Here’s one of the corner posts. Commonly referred to as a “hog trough” (as it is one piece of wood that was carved out in a similar manner).
Notice the massive corner bracing going down to the floor (typical of the Mid-Atlantic States). Also notice the white horizontal stripes, created by the plaster strips of long ago. It fascinates me that amazing woodwork like this was quickly covered over and then for the next two hundred years it was never seen, until now.
This corner post is a great example of mankind reaching perfection and then throwing it all away. It took men centuries to get to this level of skill and function in order to create the perfect corner of a house. And then, the focus switched to “reducing cost and increasing speed”.
Originally posted 2015-07-07 14:27:31.