Sage-green tile with gray grout creates a unique backsplash for the new farmhouse sink, situated in a sunny corner of the kitchen that once housed a cramped breakfast room.

You could say Bridgid Fennell and Anthony Molinaro got lucky. In the months leading up to their wedding, the couple had been searching for the perfect Craftsman bungalow. Their first bid on a house in South Pasadena had been rejected, but while they were on their honeymoon, they got a call about another house that was about to come on the market—one with the exact same floor plan, and a very similar exterior.

“They were both plan-book houses, we think from a company in L.A.,” Bridgid says. The couple snapped up the house before it was even shown to the public, and began settling into their new neighborhood and rectifying remuddles inflicted on the house by previous owners.

Because Anthony had recently begun taking woodworking classes at a local workshop, the couple’s first order of business was to restore the woodwork in the living and dining rooms, which had either been painted or removed entirely. They hired local painter Mary Gandsey to strip and refinish what remained—the dining-room breakfront, molding, window and door casings, and some wainscoting—while Anthony set about re-creating the missing elements.

His work was aided by a fortunate discovery: an original door from the long-gone colonnade, which he unearthed while trying to evict a family of feral cats from the attic. “It matched the profile of the breakfront, and looked like a door from a standard colonnade-style bookcase,” Anthony says. “Using the breakfront as a guide, I was able to design a new colonnade based on the profile of that door.”

Anthony also created a new mantelpiece for the reconstructed masonry fireplace in the living room, and a plate rail and wainscoting for the dining room, using Douglas fir paneling salvaged from a nearby bungalow that was being torn down.

The ghost of the original colonnade was visible on the bungalow’s floor; with an original door (discovered in the attic) and other neighborhood examples providing guidance, Anthony designed and built a new colonnade between the living and dining rooms.

After a few years of living in and working on the house, the couple happened upon another lucky break. While volunteering as docents on a neighborhood house tour, they met architect Lisa Henderson, who had recently left her job at a large corporate architecture firm to embrace her passion for historic preservation by starting her own residential firm, Harvest Architecture.

The three hit it off right away, and Bridgid knew Lisa was just the person to help them tackle some of their home’s larger issues—namely, two cramped and period-inappropriate bathrooms and an awkward, closed-off kitchen. “We clicked very well,” Bridgid remembers. “She was the only architect we interviewed.”

Lisa needed no introduction to Bridgid and Anthony, having witnessed their restoration work firsthand while walking her dog around the neighborhood: “There used to be this horrible fence in their front yard. Right after they moved in, it disappeared—they were the heroes of the neighborhood.”

Once she was able to peek inside the house, Lisa had some definite ideas about how to best maximize the space. “It’s such a fun puzzle for me to look at the floor plan and see how I can repurpose the space,” she says.

In this case, she reoriented the kitchen by removing a bank of cabinets and relocating the appliances, creating a corner breakfast nook. The move freed up some extra space, allowing Lisa to shift a wall to create a roomier master bathroom. That, plus the removal of a blue-tiled shower stall, helped transform the bathroom from “dark and clunky” into an airy retreat. “She did a lot of problem-solving,” says Bridgid. “She flipped everything and made it all fit in a limited amount of space.”

The luxurious tub in the master bathroom was a Dumpster rescue. "It has a lot of scratches," says Bridgid, "but it’s beautiful."

The guest bathroom footprint remained unchanged; Lisa merely removed a tiled divider and some poorly placed cabinets to open up the room. “The divider on the end of the tub wall was blocking the whole room,” she says. “It sucked all the air out of the space.”

In the process of rearranging the rooms, however, Lisa and her team stumbled upon a couple of decidedly unlucky obstacles. After gutting the kitchen, they discovered that, in the process of performing electrical work, previous owners had over- and under-cut the floor joists so many times that little more than an inch of support was holding the kitchen up over the small basement beneath it. “I’ve seen some bad stuff,” says Lisa, “but when we discovered that, I literally told everyone to take a step back.”

The process of shoring up the kitchen floor led to another project not part of the initial plan: remodeling the basement, which Bridgid and Anthony had been using as a laundry room. “We weren’t going to touch it,” says general contractor Gilbert Vuagniaux, “but when we found out the floor in the kitchen was so bad, we had to add new ceiling joists and beams anyway.”

Unexpected obstacles forced the couple to turn the basement into a family room, which now boasts bright walls and cork flooring.

