1. The Gothic Revival Style is fundamentally
different from earlier styles in having a large gable, or gables, placed on
the long side of the roof. This embayment typically housed a window of
considerable size.
2. Pointed windows, slightly bowed or triangular
are a hallmark. The cost of creating church-like windows led to a
straightening of the curved window frame which was common at first. In this case, savings were
realized by reverting to the earlier classical shape with a different
trim. The Classical Revival trim did persist around the front door.
3. The pitch of the roof was usually much better
suited
to shedding snow than earlier designs but decorative pinnacles
usually weathered poorly and are now typically absent from these houses.
This particular sample is obviously a transition in which the pitch shows no variation
from earlier colonial models.
4. The exponents of this style promoted facing
boards which were vertical but most builders used clapboard or shingles
with only an occasional vertical upright.
5. Barge board designs with their loops and
intricate
fretwork are another unrestrained part of this style. The power jigsaw
was invented in this period and it provided all the excuse needed to
create flamboyant and grossly out-of-scale "gingerbread" trim. This
eccentricity is not very much in evidence in Lunenburg County where the
decorative tendency is toward a more medieval handling of details.
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The reason that classical
moulding continued to be used was the fact that the technology for
producing these very wide decorative boards was well developed. At the
heart of this technology was the massive moulding plane (1) which has to
be judged in terms of the humans seen in this drawing by Eric Sloane.
The two handles at the front end are used to attach a hauling
rope, seen attached in the lower illustration. An apprentice (2) had
the job of passing the hauling rope around a shaft in the planing mill.
This shaft was powered by a waterwheel outside the building (3).
The shaft was not operated directly but the forces of rotation
moderated through a wooden differential (5) which had teeth made of
oak. The shaft turned somewhat more slowly that the outside axle
attached to the wheel but with extreme power where the rope passed
about the inside axle (5). This meant that the planer(6) had a great
deal of physical help in guiding his very heavy plane over the length
of wood laid out on the planing-bed.
It can be seen that this device was a fairly ordinary plane except that
its metal cutting blade was cut, abraded and sharpened to produce a
specialty tool which would cut a complex pattern. The bottom of the
plane was carved out to accommodate a female version of this shape (a).
When the wood emerged completely planed it retained a female duplicate
of this configuration.
The waterwheel was often rigged to perform a number of related feats
such as sawing wood, hammering rocks into gravel, grinding materials of
all sorts, including grains. In some shops, the movements
obtained by differential action was even be used to power the bellows
in a forge. In rare instances all this activities might take place under on roof.
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The somewhat slow and
cumbersome pole-saw needed replacement if much serious fretwork was to
be created. Ingenious workmen substituted a a small boy as the
source of power, placing him in a separate stall, but this was
not a great solution to the problem.
Its replacement was the powered scroll saw. Blades were interchangeable
between the new and old devices but the new machine was much faster and
regular in its cutting stroke. This encouraged the development of
some intricate repetitive designs for the barge boards of homes created
in this new style.
The various patterns are sometimes termed "gingerbread." While the
steeply pitched Gothic roofs were entirely suitable to the Nova Scotian
climate, this decorative stuff was sometimes considered too
expensive and it did not weather well in our high winds, rain and
changing temperatures.
In a good many cases our ancestors were correct in avoiding this new
architectural hula-hoop as barge boards were undeniably flamboyant and
frequently quite out of scale with the rest of the house.
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