FIGURE 56.
The larger, present-day house with raised roof ([figure 56]) has full-height second story rooms in the main block of the house and additional space in front and back. Details P and R indicate parts of the construction which use lumber salvaged from some previous structure. P shows where four carved porch posts are used as floor beams. R indicates three banister rails used as studs in the back wall of an upper room. Both the posts and the banister rails could have come from an earlier porch on this house. The present porch uses massive posts to support the heavy roof. To support the porch on its house side, brick piers have been added in front of the original ballast stone foundations. There are other details of the house which suggest stages in its development; we hope someone will study them someday.
To return to further examination of the curiosities suggested in diagram [56], dotted lines are shown to represent the flow of air through an ingenious cooling system. Toward the back of the house a hole in the floor allows air to rise from underneath to ventilate a bedroom. At the front of the house, an opening in the porch ceiling allows air to rise to a closet on the second floor front, and thence to bedrooms.
One last unusual detail is the stairway in the back hall, the banister posts of which are set diagonally, that is, perpendicular to the hand rail rather than the steps.
[Figure 57], a drawing of a house from Brunswick Town, near Wilmington, introduces an amazing new chapter in the story of colonial architecture in North Carolina, a chapter which is just being opened up in our day.
This house, the Hepburn-Reonalds house, built between 1734 and 1742, is of a type not seen before in this study. The structure had a family porch without steps down to the street, rather like a balcony, a protected place to sit and look at life on the street. Below, in the basement was a shop, and in the illustration a man is seen about to enter the street door of the shop.
Unfortunately, the house does not exist today; the drawing is “conjectural,” that is, it is an estimate based upon study and analysis of ruins ([figure 58]) at Brunswick Town. Knowledge of this kind of house in North Carolina, and of the town is a dramatic development of the last few years.
FIGURE 57. CONJECTURAL DRAWING OF THE HEPBURN-REONALDS HOUSE, BRUNSWICK TOWN.