So the team went about putting new framing and drywall in the basement, only to run into another obstacle: Upon inspection, they learned that the space—a later addition by previous owners—wasn’t up to code, thanks to a half-inch ceiling height discrepancy on one side of the room. They were given two choices: “Either rip it all out and have it be a typical California basement, or bring it up to code,” says Lisa. Weighing their options, Bridgid and Anthony decided the best choice was to turn the 10′ by 10′ room into additional living space.

Doing so required some heroic measures from Gilbert’s team—including jacking up the corner of the house, removing the basement walls and pouring new ones without the aid of machinery, rebuilding the staircase, and installing window egresses—but once it was finished, the space quickly became one of Bridgid and Anthony’s favorites.

Thanks to its southern exposure, “it gets all this light that the living room doesn’t,” says Bridgid. “It’s one of the nicest rooms in the house.”

Because it wasn’t original to the house, Bridgid and Anthony took a few liberties with the basement décor, trimming the space with white woodwork, recessed lighting, and contemporary furniture. The rest of the house, however, hews strictly to its Craftsman roots.

Following the trend set by the salvaged Douglas fir wainscoting in the dining room, Bridgid and Anthony tried to use salvage items wherever possible throughout the house—the center-fill tub in the master bath, for example, was rescued from a Dumpster in nearby Alhambra—filling in with reproductions where needed. “We tried to keep everything in the original style and spirit of the house,” Bridgid says.

In the kitchen, that original style includes linoleum flooring, custom-made cabinetry and molding, and an art-tile backsplash. Lisa livened up the room by painting the cabinets green, but made sure the colors remained muted.

“I wanted the kitchen to blend with the living room and dining room,” she says. “Instead of being bright and jarring, it’s more subtle, warm, and relaxing.”

By reconfiguring appliances in the kitchen, Lisa created a layout that subtly mirrors the dining-room arrangement. The poppy art tiles on the backsplash are a nod to Bridgid’s favorite flower.

On a project where even annoying roadblocks turned into happy accidents, Bridgid considers the team behind the restoration to be its most fortuitous aspect. “We were so lucky to have Lisa and Gilbert,” she says. “We all worked so well together.”

Lisa clearly agrees. “The four of us made an amazing team,” she says. “Even with all the hiccups, it was such a successful project, and one they can appreciate for a long time.”

A staircase landing proves the perfect spot for a linen closet so roomy it can house a wardrobe as well. The attached bench (with drawer) is a good place to sit and fold towels. Fabienne Photography photo courtesy of Arciform LLC

Historic houses are known for many fine original details—leaded glass windows, parquet floors, ceiling medallions, rich woodwork—but storage space isn’t usually one of them. In fact, fitting an accumulation of 21st-century belongings into an 18th-century house can be a challenge of epic proportions.

The clever use of built-ins can help. Built-ins had already been popular for centuries (Thomas Jefferson designed several for his rooms at Monticello) by the time they reached their peak in the early 20th century, thanks to architects (and plan books) who used them at seemingly every opportunity. Nothing makes better use of space, per square foot, than a well-conceived built-in—one that aligns with the rest of the woodwork and trim in your house, and incorporates clever shelving, drawers, cubbies, or doors. Built-ins are also generally easy to retrofit into an existing space, so they’re worth considering for old-house areas that need de-cluttering. We’ve rounded up some good examples of built-ins, old and new, in a room-by-room breakdown, hoping they’ll inspire a new look at an old-house storage workhorse.

Hallways

In old houses and new, we tend to think of hallways as dead space—narrow passageways with a single purpose of connecting rooms. In fact, hallways practically beg for storage: under stairs, within long walls, or at the end of a landing. Carving out cabinets and closets on the way to the kitchen or bedrooms is a great way to prevent clutter from invading your living space.

Bedrooms

Let’s be honest: Most old-house owners don’t purchase their dream homes because the bedrooms boast an excess of square footage. Rather, the opposite is true—they become smitten with the charm of the home, despite the tight quarters (sometimes shockingly so) in the boudoir. But the solution to squeezing out more space in old-house bedrooms—adding shelves, cabinets, seats, and nooks—will simply increase the charm factor, while accomodating books, clothes, and maybe even a lounging person or two.

