Pride and Prejudice: The Appalachian Boxed House in Southwestern North Carolina Michael Ann Williams Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 25, No. 4. (Winter, 1990), pp. 217-230. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0084-0416%28199024%2925%3A4%3C217%3APAPTAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4 Winterthur Portfolio is currently published by The University of Chicago Press.

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Pride and Prejudice The Appalachian Boxed House in Southwestern North Carolina Michael Ann Williams

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HE STUDY of everyday objects and structures has been touted as a means of democratizing our knowledge of history. Material culture scholars study large collections of items that might fairly represent the past as well as individual icons. State offices concerned with historic preservation have increasingly moved from designating individual structures of significance to carrying out comprehensive surveys of the total architectural fabric of the designated areas. Artifacts tell us more than simply about a past society's elite. Potentially they reveal more about the nonelites than does written documentation. So far, has the study of material culture lived up to this billing? Has history indeed been democratized? Arguments have and will continue to rage over the methods and merits of our interpretations of artifacts. But what of the data base itself? The most obvious limitation is, as one scholar has characterized it, the "fecklessness of data survival."' T o Michael Ann Williams, an assistant professor of folk studies at Western Kentucky University, received her doctorate in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She is editor of the Vernacular Architecture Newsletter. This paper is an expansion of themes explored in the author's doctoral dissertation, "Homeplace: T h e Social Use and Meaning of the Folk Dwelling in Southwestern North Carolina," University of Pennsylvania, Department of Folklore and Folklife, 1985. A revised version of the dissertation will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 1991. T h e author has benefited in her knowledge of the widespread use of vertical-plank construction by conversations and correspondence with Rachel Barber, Richard Candee, Thomas Carter, Allan Johnson, Jan Lewandoski, Howard W. Marshall, Margaret Mulrooney, Blanton Owen, Orlando Ridout V, and Julie Riesenweber. Thomas J . Schlereth, "Material Culture and Cultural Research," in Material Culture: A Research Guide (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), p. 14.

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0 1990 by T h e Henry Francis d u Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc. All rights reserved. o o 8 ~ - o ~ i 6 / g o 1 2 ~ o ~ - o o o o $ ~ . o o

create democratic histories, we must have representative samples, and to ascertain whether our samples are representative, it may be necessary to turn back to nonartifactual data. Lack of survivability, of course, poses its own interesting questions. Why do people create objects of limited permanence? The physical impermanence of housing has been examined as a clue to understanding the realities of life in the Chesapeake Bay area during the seventeenth century, and the "planned obsolescence" of objects in modern-day society has frequently been a subject of commentary.' Physical impermanence is only one aspect of the lack of survivability. Abandonment and willful destruction of still-usable objects and structures pose other questions that might be asked by the scholar. In order to study and account for the nonsurvivability of certain artifacts, their absence from our data must first be recognized. In some cases, the holes in the data may be obvious. In others, questions may arise when written and artifactual evidence cannot be reconciled. Is it possible for impermanence, or a relative lack of permanence, to go unnoticed? While the scholarly neglect of studless vertical-plank houses in southwestern North Carolina suggests that the answer is yes, the relative lack of permanence is only one cause of this neglect. The lack of recognition or understanding of surviving examples of this type of house poses even more troubling questions. How "comprehensive" are our comprehensive surveys? How objectively do we select the items we study? Are even those scholars who are committed to the study of everyday objects or structures prejudiced Cary Carson et al., "Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies," Winterthur Portfolio 16, nos. 213 (Summer/Autumn 1981): 135-96.

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in the way they ascribe significance to certain types of phenomena? An understanding of the construction of studless vertical-plank dwellings in the United States awaits comprehensive study. The mounting evidence suggests that variations in this method of construction were indeed widespread, both temporally and geographically. Perhaps best known are the "plank-frame" houses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England (particularly Plymouth Colony and Rhode Island). By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, another form of plank architecture became popular in the northern extremes of New England. Later variations of this type of construction have been found from the East Coast (Maryland and New York) to the American Southwest (Texas, Utah, Nevada, these examples share many .~ and ~ a l i f o r n i a )While of the same basic construction principles, differences are found in the method of securing the planks to the frame, the use or absence of corner posts, and the treatments of exterior and interior walls. Whether these different types of verticalplank construction may even be definitively linked is questionable; the answer resting perhaps with the scholar's own philosophical views on diffusion and independent invention. Still, it is evident that in many places and times, vertical-plank construction was an option in vernacular building in the United States. Interestingly, vertical-plank construction in many instances was a product of both tradition and change. This type of construction was probably known in the repertoire of many traditional builders, but the popularity of the vertical-plank dwelling was predicated on specific economic, environmental, and social conditions. American studies scholar Richard Candee suggests that while English antecedents may exist for the plank structures in early New England, the widespread acceptance of this method of construction was due to the commercial production of power-sawn planks and boards. Of plank-frame houses in MassachuWalter R. Nelson, "Some Examples of Plank House Construction and Their Origin," Pioneer America 1 , no. 2 (July 1969): 18-29; Abbott Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625-1725 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), p. 89; Richard M. Candee, "A Documentary History of Plymouth Colony Architecture, 1620-1700," Old Time New England 60, no. 2 (October-December 1969): 37-53; Jan Leo Lewandoski, "The Plank Framed House in Northeastern Vermont," Vermont Histo~y 53, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 104-21. Among the best brief summaries of this type of building is Dell Upton, "Traditional Timber Framing," in Material Culture of the Wooden Age, ed. Brooke Hindle (Tarrytown, N.Y.: Sleepy Hollow Press, 1981), pp. 45-49.

