2.10: Folk Housing

Folk Housing

The houses Americans built before the introduction of mass-produced housing in the mid-19th century is an excellent way for students to begin learning about folk culture. Folk houses are those houses designed and built by people with no formal architectural training. The design of these houses is the product of generations of trial and error that usually resulted in structures well suited to local conditions and local resources. Consequently, houses built with factory-made 2x4 studs using balloon framing techniques are not likely to be of folk design and construction.

Folk houses also provide an ideal subject to practice using both observational skills and spatial thinking. Small details in the design of folk houses require a sharp eye and design features invite us to think carefully about cause-and-effect relationships between climate, economics, ethnicity, and even religion in the production of something as ordinary – but vitally important – as old houses. Folk housing elements from the four major regions are explored in the sections below.

Yankee

The northernmost US folk culture has its hearth in Boston, and it diffused outward across New England, and westward into the Great Lakes region. People who live in these areas were long called Yankees by Americans. The term Yankee is now sometimes used to reference any American, particularly by persons not from the US. However, to cultural geographers, the term is applied only to people from the northeastern reaches of the United States. Yankee cultural traces are easily found in New England, but it’s also the dominant relic subculture of many communities in the northern reaches of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Some areas of southern Michigan also fall within the Yankee subcultural region.

The Yankee region fades quickly as you move west toward Chicago. There are several reasons why you don’t find much evidence of Yankee folk culture west of Chicago. First, because subcultures diffuse outward from their hearth, they suffer from the effects of distance decay, much like any other phenomena. Places distant from the Yankee cultural hearth in Boston were less likely to adopt Yankee practices in the first place. Secondly, many settlers that moved to the Upper Midwest (Minnesota, Dakotas, etc.) were less likely to share the British ancestry common among early settlers to New Englanders. Instead, Minnesotans and Dakotans were more often the descendants of German, Russian, Ukrainian and Scandinavian immigrants. Finally, by the time the European settlers began moving into the Upper Midwest in the early 19th century, many folk practices, including how people constructed houses, were beginning to be abandoned in favor of popular culture practices. So, not only will you not find a large supply of Yankee folk housing in the Upper Midwest, you won’t find much folk housing at all, because people rarely built houses themselves. Instead, by the mid-1800s houses were more likely to be designed and built by professionals who used non-local materials and were inspired by fashionable trends from Europe – all popular culture practices

Figure Keena. NH Temple front house with attached barns. This house features a series of attached barns. Consider the dangerous benefits of this design strategy. Note the sap buckets hanging from the tree in the foreground.

The earliest inhabitants of New England, like the Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth Rock, were not Yankees. They were English, and for several generations, built houses using folk traditions brought from England. Because the weather in New England was far colder than it was in Europe, these colonists were forced to adapt to local conditions. Building supplies, economic conditions, and the political environment were all different, so new design features crept into home construction. Eventually, they built houses using local materials that were well suited to their new environment. As the English settlers learned to cope with the harsh winters of the region, many of which were especially brutal during the colonial era, also known as the Little Ice Age, architectural designs evolved. The New England Yankees built houses with steeply pitched roofs, massive central chimneys, and extra-large rooms. These features helped them stay comfortable during long, cold winters. The designs also permitted families living in these houses to continue to function as an economic unit during long winters. Families living in these spacious houses were often farmers, and the large houses permitted them space to complete indoors a variety of chores necessary to their survival, like preparing food, sewing, craftworks, etc. – even during a blizzard.

Figure Keene, NH Saltbox House Note the asymmetry of the gable end roofline and large central chimney.

Yankee folk house types are mostly variations on a single floor plan featuring four or five rooms arranged around a large central chimney. The smallest version is called a Cape Cod House. Not surprisingly, it is very common in and around Cape Cod, Massachusetts. New England Large houses are also very common in the region. They are in many ways a two-story version of the Cape Cod House, which are a story-and-half.

Figure Buzzards Bay, MA Cape Cod House This mode was updated with roof dormers and a “mudroom” to meet the demands of contemporary families adequately.

In the early 19th century, many built New England Large houses with the gable end facing the street, which gave it a more stylish appearance. Those versions are called Temple Front House and if an additional room was added to one side, the house was called an Upright and Wing. The later versions are more frequently found further west as popular style elements crept into the more purely functional design of New England folk houses of the 1700s. The Yankees also built a model called a Salt Box House. Its odd name comes from the unusual, asymmetrical roofline that defines the gable ends of the house that mimic the side profile of boxes used to store salt in kitchens during the Colonial Era.

Mid-Atlantic and Midwest

Immigrants that settled Middle Atlantic states, like Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland were more likely to come from continental Europe (Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, etc.) than those early immigrants into New England and the Deep South. People of African ancestry also contributed to the development of Mid-Atlantic folk culture. Perhaps because this region had a greater diversity of cultural inputs than elsewhere, the Mid-Atlantic folk culture, and the Midwestern folk culture that evolved from it foreshadowed many elements (e.g., language, politics, religion) of what has become known as the “mainstream” of contemporary American culture.

Figure Chillicothe, OH, Hall and Parlor House. This house would originally have been two rooms wide. The extension at the rear would be later addition,

Folk housing of the middle US evolved in the Middle Atlantic States. It diffused from the Mid-Atlantic westward into central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Some also diffused southward toward the Carolinas as well. Good examples of Mid-Atlantic housing are easy to find in the Piedmont region as far south as Charlotte, North Carolina. Pioneers attempting to migrate westward from coastal Atlantic regions often found their route blocked by the Appalachian Mountains, and so turned south, settling in the Great Shenandoah Valley and into even Western North Carolina, where the settlers also adopted or invented elements of Upland South folk culture. The Appalachian Mountains became a somewhat permeable barrier to diffusion and these houses offer excellent evidence of historic migration patterns.

Folk housing of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest tends to be simple in design, and only two related house types are widespread. There were a few additional (log) types once, but they are largely extinct today. By far, the most common remaining folk house types from this region are the single-story Hall and Parlor house and its two-story cousin known as the I-house. Archeologists suggest that the hall and parlor, a two-room house might be the archetype of all European-based folk housing because evidence of this house design, both in terms of size and layout, is evident in archeological digs all over Europe. American examples of the Hall and Parlor house and I-houses are two rooms wide with gable end chimneys.

Figure Williamsport, OH I House. This brick house includes a porch but has windows on its gable ends.

I-houses, are probably the most common folk house on the landscape of the Midwest and Piedmont regions. Reputedly, this house type was given its odd name by geographer Fred Kniffen after he noticed how common this house type was in states that began with the letter I: Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. You can find I-houses in urban settings, but during the 18th and 19th centuries, the I-house was essentially synonymous with “farmhouse” in the Midwest. This building can be read as evidence of membership in a vast agricultural middle class. Its unusual dominance on the landscape of the Midwest is a strong indicator of how many thousands of families owned prosperous farms during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The I-house can be read as an important landscape symbol that communicates volumes about the culture, economics, and politics of the region where it is so very common. The next chapter discusses how principles of Jeffersonian democracy influenced the distribution of quality farming lands among homesteading pioneers, and how those principles helped an agricultural middle-class to thrive.

Figure French Camps MS, Cabin and Porch. This one room (pen) house is the foundation upon which more complex models in the Upland south derived.

Upland South

In Southern Appalachia and parts of the American South, most European settlers came from England, Ireland, and Scotland. This region is known as the Upland South. Poor farming conditions in this region discouraged plantation agriculture and slavery. So, unlike the Lowland South, the Upland South’s folk culture has fewer African elements.

This is the “white” South, though it has never been devoid of black people. One might also call it the Hillbilly South, though some might find the term “Hillbilly” offensive in certain contexts. The Upland South is similar to, but distinct from, the Lowland or Deep South in a variety of ways. Because soils were frequently poor for crop agriculture and the region was somewhat isolated from principal trade routes, people of the Upland South have tended to be among the poorest Americans for generations. As a result, their folk dwellings were also modest and largely built of locally abundant hardwood timber.

The most basic Upland South house type is known as a cabin and porch. Essentially, it is a one-room house, cabin if it has a dirt floor, featuring an attached porch and a single chimney. Ideally, settlers on the Appalachian frontier constructed a one-room house upon setting up a homestead. If conditions proved good enough to remain in the location, additional rooms, called “pens” in the local dialect, would be added.

Figure Mt. Pleasant, TN Dogtrot House. This Dogtrot was without porch and but was well restored and situated at touristy plantation home.

Figure Dubach, LA Dogtrot House. This house was built of massive pine logs, raised on stone piers and featured a second half-story

If the homeowner built a second pen (room), a second chimney for the new pen and connected the two pens with a single roof that created a central breezeway between the two rooms, then the building was called a Dogtrot House. The colorful name for this type of house seems to have come from the fact that a hound could walk, or “trot”, between the two main rooms of the house. The warm southern climate makes the central breezeway of the Dogtrot House an ideal “room” where family members could do chores or simply relax.

Alternatively, a single-pen cabin could be expanded by attaching the second pen directly to the first pen and sharing a single, central chimney. This allowed the homeowner to build one fewer wall, and use a single fireplace to heat both pens. This type of house, called a Saddlebag House, references the appearance of a packhorse laden with cargo bags.

Figure Blackwell, VA Saddlebag House. This house utilized a single central chimney to serve both “pens” A lengthy veranda porch would have served the family as important living space.