Kitchens & Baths

Any old-house owner who claims not to need more storage in the kitchen and bathroom has either embraced a minimalist lifestyle or is flat-out lying. When you factor in all the accoutrements needed in these spaces with traditional challenges like small footprints and pedestal sinks, you’ve got a recipe for not enough storage. But built-ins can again provide salvation, tucking everything from cabinets and shelves to seating and desks into unused corners.

The oldest part of the Maison Pierre du Calvet, a 1725 Breton-style stone house originally used as a warehouse, stands just across the street from the historic Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours church.

Historic preservation runs in Gaëtan Trottier’s blood. As a child growing up in the 1960s, the proprietor of the Maison Pierre du Calvet in Old Montreal watched as his parents successfully fought the construction of a superhighway that would have decimated the now-celebrated historic quarter of the city. As part of their quest to turn the virtually abandoned district into a bustling, preservation-minded hotspot, in 1962, the elder Trottiers moved their family into an 18th-century stone house once owned by French-Canadian merchant and revolutionary Pierre du Calvet. They opened a restaurant, Les Filles du Roy, on the ground floor, and their family of nine inhabited the three floors above it.

“Old Montreal had been abandoned, so it was like living in a small village,” Trottier recalls. “We knew all of our neighbors—everyone who bought a house here wanted to preserve the neighborhood. They are the reason why we still have Old Montreal.”

The lobby is bordered by the sunny Victorian-style greenhouse, created in the 1960s by enclosing a courtyard between two of the houses.

Trottier also fondly remembers following the stonemason hired by his parents as he meticulously restored the home’s ancient stone walls; it was experiences like this that entrenched in him a deep love for old buildings. In 1992, Trottier and business partner Ronald Dravigné took over the management of the café and added a gourmet grocery. While Trottier still called a small corner of the building home, he no longer needed the majority of the space, so the two men eventually turned the upper floors into a 10-room inn.

“We wanted to keep the atmosphere of a family home,” says Trottier. “We could have put in more rooms, but we wanted to retain the charm of the house.”

In addition to the 10 guest rooms, the inn also boasts a cozy, fire-lit dining room that’s home to Les Filles du Roy and its traditional Quebeçois fare, a small salon that can be reserved for private meals, a library, a Victorian-style greenhouse that’s home to a smattering of parrots, a sunny terrace, and a gallery that showcases Trottier’s bronze sculptures. (In addition to being a historic-preservation enthusiast and hotelier, he’s also a talented artist.)

In the dining room, antique hunting trophies, accompanied by a portrait of co-owner Ronald Dravigné's grandfather, pay tribute to Quebec's hunting legacy.

This eclectic collection of spaces fits together almost like a puzzle in what was originally three separate houses. The oldest of the three is the 1725 stone house, which holds the guest rooms, gallery, and Les Filles du Roy; it was originally used as a warehouse by Pierre du Calvet for his thriving import-export business. (In his spare time, du Calvet found time to advocate for democratic rule in Quebec, counting Benjamin Franklin among his cohorts.) Today, the building is the oldest home in Montreal open to the public.

While the heavy lifting on restoring the buildings was completed by Trottier’s parents in the 1960s (they oversaw restoration of the stone façade and replaced the rotted wood casement windows with exact replicas copied from an original), he still keeps himself busy caring for the old house. The greenhouse roof was recently repaired, and a new cycle of mortar restoration has begun on the stone walls. “There’s always some important work to do on the house,” Trottier observes.

Converting the building into a hotel has proved to be his biggest task, although even that challenge was simplified by the fact that the upstairs floors had already been used as living space. Trottier reconfigured the layouts of the existing rooms to give each space a private bathroom, leaving the distinct stone walls and age-old wooden ceiling beams intact.

Each of the guest rooms' mahogany canopy beds prominently features the coat of arms of the Trottier fellowship, whose motto translates to "My house is your house."

He then thoughtfully furnished the inn with a careful mix of antiques and reproduction pieces. English Chesterfield sofas and hunting trophies mingle with Louis XIII tapestry chairs and a retrofitted gaslight chandelier in the opulent dining room. Family heirlooms are scattered throughout the inn in a nod to his family’s role in the house’s history—his grandmother’s dining set, for example, resides in the Salon Beaupré. For the guest rooms, Trottier commissioned a Honduran designer to create French Regency-style mahogany canopy beds, dressers, and desks, all of which are detailed with his family’s crest.

“I did a drawing of Louis XIII’s bed and took the plans to Honduras,” Trottier says. “It was a two-year job, but it was worth the effort.”