setts Bay, another leading scholar of early New England architecture, Abbott Lowell Cummings, writes, "Precariously maintained links with such tradition, however, are perhaps less important than recognizing that an abundance of pine and the early development of the sawmill in New England encouraged the widespread adoption of this distinctive form as a practical construction alternative." It has been suggested by architectural historians Greg Koos and Williams D. Walters, Jr., that in the Midwest, vertical-plank construction represented an "early industrial attempt to use cheap machine sawn softwoods to supply the demands for inexpensive housing." Where milled lumber was plentiful, the construction of vertical-plank houses saved both time and money. Of course, board and batten over a frame were also used as a stylistic device in the mid nineteenth century by architects such as Andrew Jackson Downing. However, vernacular architecture scholar Dell Upton suggests that the popularity of board-and-batten siding was enhanced by its link to tradition, and many vernacular builders who accepted it eliminated the redundant stud frame.4 By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, vertical-plank construction was used in some temporary company-built housing, such as the "shotgun" houses in oil boomtowns of the Texas Panhandle during the ig3os, according to folklorist Sylvia Grider. A survey of the architecture of coal-company towns, based on fieldwork in southwestern Pennsylvania and a review of documentary evidence for other states by architectural historian Margaret Mulrooney, suggests that vertical-plank dwellings were found in eastern coalmining towns from Pennsylvania to Alabama.' Richard McAlpin Candee, "Wooden Building in Early Maine and New Hampshire: A Technological and Cultural History, 1600-1720'' (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976), pp. 225-46; Cummings, Framed Houses, p. 89 (for an update of Cumm~ngs'ssurvey of plank houses, see Candee et al., "First Period Buildings in Eastern Massachusetts: A Thematic Survey Report," 1985 and 1986, on file at the Massachusetts Historical Commission); Greg Koos and William D. Walters, Jr., "The Eliel Barber House and American Vertical Plank Wall Construction," Pioneer America Society Transactions g ( 1986): 71-77; Upton, "Traditional Timber Framing," p. 48. Sylvia Ann Grider, "The Shotgun House in Oil Boomtowns of the Texas Panhandle," Pioneer America 7, no. 2 (July 1975): 47-55; Margaret M. Mulrooney, A Legacy of Coal: The Coal Company Towns of Southwestern Pennsylvania (Washington, D.C.: Historic American Buildings SurveyiHistoric American Engineering Record, 1g8g), p p 123-34, 139-4 1 Mulrooney also suggests that plank houses were probably more commonplace than physical evidence suggests and that those examples that d o survive are often missed or misidentified by surveyors (Mulrooney to Michael Ann Williams, June 12, 1989).

The Appalachian Boxed Howe Until relatively recently, vertical-plank construction has received scant attention in accounts of traditional building in the Upland South. A few studies indicate that this type of construction may have been common in some parts of this region. Folklorist Diane Tebbetts's survey of traditional houses in Independence County, Arkansas, on the eastern edge of the Ozarks, found that over half the houses surveyed were of vertical-plank ("box") construction. These "average to poor" houses were built between 1870 and 1945, following the traditional plans of the Upland South. If, as Tebbetts suggests, box construction was "fairly common throughout the Ozarks," what of other parts of the Upland South? With one notable exception, mention of this type of construction in accounts of folk building in Appalachia has been rare. The publication of Charles E. Martin's Hollybwh in 1984 broke new ground in the understanding of the "box" or "boxed" house in the Appalachian ~outh.~ Martin's study of a folk building tradition in a small (now-defunct) eastern Kentucky community found vertical-plank construction to be a significant part of the local building tradition. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, log construction initially predominated, but as community members turned from farm work to employment in the mines, vertical-plank construction was adopted. According to Martin, in Hollybush, plank construction existed to the exclusion of more conventionally framed dwellings. These houses usually consisted of a minimal studless frame (hewn sills with sleepers, corner posts, plates, and ceiling joists made of milled planks) with boards and battens acting as both walls and weight-bearing supports. The houses were generally laid out in traditional single-pen or saddlebag plans.' Significantly, Martin employed more than a simple survey of extant structures in Hollybush. Instead, he chose to attempt to reconstruct the totality of its building history, a method made possible because Hollybush was a very small, isolated community with a limited life span. Martin used oral history to reconstruct much of what was unrecoverable through material evidence. By trying to include all structures, this technique helps to over-

