Houses
(Click to enlarge) Of the 470 extant hewn-log buildings in southern Indiana documented by Warren over a period of roughly twelve years, 296 were houses. Warren relied on a variety of field methodologies—studying houses in situ, producing photographs and measured sketches, dismantling the structures, experimenting with tools, conducting interviews—to reach one goal: to understand how log buildings were put together. The written result of his research is Log Buildings in Southern Indiana, an in-depth examination of foundations, walls and logs (including chinking, corner notching, and exterior siding), chimneys and fireplaces, windows and doors, finishing details, roofs, and so on. |
Houses
"A question naturally arises as to how much time it would take to hew enough logs to build a house . . . . When I have asked men who gave me information on hewing [railroad
ties] to estimate about how long it would take them to hew enough logs to build a log house, they have replied between three and four days. Although the hewing of the logs would represent a formidable and time-consuming task to a person today who wanted to build a log house from freshly cut trees,
to the skilled hewer of the nineteenth century, the actual hewing of the logs would have added relatively little time to the whole process of building a log house." |
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