The History of Doors and Windows

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The buildings across from my studio windows often are the subject of my drawings and paintings. The view consists of a row of downtown main street buildings build between 1880 and 1920. In this respect they are very much the same as all the downtown buildings of cities in the Northeast, cities which took there form after the civil war. They are all masonry buildings, built of either brick or stone. With large stone buildings the openings for the doors and windows present and interesting problem. You can’t just leave a hole for a door or window in the stone work, there has to be some kind of arrangement of stone work above the opening so that the building won’t cave in at these weak points.

In this drawing you can see several of these devices for door and window openings. In the building all the way to the left there is a stone arch over a set of windows, the arch takes the weight of the upper part of the building and sends it down each side of the window. In the next building over to the right you can see keystones over the window. Many old downtown buildings have these keystones, they are carved in a v shape so that it is impossible for them to slide downward.

That third building however was built in 1940, by then all these styles of stonework had disappeared because bricks and stones were no longer the support s for buildings at that time.

All the way over on the right you can see a little landscape above the building with the clock that says three o’clock.Both the clock and the landscape are very true to life, because this is one of those towns of a certain size, where even in the middle of the downtown you can see hills and trees in the distance, when you are checking to see what time it is.

This drawing measures 8.5” x 5.125”. 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., 3 2001.