come the problems of variable survivability of different types of buildings as well as those problems associated with the selection of what should, or should not, be documented. In contrast, the survey technique may account for vertical-plank dwellings, as in the case of Tebbetts's study, but does not always do so, either because few examples have survived or because the surveyor has failed to recognize or document them. Martin's decision to study a small isolated community enabled him to consider the totality of building within its confines, but his study cannot tell us how typical the building history of Hollybush was of southern Appalachia in general. In order to begin to understand how widespread boxed construction was in southern Appalachia, one might turn to surveys of architecture in other parts of the region such as southwestern North Carolina. A comprehensive survey program conducted by the North Carolina Division of Archives and History in the 1970s and 1980s means that the architecture of the area is well accounted for. All the eleven southwestern counties have been surveyed at least generally, and six have received comprehensive surveys.' Furthermore, the state survey program has been notable in its concern for documentation of vernacular structures. What better data could one want? Yet the survey reports from southwestern North Carolina suggest that boxed construction did not exist in this area. It is never mentioned in the reports of surveys conducted prior to 1989. Could the surveyors have been wrong? At first glance, no apparent gaps in the data seem to exist. According to most accounts, log structures were common during the period of white settlement, and log construction persisted in the more isolated communities until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (at which time, presumably, everyone switched to frame construction). But as one examines the data accompanying the documented nonlog rural dwellings, it becomes apparent that these are mostly houses built by the relatively well-off; for instance, those who prospered during the booms in flue-cured tobacco or timber, those who lived in fertile river valleys, and those who profited from the influx of tourists into the region. The surveyor, while noting

Diane Tebbetts, "Traditional Houses of Independence County, Arkansas," Pioneer America lo, no. 1 (June 1978): 37-55; Charles E. Martin, Hollybush: Folk Building and Social Change in an Appalachian Community (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984). Martin, Hollybwh, pp. 26-28.

Since 1978, work in this region has included a ten-county reconnaissance survey and comprehensive surveys of Buncombe, Henderson, Jackson, Cherokee, Haywood, and Madison cos. Essays and survey files are located in the Western Office, North Carolina Division of Archives and History, Asheville.

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the dwindling persistence of log in rural building, tends to focus more on town architecture built during this period. As the railroad finally linked together the mountain counties, towns flourished, and new towns were created. However, only a relatively small segment of the rural population of western North Carolina was prospering during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many rural people were facing new hardships posed by the economic and social changes of this period. Aside from those who still built or lived in log homes, what do we know of the dwellings of these people? Have their homes disappeared, or do they not merit documentation? (I conducted two of the comprehensive surveys in southwestern North Carolina. Therefore, any criticism implied is essentially self-criticism. When I returned to the region to study, via oral history, the social use and meaning of folk architecture, I was aware of the possible existence of studless vertical-plank structures, but I was unprepared for the disparity of evidence between oral testimony and the results of our comprehensive surveys.g) If surveys of southwestern North Carolina have failed to turn up any information on vertical-plank dwellings, another source of data does exist. In interviewing people who grew up in rural southwestern North Carolina during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the question, "Was your childhood home frame or log?" sometimes evokes the answers, "No, it was plank," or "No, it was boxed." (The terms plank and boxed are used interchangeably in this region.) While it is almost impossible to get people in this region to articulate a typology of house plans, individuals always distinguish between houses of different construction. The vast majority, men and women alike, distinguish between boxed and frame houses. Some described the difference in terms of external appearances, but most also recognized these houses as being structurally different: Well, you take a boxed house-take the boxed-they ain't got framing in it. They just built the whole plate around and nail the boards down here up. And just slat it over. See, a frame house, it got two by fours in it, put the weatherboarding on the outside like this and ceiling on the inside. Boxed house ain't got it.'' 1 am grateful to Blanton Owen for originally bringing to my attention the existence of vertical-plank construction in western North Carolina. l o Interview with Jim Neal, Nantahala, Macon Co., August 2 , 1984. Fifty individuals were interviewed, and all but three interviews were tape recorded and are part of the author's collection.

Not only did rural people know of these houses, but the majority reported that either log or boxed dwellings predominated in their childhood communities. Except in the river-valley communities (particularly those near the larger towns), people could count the number of frame houses on the fingers of one hand and in some instances on no fingers. How is it possible for the portrait of rural architecture painted by oral testimony to be so different than that suggested by comprehensive surveys? Scholars who deal with more tangible evidence are prone to question the accuracy of oral history. Certainly individual testimonies should be scrutinized; still, the combined testimonies of several dozen unrelated individuals from various parts of southwestern North Carolina, accurately describing a form of architecture known to have existed in another part of Appalachia, strongly suggest that it is the tangible architectural evidence that needs to be reexamined. Another tangible form of evidence that supports the oral testimony does exist. In the files of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are many photographs of vertical-plank houses that existed at the time of the park's creation in the 1930s. The dwellings in the photographs are labeled "boxed" houses (figs. 1, 2 , 3).11 Impermanence is, of course, one reason why surveys have failed to turn up many instances of this type of architecture. Vertical-plank construction is not necessarily impermanent; some New England examples survived for centuries. Much like the houses in Hollybush, however, boxed dwellings in southwestern North Carolina were structurally weak. Planks, often put up green, were simply nailed to the "frame." While battens were usually used over the spaces between the planks, the exterior seldom had any other covering. The interior was often just covered with cardboard and newspaper. These hastily built houses were indeed frail, and the chances of survival seem slim compared with hewn-log and frame dwellings. The lack of survivability goes beyond physical impermanence. The fate of the boxed houses within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is instructive on this point. In the creation of the park, the decision was made by the federal government to preserve some of the cultural landscape. Log structures were selectively chosen to represent l ' The archives of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which is located in southeastern Tennessee and southwestern North Carolina, are at the Sugarland Visitors Center, Gatlinburg, Tenn.

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Fig. 1. Lucinda Benson house, Cosby Creek, Tenn., 1937;demolished. (Photo, courtesy, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.)

folk tradition. And lest the visitor think that everyone lived in log cabins, a few large frame houses were also preserved. Despite the effort to balance the presented images of mountain life judiciously, a representative landscape was not achieved, for the boxed houses were not preserved. Notes accompanying the photographs in the park's archives often label these structures as eyesores and recommend removal or destruction. Likewise, rural people in southwestern North Carolina have seldom treated their architectural heritage kindly. Small houses thought of as easily replaceable were frequently abandoned or destroyed. The topic of a common narrative is that log houses were the source of firewood. The popularity of this tale is based on many people recognizing the folly of their ways. Outsiders are now willing to pay good money for log structures, and local people are beginning to embrace the log house as a symbol of their heritage. Where larger frame houses were originally favored for preservation, external interest in the preservation (or owner-

ship) of log dwellings and changing local attitudes have recently come to the defense of log houses. While sentimentality may be attached to a homeplace of boxed construction, it has seldom resulted in the house's physical preservation. If impermanence is a major cause of lack of documentation of vertical-plank structures, why have surveyors failed to uncover the bountiful oral evidence on this type of construction? A confusion in nomenclature is one possibility. Architectural historians sometimes use the term plank to describe horizontal-plank construction. Although relatively uncommon, one variant of this type of construction does exist in western North Carolina. Occasionally "log" houses were built with narrowly hewn or sawn timbers, such as the "whup sawn" log house one woman described, but the term plank in western North Carolina always refers to the vertical-plank house.'* Further questioning might easl2 Interview with Mary Jane Queen, John's Creek, Jackson Co., August 24, 1984.

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Fig. 2. Old Bennett house, Little Cataloochie, N.C., 1937; demolished. (Photo, courtesy, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.)

ily clear up such misunderstandings, but confusion may occur if the definition of the term plank house is not pursued by the interviewer. Oral history has been used in survey work, particularly in rural areas where documentary evidence is scanty. In these instances it is often standard procedure to begin the historical documentation of structures with the owner's or occupant's testimony. However, oral testimony is usually recorded in reference to specific extant structures, buildings that the surveyor has already chosen to study. The surveyor is unlikely to gather information on a structure that has disappeared or is deemed insignificant. Of course, it may be fairly argued that the purpose of the comprehensive survey is to document surviving significant structures, but because building histories of the region are written based on this information, the collected

data is skewed, and the history runs the risk of being inaccurate. If boxed houses survived in anywhere near the proportion that oral testimony suggests they occurred in the early twentieth century, this form of construction might be hard to overlook. Perhaps, too, we are unaccustomed to looking for impermanence in such a recent past. Still, even cursory surveys of the region (by those who know what they are looking for) suggest that some boxed houses have survived (figs. 4,5). Why have these survivors not been adequately documented? Perhaps the surveyor has failed to recognize them as structurally different. Some rural board-and-batten structures in the region do have more conventional framing, and these are the structures most likely to survive. While it was uncommon to cover the exterior of boxed houses when they were first

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Fig. 3. Carey Nation house, Smokemont, N.C., 1949; demolished. On the reverse of the original photo the house is described as unsightly, and its disposal is recommended. (Photo, courtesy, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.)

built, some received new coverings on both the interior and the exterior (often several layers of various materials) in subsequent decades, obscuring the nature of their con~truction.'~Still, some boxed houses need only a closer look for the construction to be apparent. Have surveyors simply failed to recognize the nature of these houses, or have they just judged them insignificant? These structures are unlikely to appear very significant to the surveyor. While log houses are now clearly seen as a part of folk tradition, boxed l3 A resurvey of Jackson Co. began in autumn 1989. The surveyor, Rachel Barber, read a draft of this paper when she began her work and located a couple of examples early in the survey process. One recent occupant of a boxed house did not realize the nature of its construction until he tried to enlarge a window and discovered the studless single-wall construction. I am grateful to Allan Johnson of Murphy, N.C., for relating this story to me.

houses seem barely to qualify as adequate housing. They were obviously cold and seem poorly built and aesthetically unappealing. The boxed houses that replaced log dwellings may appear to the surveyor to be a poor substitute, an architecture of poverty, rather than an architecture of tradition. Much is yet to be learned about vertical-plank architecture in southwestern North Carolina. Surviving examples need to be enumerated and carefully documented. Further oral testimony is needed to ascertain the prevalence of this construction method within certain communities. The data at hand, however, can provide some insights. We may begin to understand the nature of verticalplank construction in the region, and in doing so we may ponder how our methods of studying folk architecture have skewed our perceptions of the objective reality of building practices within a re-

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Fig. 4. Roscoe and Rouia Hooper house, Caney Fork vicinity, Jackson Co., N.C., ca. 1941. (Photo, Rachel Barber; courtesy, North Carolina Division of Archives and History.)

gion and time. We can also learn something more. Folk architecture scholars have sometimes chided other architectural historians for letting aesthetic criteria dictate what is to be studied. But students of folk architecture also bring external criteria of significance to the field. Oral testimony about boxed dwellings suggests that the surveyor's concepts of architectural significance may be radically different from the significance that certain buildings had in the lives of the individuals who experienced them. The possible links to older forms of verticalplank construction and the widespread distribution of this type of construction as a building option in vernacular architecture suggests that the boxed house in southwestern North Carolina merits attention as a form of traditional building. As of yet, no evidence is available on when verticalplank architecture was introduced to southwestern North Carolina. Vertical-plank construction was known in the early settlement years of Kentucky, and there is at least one surviving mid nineteenthcentury plank structure (fig. 6). Martin, however,

suggests that exploration of the connection between vertical-plank dwellings and the industrialization of isolated traditional communities may be more fruitful than the examination of possible antecedents. In his 1985 survey of Knott County, Kentucky, Martin found that the boxed construction technique was still being used as late as 1960 (fig. 7).14 Certainly, the popularity of vertical-plank architecture in southwestern North Carolina in the early twentieth century is linked to industrialization. Still, boxed construction may also be considered traditional building because of its antecedents as well as how and why it was built. In southwestern North Carolina, the construction of the railroad during the late nineteenth century brought the large-scale exploitation of the region's major natural resource, timber. For the first time many rural western Carolinians were drawn l4 Upton, "Traditional Timber Framing," p. 47. Information on the Wasson Farm and the Holiday house is in the files of Kentucky Heritage Council, Frankfort. Martin, Hollybush, p. 110.

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Fig. 5. Frank Gates house, Balsam vicinity, Jackson Co., N.C., ca. 1948. (Photo, Rachel Barber; courtesy, North Carolina Division of Archives and History.)

into "public work," paid employment away from home. Boxed construction was sometimes used in timber-camp housing. While it is possible that the construction of this temporary housing was responsible for the introduction of the boxed house in the region, it is likely that boxed construction already existed to a limited degree in the local building repertoire. In some cases, local individuals rather than the companies themselves were responsible for the construction of housing near the timber camp. Jessie Frazier recalled that her father built many boxed houses on their property to rent to people working in the nearby Sunburst timber camp. Raised in a frame house built by carpenters paid for their labor, she was unimpressed by their construction and was frank about their impermanence. Well, [a boxed house is] when you-when they don't take pains to cut the lumber all to pieces and fix it up fine. They just take the planks and just set them u p and nail them. You know, and just all around. Just kind of

boxed them-we called it boxing them in. . . . That's the way my dad built them to rent to people, because he wasn't building them to stay there forever.15

These boxed timber-camp houses generally have disappeared from the landscape. (The surviving company-built housing at Sunburst is built of log.) The impermanence of timber-camp houses makes sense. They were not made to stay forever. What is more surprising is that vertical plank was also used to build "permanent" homes on family farms in southwestern North Carolina. By the early twentieth century, many rural people in the region were clinging desperately to their rural lifestyles and communities. Employment drew many men away from home for extended periods of time, and women were often left to run the farm. Still, individuals strove to maintain the bonds of cooperative community labor, although they siml5

July

Interview with Jessie Frazier, Cullowhee, Jackson Co., 1984.

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Fig. 6. Vertical-plank slave or servant quarter, now covered with vinyl siding, R. H. Wasson Farm, Woodford Co., Ky., probably early to mid nineteenth century. (Photo, courtesy, Kentucky Heritage Council.)

ply had less time to spare. As the timber boom collapsed, many were forced farther afield in search of paid employment: to the coalfields of central Appalachia, the textile mills of piedmont Carolina, the new timber camps in the state of Washington, and the factories of the North. While this led to a great deal of permanent out-migration, some individuals only temporarily left families and farms behind to earn wages. Up until this time the system of community labor exchange provided many rural people with houses. The majority of cooperatively built houses were constructed of log. An individual who wanted a frame house or a home that was significantly larger or different from the community norm usually had to pay to have it built, unless there were carpenters in the family. Therefore, frame houses tended to be the product of paid, professional labor, while log houses were the product of unpaid cooperative labor. (This does not necessarily mean that log construction was less skilled or less specialized a job. Certainly within some communities, individuals specialized in aspects of log building, and often there was a specialist who excelled in the construction of stone chimneys.) Families who moved

from log to frame dwellings were usually ones who could afford to pay for the construction of a new home, although some individuals specifically built large frame houses to make money by boarding travelers, drummers, schoolteachers, or professionals employed in the timber industry. For those who could not afford to pay carpenters but found that their community or family could no longer afford the time to build a log house, the alternative was vertical plank. The availability of sawn lumber brought by the timber industry and the growing number of local sawmills enabled plank architecture to become popular, but time was the most important motivating factor. Boxed houses could be assembled very quickly. One did have to pay for milled lumber, but the lumber consisted of unfinished planks which could be purchased relatively inexpensively. Boxed houses were generally built by the owner with the unpaid help of community and family. You could go and buy lumber at some of these sawmills, they's in every cove, two or three down through this country. You could buy lumber to put you up a fourroom house, for about thirty or forty dollars. . . . There'd

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Fig. 7. Ann Cornett Holiday house, Knott County, Ky., ca. 1960. (Photo, Charles E. Martin; courtesy, Kentucky Heritage Council.) be a crowd, be a bunch of people right in the country. They'd just come automatically, help you throw your house right up.16

While the widespread adoption of boxed houses might seem to signal the demise of traditional log construction, in many communities it enabled the prolongation of the traditional cooperative building system. Unable to help to build log houses, the rural individual who was drawn into the cash economy might still afford the time to help to put up a boxed house. Boxed houses of the early twentieth century in southwestern North Carolina were also traditional in form. At a time when builders of rural frame houses were breaking away from the confines of tradition in their choice of plans, the builders of boxed houses tended to be more conservative. Many boxed houses had three-room plans such as the center-chimney saddlebag plan with a rear

''

Interview with Grady Carringer, Stecoah, Graham Co., September 14, 1984.

kitchen and an end-chimney plan which resembled the partitioned single-pen log house with attached shed kitchen. The family who lived in a boxed house during the early twentieth century was probably organizing their domestic space in a way identical to that of the family living in a similar-size log house. Changing spatial preferences were slowly incorporated in boxed-house plans. Rooms in boxed houses were smaller and tended to be more numerous, although older log houses were themselves being partitioned into smaller rooms in the early twentieth century. By the 1930s boxed houses were frequently built with nontraditional front gables and multiple bedrooms. Different individuals' testimonies vary as to when plank houses became common in their community. None of the people interviewed who were born before igoo recalled spending their first years in a boxed house, although it is conceivable that boxed houses existed in this region during the late nineteenth century. (The small amount of oral testimony available for this period makes the evi-

Winterthur Portfolio dence unclear.) Individuals born in 1909 and 1914 did report that they had first lived in boxed houses. Oma Jenkins, born in Graham County in 1898, recalled, "There were a lot of log houses then, but a lot of lumber, plank, houses, too," and maintained that plank houses outnumbered log houses in her childhood community. However, some communities held on to log construction for a long time. Robert Blanton, raised in Swain County, reported that log houses predominated in his community as late as the early 1930s. There were only two plank houses at that time and no frame ones. His own family built a new log house in i9i9." Less than twenty miles away, in a river-valley community in Macon County, frame houses were quite common in the early twentieth century. In terms of the building history of the region, and in the minds of the former occupants, verticalplank construction was quite distinct from the more conventional forms of framing. In fact, many individuals described the boxed house as having "no framing in it," which is an accurate description to the extent that the planks support the structure and constitute both the exterior and the interior wall^.'^ If, during the early twentieth century, builders of log structures were tenuously clinging to tradition, and builders of frame houses were rapidly discarding it, boxed houses offered a mediation between tradition and change. A change in construction technique enabled some communities to continue to build small traditional houses cooperatively. It preserved these elements of tradition while responding to the pressures of economic and social change. Vertical-plank construction seemingly demanded many sacrifices. Boxed houses appear distinctly inferior to both log and frame dwellings, aesthetically and practically. T o an extent, they were products of poverty, as the builders were often individuals who were hard pressed by economic change. However, some people abandoned still-usable log dwellings in preference for a new plank house. While economic pressures may have dictated the choice of construction method, the choice of plank did have some positive connotations. Ironically, for a people who clung tenaciously to traditional cooperative building and conservative house forms, rural western Carolinians " Interviews with Monroe Ledford, Union, Macon Co., October 21, 1983, Minnie McDonald, Hanging Dog, Cherokee Co., August 27, 1984, Oma Jenkins, Stecoah, Graham Co., May 23, 1984, and Robert Blanton, Matlock Creek, Macon Co., July 30, 1984. l8 Interviews with Bass Hyatt, Brasstown, Clay Co., September 2 1, 1984, Blanton, and Neal.

also put special value on having a new house. At the very worst, the boxed house was considered equivalent to the log house as an indicator of social and economic status. Plank houses were also judged by many as aesthetically equivalent or even better than log dwellings. While people in the 1980s may describe their family's former home as "just" a boxed house, it was described negatively only in comparison with frame houses. Built of rough lumber and left unpainted, plank was similar to log in its closeness to timber in its natural state. As Frank Messer suggested, the plank house would be "rough, just like the logs; log's the same way." Frame houses were built of finished lumber and were commonly weatherboarded and painted. Additionally, frame houses tended to have more windows and were considerably larger. Describing the community of her youth, Eller Garrett noted: Some [houses] was built of logs. We had that half of one built out of logs, but most people just got old rough lumber, like my house was built of. Just rough sawed. And there was a few, one scattered here and yonder that had a house put up out of plain lumber and painted. Sherman Clayton had one, and Bill Allen had one. There was just two u p there, I believe, had decent houses.

Further questioning confirmed that the difference between rough-sawn and plain lumber houses was the difference between dwellings of plank and frame construction. Gilford Williams distinguished between "painted" houses and houses of log or plank: Well, I remember back then when we saw a white house, and it have an upstairs . . . and windows up there. Oh, how pretty it was. And I'd look at them old log houses and them old plank houses . . . how, back then, how shabby they looked.

While these are negative judgments, it should be noted that the people assessed plank houses to be shabby along with, rather than in comparison with, log houses. Others judged plank houses positively, at least in comparison with their log counterparts. After all, as Kate Rogers said, they were "nice and new." In some cases, a boxed house could be a symbol of a relatively high status within a rural community. Minnie McDonald, raised in a boxed house in the Hanging Dog community of Cherokee County, described her family as the "best livers of anybody around there," because her father worked in timber all his life and had the available cash to build a new boxed house.lg l9 Interviews with Frank Messer, West Waynesville, Haywood Co., September 6, 1984. Eller Garrett, Unaka, Cherokee

The Appalachian Boxed House Too often scholars who attempt to assess Appalachian housing assume that poverty was the sole determinant of design, extinguishing expressive and creative ability. Martin raised an effective challenge to this in his discussion of interior decoration in the houses of Hollybush. While the papering of interior walls in both log and plank houses with newspapers and magazines was a product of poverty and the practical need for insulation, the papering of walls followed certain aesthetic rules and provided an outlet for individual creativity and expression. While outsiders or even members of the younger generation in the region have subsequently assessed this mode of decoration dismal or sad, individuals who grew up in dwellings papered in this manner often speak of it in positive terms. Many western Carolinians spoke of how "clean" it looked. Others in the region, and in Hollybush, reminisced fondly of playing games as children by locating words on the walls.20Although currently admired by many, log houses, too, have been considered testaments to Appalachian poverty. It is too easy now to extol log architecture as a symbol of a proud heritage and dismiss boxed houses as eyesores. People did not have to live in boxed houses; they chose to. Some considered them a step up from log dwellings, and few saw any aesthetic loss in their adoption. What of more objective criteria in judging the boxed house? At their most basic, houses protect the occupants from the elements. Surely the singlewall boxed house failed to do an adequate job on this level. In Hollybush, the construction of boxed houses followed a switch from wood to coal heat, the efficiency of the latter making up for the loss of insulating power of the boxed h o u ~ e . In ~ ' southwestern North Carolina, however, the majority of boxed houses continued to be heated with wood burned in an open hearth during the early twentieth century. Compared with the thick-walled, hewn-log house, the thin-walled boxed dwelling must have demanded quite a sacrifice in personal comfort. But were log houses really that warm and tight? Certainly the thick log walls potentially had more insulating power than thin planks, if the walls were kept well chinked, but often they were not. For all the humorous stories of log houses with cracks so

Co., June 2 0 , 1984, Gilford Williams, Stecoah, Graham Co., October 4, 1983, Kate Rogers, Ellijay, Macon Co., October 3, 1983, and McDonald. 20 Interview with Mary Messer, West Waynesville, Haywood Co., September 6, 1984; Martin, Hollybwh, pp. 28-31. " Martin, Hollybwh, pp. 92-94,

large "you could throw a cat through," there is abundant and very real testimony about the wind and snow blowing through those spaces. Children would sometimes create gaps in the chinking on purpose to form windows from which to look out. Real windows were few and were often unglazed so that windows, and sometimes doors, would be left open to allow a little light into the dark house even when the weather was cool. The board roofs of log houses, just like the board roofs of boxed houses, sometimes let snow accumulate on the bedclothes.22Surely people who lived in boxed houses were often cold, but there is no testimony indicating that people found these houses to be significantly colder than log dwellings. The impermanence of boxed houses would also seem to make them distinctly inferior to both hewn-log and frame houses. Surprisingly, only a few individuals mentioned this impermanence, and all of them were raised in frame houses. Jim Neal of the Aquone community in Macon County was the most outspoken critic: [A boxed house] ain't got the framing in it. And you can't take-you can't hold a boxed house together. It will give. A frame house is better.

At best, he estimated, a boxed house might "stick" forty or fifty years. However, even Neal's comparison with frame houses is revealing: It will be cheaper in the long run [to build a boxed house], but it wouldn't be as good. But you know, a fellow builds a house, he generally spends his lifetime in it; he spends a lifetime.23

The ideal according to this statement is that a house should last a builder-owner's lifetime, rather than endure for posterity. Hewn-log and frame houses in southwestern North Carolina may have been relatively permanent in physical construction, yet they were often impermanent in use. Even in the nineteenth century, many houses, particularly smaller folk houses, served as a dwelling for a generation or two. T h e younger generation would often build new houses on the family property, leaving the homeplace vacant. Some small folk houses were replaced by their very builder. During the early twentieth century, this was apparently quite common. Many individuals recalled living in two or three houses on the same property during their childhood. 22 This is the commonest narrative collected from individuals interviewed for this study. It is told by both people raised in log houses and those raised in boxed houses. " Interview with Neal.

Winterthur Portfolio Given this pattern of abandonment or destruction, traditional log houses and the smaller frame houses seem overbuilt. The adoption of plank construction made some degree of sense in local practices of rebuilding. Despite Neal's criticism, the gap between a builder's adult lifetime and "forty or fifty" years is relatively small. Perhaps the adoption of boxed construction did involve a recognition by the builder that a way of life was drawing to an end and permanence was no longer called for. Or, perhaps it only involved a practical assessment that physical permanence was a factor that could be easily sacrificed in order to maintain other aspects of traditional practice. In most cases, the builders of boxed houses were individuals who a generation before would have chosen log as their building medium. Compared with frame houses, these new houses were "just" boxed houses, but in a good many communities, frame houses were beyond the economic reach of the average individual. Boxed houses were generally judged positively by the builders, both in comparison with the houses belonging to their parents and grandparents and in comparison with the norms of the builders' communities. The widespread construction of boxed dwellings in southwestern North Carolina survived only a decade or two beyond the traditional log construction. By the ig5os, and especially as electricity became available in the more remote communities, making single-wall construction impractical, construction of the boxed house declined. Its role as a mediator between tradition and change was no longer called for. Rural people became more integrated into the cash economy, mutual exchange of labor declined, and traditional house forms were eclipsed by popular styles. People living in western North Carolina still equate boxed houses with log dwellings. Rather than being perceived as symbols of the end of traditional building in the region, vertical-plank dwellings are now considered to be "old-style" houses. Willa Mae Pressley described a boxed house she lived in during the 1940s soon after she was married: At first, we bought an old, a very old, house. It wasn't a log house, but it was a very old house. And it kind of fit back in, back in the days when the log houses were there.

Initially, as aesthetic and spatial preference changed in midcentury, boxed dwellings were judged negatively as "old-style" houses. More recently, boxed houses have been judged more positively as people grow nostalgic. Similar to log

houses, boxed dwellings have become a symbol of a way of life that has disappeared, a way of life of which people are now proud. Gilford Williams, who described how shabby log and plank houses once looked in comparison with painted frame houses, now concludes, "these days, I don't think they look so shabby."24 Folk architecture scholars, as well as preservationists and local-color writers, look beyond the poverty and physical discomfort that the log house may have once represented. As symbols of the past, artifacts of folk tradition, or aesthetic objects, log dwellings merit their attention. Perhaps it is also time to look beyond the shabbiness of plank houses. We need to understand both the role of vertical-plank construction in the vernacular building of this region and the meaning that boxed houses held in individuals' lives. The mounting evidence indicates that verticalplank construction was a common form of vernacular building across the rural United States, particularly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is also probable that further research will demonstrate that the vertical-plank "boxed" house was a predominant form of rural dwelling in Appalachia during the early twentieth century. Except for differences in the method of heating, eastern Kentucky and southwestern North Carolina examples are remarkably similar. Questions pertaining to the origin of the Appalachian boxed house remain to be answered. As with the early New England examples, a few traditional antecedents do exist, but the widespread acceptance of this form of construction is linked to specific economic conditions. Rather than the forces of industrialization in Appalachia introducing a foreign mode of building, it is likely that these forces introduced social and economic changes that rendered a less common traditional building method a desirable alternative to log or frame. The Appalachian boxed house was to some extent both traditional and innovative. While the basic form of rural building was altered, cooperative building practices and traditional house plans were, for a time, retained. As symbols of economic and social status, plank houses were also mediators. The boxed house, while continuing to take traditional forms, was a symbol of change. While still living in cooperatively built houses, builders of boxed houses signaled their entrance into a new industrialized economy. 24 Interviews with Willa Mae Pressley, Bo Cove, Jackson Co., June 28, 1984, and Williams.

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You have printed the following article: Pride and Prejudice: The Appalachian Boxed House in Southwestern North Carolina Michael Ann Williams Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 25, No. 4. (Winter, 1990), pp. 217-230. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0084-0416%28199024%2925%3A4%3C217%3APAPTAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4

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Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies Cary Carson; Norman F. Barka; William M. Kelso; Garry Wheeler Stone; Dell Upton Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 16, No. 2/3. (Summer - Autumn, 1981), pp. 135-196. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0084-0416%28198122%2F23%2916%3A2%2F3%3C135%3AIAITSA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

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