Like his parents before him, Trottier stands firm on the principle of honoring the past; as a result, the Pierre du Calvet inn retains plenty of the Old World atmosphere that the original preservationists in Old Montreal strove to create. And, just like in the 1960s, he has plenty of support in his efforts: “People are more conscious of historic preservation in Old Montreal,” he says. “It’s still a community of old-house lovers.”

Bound by city and organized by year, the collection of original Sanborn maps is housed at the Library of Congress. (Photo: Karen Smith. Sanborn maps reprinted/used with permission from the Sanborn Library, LLC)

“In lieu of extant architectural drawings, they are the best guide you can find,” says Vincent Brooks, senior records archivist at the Library of Virginia. “They give you construction materials, exterior dimensions, roofing information, and, since they were updated every year, you can see changes over time.”

Plotting the Course

In the late 19th century, the advent of lithographic printing and the extension of rail lines collided with a near tripling of the U.S. population to create a booming market for insurance-based mapmaking. As new “fireproof” construction materials gradually appeared on the market to replace traditional wood and cast iron, insurance companies discovered a need to know what kinds of structures they were insuring before issuing policies. Between 1850 and 1900, companies like Aetna and Hartford Fire Insurance Company competed to track new and existing construction of homes, businesses, and property interests. Established in 1867, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Company’s map division came to dominate the industry by doing two things well: producing readable, uniform maps of towns and cities, and systematically absorbing local map companies. In 1883, the Sanborn Map Company began registering their maps with the copyright division of the Library of Congress, preserving a wealth of information for today’s homeowner. “Depending on what city you’re in, and depending on when they instituted a building permit process, Sanborns could be your only source for information,” notes Brooks.

Each Sanborn map was drawn at a scale of 1″ to 50′ on a uniform 21″ x 25″ sheet, cross-ruled in 1″ squares. What makes the maps especially useful for homeowners is their consistency from year to year and their color-coded key, which indicates a wealth of easily identifiable detail: type of construction (concrete block, brick, stone, or wood frame), fireproof or not, cornice material, cladding material, wall thickness, type of shutter cladding (iron or tin), and exact window sizes. Because of their clear and consistent graphic style, Sanborn maps are particularly easy for non-professionals to read and use. In recording these kinds of details, the company inadvertently provided a crucial tool for historic preservation officials—as well as the average curious homeowner.

“It gives you a gross level of information, like a footprint—was there a porch, was there an addition?” says Kim Chen, a historical architect whose firm has completed projects up and down the East Coast. “If you can get the color versions of the map, it will tell you if the building is brick or frame. Sanborns are just one piece of the puzzle, but they’re a great first step.”

Today, the collection of original Sanborn maps at the Library of Congress (donated in the ’60s) spans from 1867 to the late 1950s, but you don’t have to travel to Washington, D.C. to take advantage of them for your next restoration project. More than 50 state, local, and university libraries across the country were gifted with duplicate sheets from the collection that represented their regional areas. In addition, many libraries and universities subscribe to ProQuest’s Digital Sanborn collection, a searchable, printable database of all the Sanborn maps in the Library of Congress’ collection (plus those up until the 1970s), reproduced in black and white. Whether they’ve been digitized, microfilmed, or remain in their original large-format printed state, Sanborn maps are one of the most accessible and useful research tools for anyone with a little patience and an hour or two to spare.

A 1905 Sanborn map showed the configuration of Barbara Smith's narrow 1895 Italianate, which has changed little over the years. (Photo: William Richards)

Practical Applications

“Property assessments are great, deeds are wonderful, but I depend on Sanborns to tell me if there have been any changes,” says Barbara Smith, a Virginia homeowner who writes local house histories. Her 1895 Italianate home, barely 10′ wide, is a two-story wood-frame structure tucked into the heart of Richmond’s historic Church Hill. As the neighborhood expanded during Reconstruction, she explains, the economics of homeownership became more favorable for the working class. In 1895, Richmond paperhanger and upholsterer Irvin Hudson built Smith’s modest home, just two blocks from one of the city’s main thoroughfares.

“It’s a funny little house,” she says, “but it says a lot about how a person like Irvin Hudson lived. With family nearby and a trolley line he could use, he represents an important chapter in Richmond’s history—and where he lived is a big part of that.”