Figure Melrose LA, Saddlebag House. These were once slave quarters and are located just within the French region of Louisiana, suggesting a diffusion of style from the upland south into the Lowland/Creole region.

Interestingly, most saddlebag houses do not have an internal doorway allowing people to pass directly between the two pens. Instead, inhabitants must go outside through the front doorway of one pen to enter the adjacent pen. Luckily, the weather is generally mild in the Upland South. Still, most Saddlebag Houses had a wide porch, called a veranda, to provide shade on sunny days and shelter on rainy days.

Lowland South

The area of the American South where slavery was more prevalent is known to geographers as the Lowland South. More colloquially, this area is known as the Deep South. The earliest Europeans to settle the region were English, but the Spanish and the French also settled parts of Florida and Louisiana. Far outnumbering Europeans though were people of African descent, brought as slaves to work in agricultural industries. In some parts of the region, over 90 percent of the population was of African descent. Many African cultural practices survived the ordeal of slavery and continue to have an outsized effect on the culture of the Deep South. Today, the legacy of these folkways remains strong, deeply influencing religion, politics, language and the economy, especially in places most isolated from outside influences.

The economic structures of the Deep South, deeply intertwined with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow Laws, are reflected in the folk housing of the region. Unlike in the Midwest, where the most common folk house (the I house) was a substantial two-story home, or in New England where large comfortable houses were common, the Deep South featured only two types of housing - those custom-built for the wealthy and folk houses built by poor people. Houses built for the wealthy are rarely considered “folk housing” because they were generally designed by architects, often used non-local materials and do not regularly reflect local environmental concerns. Architect designed homes also reflect changing styles and fashions. The architectural “plans” of folk structures, on the other hand, were maintained only in the collective memory of ordinary people from the region and they evolved over generations to deal with local environmental conditions and local resource availability. Considerations for “style” are often minimal in folk structures, and where style elements are found, they reflect local or regional taste preference, rather than national or international taste preferences

Figure Key west FL-Shotgun house is raised on piers to minimize termite and wood rot damage persistence in humid locations.

Folk housing in the Deep South, like New England, evolved to suit a challenging climate. Building techniques, before the age of electricity and air conditioning, attempted to minimize the effects of the oppressive heat and humidity of the Deep South. In the 18th and 19th centuries, folk builders also combatted termites, wood rot and flooding, by building many houses using pier and beam construction, a technique that raises the floor several feet above the ground on platforms of stone or brick. This strategy keeps flooring and framing from touching the soil, where the timber framing would quickly be destroyed by termites and wood rot. Pier and beam construction also allows cooling breezes to pass under the house – as well giving a place for dogs to nap during the day.

The harsh climate also affected the choice of building materials. Where it was available, wood from Cypress trees was prized for building houses, and especially for roofing and siding material. Cypress trees grow in some abundance in swampy locations in the Deep South and so its wood is naturally resistant to rot and insects. Most houses though were built with far less durable Pine because it was widely available and very inexpensive, which helps explain why many examples of folk architecture in the South have disappeared from the landscape.

Surely, the most common folk house of the Lowland South is the Shotgun House. The design was probably introduced to the US by African-Haitians via South Louisiana and Florida. Experts disagree about the origins of the colorful name, and no argument satisfies completely. One theory stems from the fact that if you open the front door, back door and the interior doors of a shotgun house, you can see all the way through the house. Theoretically, you could fire a shotgun through the front door and pellets would fly out the backdoor. Another theory suggests that English speakers may have misinterpreted the African-Haitian word for house, “togun”, as “shotgun”, and the mistaken interpretation stuck in the lingo of the region.

The design of the shotgun house is simple. Most often, they are one room wide, a single story tall, and three to five rooms long. This rectangular, Afro-Caribbean design was perfectly culturally pre-adapted to the European long lot cadastral system commonly used to divide property in French Louisiana. (see Chapter 3 for more) Shotgun houses proved so versatile and utilitarian, they diffused outward to many other parts of the United States, where they can be found in many neighborhoods where large numbers of African-American migrated, or where “company housing” was built by industrial concerns to attract and retain workers. As they diffused outward, shotgun houses entered the realm of popular culture.

There are multiple variants of the shotgun house. Some families modified their Shotgun house by building a second, parallel shotgun house that shared a common center wall, roof, and porch to produce a double shotgun. Other families modified their shotgun house by adding a second story to the rear portion of the house, creating what is known as a camelback shotgun. Interestingly, these second-story rooms were only added to the rear portions of the houses in an attempt to avoid incurring additional property taxes in places where they were calculated by estimating the square footage of the house facing the street.

Figure Monroe LA- Shotgun Houses These houses built closely together suggest that they were “company houses' ' for the railroad that once employed many people in this neighborhood.