Old Houses

[NancyNGA]

I love old houses. Does anyone have any interesting pictures, stories, or other information about them you would like to share---either houses you are familiar with yourself, or from the internet? Inside or outside?

I think this is a cool style architecture, literally. One room depth, to promote air circulation in hot weather, or so I was told, and a chimney on each end. More common in the southern US. I don't know where these are located, but the one on the right, which has a newer addition, shows Spanish moss hanging from the trees.



Sometimes the kitchens were in a separate structure with a covered breezeway (called a "dog trot") connecting them with the rest of the house.

Old log house with "dog trot" in Alabama.

 

[Aunt Bea]

Another example of a small Southern home is the Shotgun!

Octagon houses made a brief appearance.

This one has been preserved as a museum. If you open the link you can click on the layout of each floor to enlarge them.

http://www.octagonhouseofcamillus.org/

The home's history.

http://www.yrbook.com/octagon/

 

[Pappy]

Built in 1900 by my great grandfather. My grandparents lived there and then my mom and stepdadand and I lived there until I went into Army.

 

[NancyNGA]

Another example of a small Southern home is the Shotgun!

Bea, I'm glad you posted the shotgun house and the floorplan. I took this photo last week of a block of 6 shotgun houses in our town. Not many left here. It was why I thought of this thread.

If you open the link you can click on the layout of each floor to enlarge them.

I love floor plans. When I was a kid the first thing I would open in the paper, after the cartoons, was the daily house floor plan. I would pretend I was walking through the house and visualize the inside. :shrug:

 

[twinkles]

i love looking at old houses----there is a place on the internet that has loads of them and you can go all thru them---people have left the house and left all their belongings there--when i was married my husband and i use to ride out in the country and go thru some

 

[Aunt Bea]

These old farmhouses with an ell connecting the house to the barn were popular in the Northeast. It allowed the farmer to do his chores without leaving the building during bad weather. Many of them also had an indoor/outhouse, in the ell, so the family did not have to make a dash through the snow when they needed to go!

 

[Aunt Bea]

Bea, I'm glad you posted the shotgun house and the floorplan. I took this photo last week of a block of 6 shotgun houses in our town. Not many left here. It was why I thought of this thread.

View attachment 48782

I love floor plans. When I was a kid the first thing I would open in the paper, after the cartoons, was the daily house floor plan. I would pretend I was walking through the house and visualize the inside. :shrug:

In our area we have hundreds and hundreds of little homes similar to this one. They were built about the time that the German and Italian immigrants were coming to America. The bedrooms are tiny, just room enough for the bed and a strip of floor the width of the door. No bathroom and no closets just two hooks on the back of the bedroom door, one hook for your Sunday clothes and one hook for your everyday clothes. The lots are narrow and many do not have driveways, in those days people were able to walk to local factories of take a trolley. When these homes were built they were home to large families.

 

[NancyNGA]

Smithonia House, Smithonia, GA

Another fancier house in the same style, one room deep, as the first post, named after James Monroe Smith. Since this picture was taken it has been remodeled, added onto, and made into a hotel. Probably more like a bed and breakfast. I would like to see the floor plan of this one. Maybe the upstairs was just a shotgun house. LOL

From the hotel's webpage:

"As soon as the Civil War was over, Smith started digging in the dirt. With one mule, he began turning Northeast Georgia red clay. And when his crops were in the barn, he hitched that same mule to a peddler’s wagon to sell tinware. In time, Smith’s vision, guts and hard work paid off. He owned one of the largest farms in Georgia, encompassing 30-square miles.

The center of his agricultural empire was in Smithonia. Smith built 17 miles of railroad tracks to haul his products to market. The rail lines, his personal rail car, sawmill, fertilizer plant, brickyard, cotton gin, schools, post office and hundreds of other structures are gone, but six historic structures- his mansion, the milk house, the hotel, the plantation’s commissary and three massive brick barns- still stand in the center of his Oglethorpe County community."

The above narrative definitely sugar coats the story just a tad. James Monroe Smith was not a very nice man at all.

 

[NancyNGA]

Van Ness Avenue. San Franscisco, 1940. Houses built in the 1880's

Photo by A.J. Whittlock; Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey

Similar house that didn't do so well in the 1906 earthquake. [A bit off topic, but the first thing I thought of was what would happen in an earthquake.]

 

[RadishRose]

I've always loved the Arts and Crafts style homes from the turn of the century.

 

[NancyNGA]

I like this old farmhouse style.

Constructed in 1866, in Madison, GA

 

[needshave]

View attachment 48969
This is a property that I'm currently restoring/renovating. The house is a brick structure built in 1850. The house is made of soft red brick that was fired on site. The roof lines are highlighted with ornate gingerbread, fans and turned posts. House showed during the restoration stage with porch railings and skirts yet to be installed. Part of the windows in this picture is shown out since they are all being removed and restored.
Also shown is the carriage house, a wood structure The carriage was kept here and the horse was stabled in the rear of the carriage house and pastured in a small area behind the carriage house.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[NancyNGA]

Thanks for the pictures, needshave. Nice looking house. Are you living in the house while you are restoring it?