JULY 2009 » book review

An Interior Sourcebook

Traditional American Rooms: Celebrating Style, Craftsmanship, and Historic Woodwork
by Brent Hull and Christine G.H. Franck, with a preface by Maggie Lidz and foreword by Barbra Streisand
Fox Chapel Publishing, East Petersburg, PA; 2009
180 pages; softcover; 297 illustrations; $35
ISBN 978-1-56523-322-5

Reviewed by Clem Labine

Traditional American Rooms, a groundbreaking new volume from Winterthur and Fox Chapel Publishing, is a good-looking – and extremely useful – design guide and tutorial on the creation of classic interior architecture. The "campus" for this illustrated lecture-series-in-print is the treasure house of period rooms at the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Winterthur, DE. Winterthur contains the largest publicly accessible collection of authentic Early American interior architectural millwork in the U.S. Its 175 interior spaces – rooms, halls, alcoves and stairwells – are a 3D textbook on Classical architectural millwork from 1640 through 1840.

Instructors for this exploration of traditional American moldings and paneling are Brent Hull and Christine Franck. Millwork-meister Brent Hull is this country's leading authority on historic woodwork (having authored a number of books on the topic), as well as a design consultant and president of Hull Historical, an architectural millwork company in Ft. Worth, TX. Christine Franck is a Palladio Award-winning architectural designer, author and educator, as well as a board member of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America.

The Winterthur period rooms that provide the reference materials for this volume are the result of the collecting passion of Henry Francis du Pont. From 1929 thru the 1960s, du Pont purchased historical rooms – and whole houses – along the entire Atlantic Seaboard, and had the antique woodwork reassembled in what was originally du Pont's home by an in-house crew of carpenters, masons and painters. Prior to Winterthur opening to the public as a museum in 1951, du Pont moved out and turned the entire establishment over to his collections. Although there are many books about the gardens, furniture and decorative arts at Winterthur, little has been done to document the vast collection of historic architectural millwork contained in the 175 interior spaces.

This historic woodwork sourcebook sets out to fill this void. Covering primarily the Georgian and Federal periods, Hull and Franck focus on 20 of Winterthur's most representative rooms and examine the history and changing styles of millwork throughout the pre-1840 era. Analysis of each room features a combination of color photography, a cataloging of the architectural details and commentary on each element. The breakdown of each space includes close-up photos of millwork details, and profiles of all the moldings drawn to scale – with the scale carefully indicated. Also noted are the overall dimensions of each room being dissected, because the moldings are all scaled to the size of the room. If a designer wanted to adapt these historic moldings to a room of greater or lesser size, the moldings would have to be re-scaled appropriately. It should be noted that this book is primarily about moldings and paneling; mantels are not covered to any great extent. There are 145 historic mantels at Winterthur and they deserve (and will get) a book of their own. Also, floor plans of the rooms are not shown for spatial reasons, but the overall room dimensions provided give the designer sufficient context.

The book's introduction shows how the master builders who created the original millwork for these rooms were all working from precedents of the Baroque, Palladian, and Neoclassical styles as practiced in England. The book also delineates the subtle shifts in design as the formal Georgian style gave way to the more inventive and free-flowing Federal style.

It's worth noting that the Winterthur rooms are very much Classical, but not necessarily "historic" in the pure sense. As Winterthur Estate Historian Maggie Lidz points out in her preface: "…the historic woodwork was not installed at Winterthur as it had been at its original location. The materials were reassembled and very much modified to fit modern needs and tastes." As has always been true in the Classical tradition, in constructing the Winterthur rooms the basic building blocks of the Classical language were adapted and interpreted by designers who were well-educated in the principles of Classicism. They created interiors spaces that were – at one and the same time – entirely new, and yet well within the tradition of the Classical canon.

Designers should be aware that few of the historical profiles (less than 10%) shown in the book are available as standard lumberyard profiles these days. However, Winterthur has licensed Hull Historical to reproduce its period millwork, and Hull has created molding knives that can replicate all of the millwork in the Winterthur period rooms. But as noted above, if the moldings are intended for a room of a size different than at Winterthur, the moldings should be re-proportioned accordingly.

Both design professionals and clients will find this a work of great merit. Clients can use the volume to train their eyes and perhaps even to help educate their designers. For architects and interior designers, this sourcebook is of obvious utility in specifying both types of moldings and their distribution in the creation of refined traditional interiors. And what a great selling point to be able to say in client presentations: "This design is just like Winterthur!"  

Clem Labine is the founder of Old-House Journal, Traditional Building and Period Homes magazines. He has been recognized with the Excellence in Historic Preservation Award from the Preservation League of New York State, the Arthur Ross Award from Classical America and the Harley J. McKee Award from the Association for Preservation Technology. He was a founding board member of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America. Labine's blog, The Preservationist, can be read at www.traditional-building.com/clem_labine/.

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