that was in existence (in a different, now lost, alignment) since the 1720s.
Fire Insurance Record Collections
July 5 2024
New On The Website
Fire Insurance Record Collections
A new version of the directory of fire insurance record collections has just been posted. While the old version listed 26 collections from just four eastern states, the new version lists 40 collections from 12 states, including some western and New England ones. As more researchers learn the value of fire insurance records for the study of old buildings, the size and strength of this directory is likely to grow further. Those who are aware of other collections of fire insurance company or agency records (not Sanborns), are invited to share them to help the list grow, by sending information to rcraig@advancedoldbuildingresearch.com.
Original Cities Service Company Filling Station Facade Uncovered
June 9 2024
Scene Seldom: Cities Service
When a recently-closed ethnic food store building was redeveloped, the facade was taken off, revealing that the building started life as a Cities Service Company filling station. Cities Service, now long-since rebranded as Citgo, was a company founded in the 1910s to provide oil and natural gas products, and their refining and transportation. It became a significant gasoline retailer by the 1920s. This station was probably built about 1940-50. It stands facing a commercial highway built about 1935-40.
Although it may have been built before WW2, it also might have been built during the early postwar years. Its existence might have been knowable from Sanborn maps, other commercial maps, filed maps of subdivision, and telephone directories, but its appearance might likely have been published only through newspaper coverage at the time of its first opening, or in property record cards used in the property tax assessment process. The Cities Service logo was flanked by three horizontal bands as a painted finish, all in green, in a standard design common to all of its stations during the years of its use. Cities Service evidently avoided the enameled steel-panel designs of some major gasoline retailers.
The image of the Cities Service facade has once again been covered up as the rehabilitation and enlargement of the building has proceeded, though it is still there under the new finish work.
Fire Insurance Record Collections
November 2023
New On The Website
Fire Insurance Record Collections
The Spring / Fall 2023 issue of the journal Buildings and Landscapes carries my article describing the kinds of architectural information found in records produced and collected by insurance agents and fire insurance companies, especially from the 18th through the early 20th centuries. Go to Fire Insurance Records under “Special Projects” for a directory of these collections that includes a brief description of their scope.
More content under Mechanic Liens
More content has been added within “Record Types” under the sub-heading for “Mechanic Liens.” Readers who have information about the scope of mechanic lien records in states other than New Jersey, or about the laws surrounding mechanic liens and the filing or recording practices followed there, are invited to share them at rcraig@advancedoldbuildingresearch.com
Tally of New Jersey’s Patterned Brickwork Buildings Reaches 400
June 2023
Among New Jersey’s most admired early buildings are those built between about 1680 and 1830 that exhibit traditional forms of patterned brickwork, in which bricklayers used vitrified, often called “glazed,” bricks to make designs in the masonry.
In 1950 art historian Paul Love claimed that New Jersey held more such buildings than any of the other East Coast states, where such buildings were also built, and even more than all of them combined.
Although it hasn’t been possible to rigorously test that claim, New Jersey began more than a decade ago to enumerate all the examples of this vernacular architecture that could be found.
Working with both professional architectural historians and other admirers of these buildings, the tally grew until by 2017 it reached more than 375 buildings—the vast majority of them in the southwestern counties of the state. This figure includes both buildings that still survive today and those that have disappeared but are known from photographs and other historical sources.
Their number continued to grow slowly after reaching that plateau, but for the last few years the number has hovered in the 390’s. It reached 400 after a Warren County brick house with patterned work in its gable was brought to light late last year, and after a long-since demolished Burlington house, not previously recognized, was found to have some patterned brickwork.
Patterned brickwork buildings continue to be discovered, sometimes by as many as a few per year.
These buildings are prized for their simple elegance and for being an architecture of refinement at a time when most construction in the colonies was limited by pioneer conditions.
For the entire story, see Robert W. Craig, New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 57-124, VOL. 5 NO. 2 (2019) Click on the link to the pdf.
Miyake Events
May 2023
The latest issue of Science Magazine reports "Miyake events," a new discovery of radiocarbon timestamps that left very high levels of radioactive carbon in individual tree rings. This will have implications for historic site and prehistoric archaeology and may become a means by which to check the accuracy of dates derived from dendrochronology and strengthen confidence in those dates. This could have indirect affects on archival research about very old buildings—if they provide more precise dates of their construction or modification, and lead to the need for follow-up investigation among written sources.
For the entire story, see M.Price, Science 380, 124-128 (2023).