We often hear what we assume are truths about houses that turn out not to be quite so. Remember the former aversion to high ceilings? It was thought that high ceilings wasted heat and, therefore, lower, “false” ceilings were justified improvements to old houses. Today, we realize that heat rises and most heat loss is through ceilings, not the extra foot or two of wall height. Indeed, today it is becoming harder to sell low-ceiling houses, albeit for aesthetic and psychological reasons. Although that “truth” and others have been put to rest, many similar “truths” persist today and new ones are being created despite facts to the contrary. Let’s examine some as a way of improving our understanding of how houses work.

Wide Board Floors are Beautiful
Older houses often have wide board floors; the older the house usually the wider the boards. Equating age with beauty, real estate ads trumpet “wide board floors” as a major plus. No doubt to us, wide board floors are usually appealing for their warmth and age. However, those who built houses before the modern era never intended wood floors to be aesthetically appealing; in fact, in the best houses, floors were covered with rugs, in part to hide their irregular knots, stains and cracks. Instead, they lavished aesthetic attention on moldings, fireplaces, doors and windows. These were the features they saw as beautiful, and as long as homeowners understood and appreciated how such features were integrated into a coherent whole defined as a style, homes continued to be built to high aesthetic standards. Today, an appreciation of architectural style, both traditional and modern, exists but it is not as widespread in our culture as it was formerly. As a result, homeowners are often more appreciative of simplicity, a sense of antiquity, and may thus overlook aesthetics that past generations worked hard to achieve.

Colonial
Closely related to “wide board floors” is the adjective “colonial” as applied to any old or new house that is not obviously “Victorian,” “ranch” or “modern.” True, colonial houses were built before the Revolution when we were still living in colonies. That is a period of time, not a style. But the term has morphed in recent decades into a catch-all style. In the colonial period, several styles of houses were in vogue: Dutch (New York and New Jersey), English (New England and the South), German (Pennsylvania), Swedish (Delaware Valley), Spanish (Florida), French (New Orleans, Quebec)—basically adaptations of medieval or classical European styles to our climate and materials. True, there was a Colonial Revival style, a nostalgic return to our colonial past, dating from after the Centennial. This, in various guises, continues today. But in real estate ads, the term “colonial” is often applied to any new house that is under a pitch roof (symmetric two sided) with small light grilled windows and lacks defining Victorian features. Even older houses, such as Federal and Greek Revival, are sometimes called colonial. Looking back four decades, however, I do see real improvements in realator and home owner knowledge in counties where period houses were once, and now again, appreciated.

Open Plan
There was a time when houses were built like an agglomeration of boxes, each room a discrete and tightly sealed space heated by its own fireplace or stove. With the advent of “central heating,” that arrangement changed as a central floor register in the hall floor emitted so much hot air that keeping all doors open would heat the whole house. In many homes, today’s heating is similar, although it is really “distributive heating” with heating elements, usually from a central furnace or boiler, in every room. Doors only function for privacy so, outside of bedrooms and bathrooms, houses are becoming increasingly an open plan. Driven by historically cheap oil heat and electric cooling, plus the premium placed on guest circulation, the prevalent notion that open plan is all good is likely to receive a reevaluation as heating costs will likely encourage economy and a return to closed rooms with time-controlled thermostats.

Rumford Fireplace
The Rumford fireplace is becoming a selling point both in new houses and in old houses with rebuilt fireplaces. Although somewhat more efficient than conventional Federal period fireplaces, Rumford’s improvements were not widely adopted (judging by extant fireplaces) until, ironically, today when we make little use of fireplaces for heat. Fireplaces work if they don’t produce smoke, but do heat. It is not well or widely appreciated that they heat by radiation, not by convection. Like the sun, the flames of a fire don’t heat the room’s air directly, but rather the objects in the room and the walls. They in turn heat the air. Open fireplaces, however, need air to burn and thus suck out quite a bit of secondarily heated air from the room, an inefficiency that stoves subsequently improved on significantly.

Rumford was born plain Mr. Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, MA in 1753, but skipped out with the Revolution. Working for the Bavarian government, he was rewarded with the title Count Rumford. Returning to England, he experimented with fireplace and stove designs and published two papers in 1796 and 1798 on the subject. By widening the jams and increasing the height of the fireplace opening, more of the fire flames radiated into the room. Smoothing the “throat” of the fireplace increased efficient air flow and reduced smoking. If you look at American Federal fireplaces, you will note that most are similar to Rumford’s later design. Indeed, he got his ideas from New England fireplaces, but introduced them as “new” to England where fireplaces were less efficiently designed.

