History of Doors and Windows part 2

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The basic shapes of the brick and stone work above windows and doors in masonry buildings remained unchanged in most respects for thousands of years. An arch of bricks above a window, or the appearance of a big single stone over a door or window opening is much the same in buildings built in 1880 as in buildings built in Roman times. At the end of the Nineteenth Century however builders introduced iron and steel into the construction of buildings, and from that point on tall buildings were supported by a steel structure, and the brick and stone facing became partly decorative, and partly a protection from the elements. Window and door openings no longer needed keystone arches or single lintel stones, because the steel was all the structure that was necessary. At that point however the brick and stone work remained the same stylistically, probably from the force of habit, for about twenty years. As the modern era began, the structural stone work, which had become ornamental, slowly began to disappear.

In this drawing the building on the far left was built as the styles were changing, the forms are basically like an old stone building, but if you look carefully you will see that the brick work above the windows is different. The bricks are set in vertically all in a row, with no arch or keystone. Setting the bricks on edge was lip service to the old decorative brick work, but when you see bricks above a window all set in a row like that, it means that they rest on a steel I beam, if they didn’t rest on an I beam then that part of the wall would collapse. The two buildings in the middle were built in the fifties so we will pass over them in silence. Behind those two middle buildings there is the cement wall of a concrete and steel building built in the Seventies. That building in the background there, is a perfect surface for graffiti. Fortunately the building on the right casts its shadow over the graffiti so that it is not too bothersome.

You may want to ask, “How did the graffiti artists manage to paint so high up on the wall?” The answer is that there is a ladder laying on the roof, you can see it there in the drawing. And what is that big masonry arch doing in the side wall of the building built in the fifties that I was going to pass over in silence? It is the remaining wall of a building that burned down in 1950, which had stood on that spot since 1895, and was incorporated into the building built in the fifties. You can still see the marks in the cement work on the side of the building on the left where the old building once met the wall of the outer building.

The building on the far right is the oldest building in this drawing, it was built in 1868. You can tell that it was built in 1868 because it says so in the arch over the second floor. The same group of Italian stone masons built the 1868 building, and the building that burned down, you can tell by the style of an arch over three windows which was one of their trademarks.

You may want to look at the doors and windows in the buildings of your town and compare their styles to the occasional date stones on the buildings and see just how accurate a dating method this is for American buildings of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

This drawing measures 5.125” x 8.5”. It is drawn on gessoed and tinted cold press watercolor paper with a maroon wax pencil. It is signed with an R on the front, and full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell, Oct., 4 2001.