All of this was accomplished with a simple, singular gesture. But by separating it a rooms’ width (12 – 16 feet) away it doubled as an additional outdoor, multipurpose room. Building the second cabin only a few feet away would’ve resulted in a useless and dark intervening space. Lacking any way to modify the supporting walls of the log structures meant the only means of adding to the structure was to build yet a neighboring structure - again subject to all of the previously noted limitations. In stick frame construction of the present day, additions are accomplished simply without much thought and in virtually any location. Once a log structure was completed, adding to it presented difficulty. Accounting for these factors during construction ensured the log cabins remained small and one-story. Equally, a log’s taper was a critical factor as the taller log sections yielded more taper. Selecting logs of a length able to easily be moved into place, especially above one’s head, limited the size logs one could use to build the log structure with and thus the length of the walls. The second was the availability of such raw materials. There were two major limiting factors in the construction of log cabins - the first was the length of log that a team of men and livestock could handle. The origin of the early dogtrot’s construction methods as linked log cabins is telling as well. The Fenno-Swedish settlers were accustomed to working with large timbers and hewing logs for construction and as early settlers of the lower Delaware Valley it made sense that their woodworking skills were put to use in constructing their early homes. These pair-cottages consisted of a pair of log cabins stationed side-by-side and joined with a common grass-covered roof. It is believed that Swedish and Finnish settlers of North America in the mid-1600s brought a building typology know as the ‘pair-cottage’, from Northern Europe. While it’s hard to pin down the exact origin or antecedent of this building typology in the United States, there’s much evidence that earliest forms of dogtrots came into existence here in the lower Delaware Valley colony of New Sweden in what we now know as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The dogtrot is a wonderfully versatile building typology that has endured differing building climates and cultures not only because of its utility, but also because of its simplicity and beauty.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |