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The Log Home Tradition
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From where do log homes come? Hum. Good question, that. In answer: Our earliest reference comes to us from Vitruvius (the Vitruvian Triad, “Firmness, Commodity, Delight“), Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, architect to Caesar Augustus who informs us that in Cappadocia (Northeastern Turkey) the typical dwelling was composed of horizontally laid logs whose gaps were filled with chips and mud. This, a tradition known by archeological research to have been employed by Scandinavians some 5,500 years ago. And that, as you have guessed, is the genesis of America’s log home tradition. From the Bronze Age forests to European Swedes and Finns and Danes who came with ancient building traditions to British America’s Atlantic seaboard in the 17th Century, from there to the Pacific shores of these States in the early 20th Century, by which time nearly one-third of the Scandinavians left their ancient homes to become native to these United States, one among our people.
Log homes in Stalekleivoloftet, Norway, c. 1167; among the world’s oldest.
To this day, you will find log homes Maine to California, Florida to Washington, to Alaska where settler cabins are made much as they were 5,500 years ago, with but a few technological advances: the fireplace:
43 A.D., Roman bakers invented the fireplace;
1066, the chimney was invented;
1678, Prince Rupert of Rhine invented the fireplace grate;
1742, the [Benjamin] Franklin Stove, et cetera),
the glass window came, as did much else (including textual criticism) from the Greek city of Alexandria, Egypt, circa 100 A.D., and was little changed until the plate-glass window of the 20th Century, made possible by Emile Fourcault (Belgian inventor of the quenching, glass-draw process).
Nothnagle Log House c. 1640, near Swedesboro (new Sweeden), New Jersey. credit: M. Smallbones
New Sweden
Along the banks of the Delaware River, circa 1640, from Delaware to New York, a New Sweden sprung-up in communities of homey little cabins carved from woods, well, what was left of woods after conflagrations of the Iroquois and Mohicans. Each log cabin required but an ax, a froe, and about ten days to build a house sufficient for a single man, a house seven horizontal logs high. A team of men, in about ten days, could build a two-story, fancy home for a family, and this, our continuing log cabin tradition Delaware to California, to Alaska. Should mention: log homes can be found in Hawaii. Remarkable.
Types of cabins you might know
The “Dogtrot”, English in tradition, two rooms separated by a central hall, each room boasting its own fireplace;
the “Scots-Irish”, a single 16’ x 20’ room with one large hearth and two doors, one front, one back, directly opposite;
the “Saddlebag”, a two-room cabin, each room with a chimney, each with a door or window or two, and a loft for sleeping or storage.
Interior, the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial, the Lincoln Birthplace Cabin. credit: LOC
There are many famous American cabins: the parade-cabins of candidate William Henry Harrison, employed to win the favor of frontier voters, and, of course, Lincoln’s log cabins … well, his several log cabins: his birthplace home, Sinking Spring Farm, Kentucky (1809 – 1811); his first boyhood home, Knob Creek Farm, Kentucky (1811 – 1816); his second boyhood home, Lincoln, Indiana (1816 – 1830); his temporary home, Lincoln Trail Homestead (1830 – 1831); his adult home at the pioneer village of New Salem, Illinois (1831 – 1837). Lincoln’s other homes, Springfield, Illinois and Washington, D.C., as you know, were not log cabins.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Poster, c. 1860.
Another log cabin, famous in literature, in myth and politics, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: or, Life Among the Lowly, the novel of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852) that flamed tempers which soon set the Country afire in The War to End Slavery (1861 – 1865). You will remember the story: the long-suffering American slave, Uncle Tom, resident of a Kentucky log cabin, is sold down-the-river where he meets a beatific girl whom he in Christian love befriends, and then a happy life until Tom is sold to the contemptable Simon Legree … well, you know the story, typical of Greek tragedy and European high opera, sex, revenge, death, et cetera. When Lincoln met Stowe, Lincoln is reported to have said, “So this is the little lady who started the great war.”
“Childs Life”, Lincoln Logs advertisement, 1928.
Of course, your likely log home, Lincoln Logs, invented in 1916 by Frank Lloyd Wright’s second son, John … the first son, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr., followed his father’s practice. Of the three Wrights, I much prefer the work of John, a bringer of much happiness and sound design. What to say: “When John was with his father who was crafting the earthquake-proof Imperial Hotel, Tokyo (1916-17), John conceived a toy-home based upon his father’s construction widget (the tiny log you know) and formed a company that found early success in marketing to both girls and boys a simple, joyful form of creativity.” Should mention: the original Lincoln Log Set came with instructions to build Uncle Tom’s Cabin. An interesting equilibrium.
Here, insufficient space to expand upon the Classive log homes of the Arts & Crafts, Greene and Greene, et alia. That, for some full issue of The Beautiful Home, or, perhaps, of some Home: A History episode. We shall see.
Perhaps You Knew
Among the etymology of “window”, the Old Norse vindauga, from vindr , “wind”, and auga, “eye”, that is, “wind eye”. And then, sensibly, “window” replaced the Old English eagþyrl, “eye-hole”, and eagduru, “eye-door”. Most every day you speak a bit of Viking, of Old Norse, the “sk” words, school, skull, skill, et cetera,
The Lincoln Log 1916 Patent Drawing.
and of the Gods: Tuesday, Tiesdi’s Day; Wednesday, Woden’s Day; Thursday, Thor’s Day; Friday, Frigga’s Day.
When building a log cabin, face the main door and window (if you have one) south … allows the sun to shine in. Notice the vindauga, the wind-eye that looks down upon Lincoln’s home snugly sheltered in the Doric temple of Kentucky’s woods.
The recluse misanthrope Henry David Thoreau, wrote in his book of savage home economics, Walden: or, Life in the Woods (1854), “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
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Lincoln’s Birthplace Memorial; cradled inside, the symbolic, Lincoln Cabin; John Russell Pope, architect, 1911.
The temple’s inscription reads:
HERE * OVER THE LOG CABIN WHERE ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS BORN * DESTINED TO PRESERVE THE UNION AND FREE THE SLAVE * A GRATEFUL PEOPLE HAVE DEDICATED THIS MEMORIAL * TO UNITY PEACE AND BROTHERHOOD AMONG THESE STATES
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Featured image: Lincoln’s Birthplace Memorial; cradled inside, the symbolic, Lincoln Cabin; John Russell Pope, architect, 1911
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