In days when fireplaces burned most of the winter, little efficiencies were appreciated. Today’s fires are for occasional ornament, not heat, and so the utility of Rumford’s design is of little practical importance; his fireplace proportions being somewhat at odds with period design (and certainly not a reason to rip out an original fireplace). Stick an impressive-sounding name on a product and the sales will follow, justified or not.

Firebacks are There to Throw Heat
Firebacks are cast iron plates, usually with designs that have been in use since at least the 16th century when fires were set against walls (later enclosed in fireplaces). They lend interest to the black hole of a fireplace through their designs, but their real purpose was to protect the fireplace stone or brick from the heat of the fire, which can ruin even stone in one season. Firebacks do get hot, but they do not radiate heat to the room. Whatever air they heat goes right up the chimney instead. Only “radiant” heat from flame enters the room, not warm air. Most are too wide for Rumford’s narrow-back fireplace dimensions, but work nicely in period fireplaces. Originals cost $1,000-$45,000, reproductions $300-$500, depending on size.

Line the Chimneys
While we are on fireplaces, here is another modern notion. In early houses, there are countless original fireplaces still working well today—and not a one has burned down a house. Today, newcomers to old houses have been told that any old chimney is inherently dangerous. What is dangerous is the lack of care given to fireplaces and chimneys, even by those who spend thousands on their safe improvement. In recent decades, fireplaces have had dampers installed to forestall warm air escaping since they are so rarely used. Behind the iron damper, however, is a smoke shelf, useful for directing air flow but unfortunately a great collector of creosote, the most flammable tinder imaginable, which flakes off the chimney walls and accumulates exactly where the fire is hottest. Annually one should feed a vacuum hose into this shelf area and clean out the creosote. A good chimney sweep will do this; just make sure it is done by you or a sweep. The damper also makes it harder to check the condition of the bricks above to make sure they are intact and well mortared. Fearing they might not be in good condition, many have their chimneys lined, such as with tiles or steel tubes, pouring cement all around but constricting air flow, often leading to poor draft and smoke entering the room. By long experiment, early masons knew how large a chimney should be to draw properly. Don’t let modern salesmen mess with old wisdom. The best solution I have seen, if bricks or mortar can’t be easily repaired, is a process by which the chimney insides are cleaned and then lined with thin layers of mortar mechanically applied.

Bricks from Holland
This is an old Hudson Valley notion, that Dutch houses were built of bricks brought all the way from Holland. In fact, there is not a Dutch house extant in America that is built of bricks from Holland. The Hudson Valley used to be famous as a source for clay suitable for bricks from the time the first Dutch settlers arrived nearly 400 years ago. Remnants of brick works are still found along the river shore. But like some notions, there was a kernel of truth to it once. Wrecks of 17th century Dutch ships around the world show evidence of bricks used as ballast to stabilize the ship, usually offloaded at the colony and used for paving or construction. These are always “Rhine” bricks, made from a clay from the Rhine river, which when fired turn yellow, not red. This hard, solid brick does not absorb water (essential for ballast purposes), unlike the iron oxide-bearing red bricks. Some early New York houses were built of this brick, as they still are in the Netherlands, but all those buildings have crumbled, their remnants found in archeological excavations. I found just one such yellow brick in a building, the early Dutch church at Tarrytown, where some early mason had inserted it in the otherwise all stone wall.

Slave Tunnels on the Underground Railroad
This is another persistent Hudson Valley myth. It is amusing to hear it said that an early house has an escape tunnel from the cellar to somewhere for slaves to escape through on the Underground Railroad. I have yet to find evidence of any such tunnel. Likely, there may have been such a tunnel in some house, more likely to escape Indians or Tories (or rebels) since the houses I have been told about have been 18th century or before. Romantic notions of dramatic people or events do persist, especially encapsulated in text. Washington Irving’s tales of the Hudson Valley have made our region famous.

These are just some of the traditional notions in need of revision in order for us to preserve fine houses, improve our enjoyment thereof and, in some cases, to save ourselves from unrequired extra expense. ¶

Roderic H. Blackburn is the principal of R. H. Blackburn
& Associates - Real Estate, Kinderhook, NY, also chairman
of the Historic Preservation Commission of that village.