Preservation of Historic Winchester

We were devastated to learn of the fire that took place last night on the south end of the Loudoun Street Mall involving three significant buildings – the Cork Street Tavern, the Sperry House, and Beyond the Fringe. Although the cause of the fire is unknown at this time, we would like to take this moment to share some materials on fire prevention in historic buildings.

Although geared more to cultural institutions like museums and archives, J. Andrew Wilson’s Fire Protection in Cultural Institutions paper includes many of the common sense considerations applicable to any historic property. As stated in the paper, “No institution is immune from fire. . . . Damage from fire . . . is usually permanent and irreparable. Historical buildings or contents, once reduced to ash, can never be restored.” Of particular interest is the Self-Inspection Checklist.

The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and the General Services Administration produced a manual in 1989 for Fire Safety Retrofitting in Historic Buildings. GSA has extracted the most important information in the manual to a bullet point list on their website. There is also the 2001 Technical Preservation Guidelines Fire Safety Retrofitting which contains similar guidelines and illustrations for less-invasive fire suppression and detection technology.

For more information on fire safety and research, visit the National Fire Prevention Association website at www.nfpa.org.

There are literally hundreds of specialized terms for the parts of a building, and it can be hard to find precisely the right word you need to describe one part of your building. Here are a few suggestions, from the basic to the specialized, to help you start identifying the parts of your house with confidence and precision.

For a basic overview of the “bones” of the house, the recommended book is Francis Ching’s Building Construction Illustrated. Older editions are recommended for legibility.

For a simplified visual guide to identifying house styles, basic floor plans, and exterior parts of a house, the go-to book is Virginia Savage McAlester and Lee McAlester’s A Field Guide to American Houses. The pictorial glossary is in the first section of the book, before the discussions of identifying architectural styles.

For more specialized terms, Cyril M. Harris’ Historic Architecture Sourcebook contains numerous illustrations and alphabetical listings of uncommon architectural terms. The downside of this book is that you must either have an idea of the word you are searching for, or plenty of time to flip through the book.

A number of older, out of copyright architectural glossaries can now be searched and read on Google eBooks. A free version of John Henry Parker’s classic A Concise Glossary of Terms Used in Grecian, Roman, Italian, and Gothic Architecture (1869) is available. An American-specific glossary The American Glossary of Architectural Terms (1887) by George O. Garnsey is also available. The text of both can be searched for broad terms to find more specific related words.

If you would just like a quick dose of new architectural vocabulary in your life, visit National Trust for Historic Preservation Blog and search their “Preservation Glossary” entries, which offer illustrations and short definitions. A similar slideshow of unusual terms is available at This Old House.

Do you have any other favorite places to find architectural terminology? Let us know!

If you are searching for some unorthodox means to create historically accurate menus, the Buttolph collection of menus at the New York Public Library may be just the collection you need. From the description of the collection at the New York Public Library:

The menu collection originated through the energetic efforts of Miss Frank E. Buttolph (1850-1924), a somewhat mysterious and passionate figure, whose mission in life was to collect menus. In 1899, she offered to donate her existing collection to the Library — and to keep collecting on the Library’s behalf.

Most of the menus are from New York or adjacent states, but the collection is not geographically limited. Two menus from Virginia are currently in the online collection, both from the celebrated Hygeia Hotel near Fort Monroe from the 1880s. You can read more about the Hygeia Hotel in a promotional booklet from the 1880s at the Internet Archive.

Read more about the Buttolph collection and its offerings at The History Blog.