Smith found the peculiarities of her property’s history useful as she prepared to put it on the market in early 2009. Remarkably, the house remained in Hudson’s family for 85 years, which she determined through city records. By tracking the home on successive Sanborn maps, however, she determined that little about it had changed beyond some cosmetic, electrical, and HVAC upgrades. “It’s good information for a potential homebuyer,” says Smith, “and it’s information that you can back up with evidence.”

Sanborn maps not only provide data about individual structures, but also can reveal information about the texture and character of neighborhoods. “They help me understand that, say, between 1918 and 1924, there were six houses in a neighborhood. Then you look at the 1932 map and see that 300 houses were developed by that time,” says Chen. “You start asking yourself, why did this happen?” The extension of city trolley lines often brought development, as did the construction of a factory nearby. Where there was local employment and accessible transportation, especially before the automobile’s dominance, there was housing. “Now you know something about the social and professional fabric of your neighborhood—and your house,” notes Chen.

The maps can reveal details about your surroundings that you may never have suspected. While researching the background of his home, Jeff Elliott, a homeowner in Santa Rosa, California, made a surprising discovery about a two-story circa-1880 Greek Revival home on his block.
“The house is an oddity on the street,” he notes, “where nearby houses are single-story cottages or Western ranches built between 1930 and 1950.”

After comparing two Sanborn maps from 1908 and 1937, Elliott discovered that the original site of the house was nearly a football field away from its current location. The building began life as the farmhouse on land that was eventually turned into a mid-century subdivision. “At some point after 1908, they lifted the old girl and moved her—probably with mules pulling a platform over rolling logs—while spinning it around 180 degrees at the same time,” Elliott says. “Quite a trick.”

Of course, the most handy—and common—use for Sanborn maps is to provide essential details that can help inform restoration decisions. For instance, on Comstock House, Elliott’s own home, an adjacent garage on the property presented “some serious structural issues that needed prompt attention,” he says, in turn raising questions about the outbuilding’s origins. “I needed to know whether I should approach it as a historical restoration.”

By comparing 1908 and 1937 Sanborn maps of his home, Comstock House, Jeff Elliott discovered that a detached garage was added sometime in the early 20th century. (Photo: Jeff Elliott)

By studying the available Sanborn maps for his area—1904, 1908, and 1937—Elliott confirmed several things. First, the garage was not original to the house—it was built later, sometime between 1908 and 1937. One could then rule out the possibility that it was an existing carriage house later converted to a garage, as its probable construction dates correspond to the introduction of the affordable automobile. Second, and more curiously, Elliott noticed that the building had its own half address (767½), which corresponded to the main house’s 767 street number.

Although Elliott still has more research to do—“Does that half address impact a possible future conversion from outbuilding to ‘granny unit’?” he wonders—he calls this quick research project “a perfect example of how useful the maps can be.”
In addition to helping uncover invisible changes that have happened to a property over time, Sanborn maps also can clarify visible changes that seem out of place.

Carl Nittinger, a historic preservationist in New Jersey, relays a story about a double house in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with symmetrical detailing. While the local historic preservation commission approved the reconstruction of a front porch on one side of the Queen Anne structure, something was slightly off about its appearance compared to the other side.

Part of the problem lay in the fact that the porch was built in concrete, instead of a more authentic wood decking system, but Nittinger also noticed that the porch seemed to protrude from the building in an “acutely apparent” way. “I consulted the historic Sanborn map of the neighborhood and found that the footprint was not consistent with the original roof, and the new, angular replacement porch extended beyond the Sanborn footprint,” he reports. “It’s a good example of how a restoration project could have been executed in a historically correct way by consulting the Sanborn.”

On another level, the original Sanborn maps are handsome objects in and of themselves. All colored by hand in the Sanborn home office, some maps show richly detailed and dense city streets, while others seem almost abstract in their careful register of sparser industrial tracts.
The insurance division of the Sanborn Company is long gone, having evolved into a provider of data for geographic information system (GIS) mapping services. Yet Sanborn’s early maps remain, not just as tools, but also as vivid links to the past.

William Richards is a writer based in Richmond, Virginia, and editor of Inform: Architecture and Design in the Mid-Atlantic.

Web exclusive: Click here to find Sanborn maps online.

The entrance to the 1790 Pancoast-Lewis-Wharton House is enriched with a Tuscan frontispiece. A King of Prussia marble stoop and Flemish bond brickwork with glazed headers are both typical of the period.

In Philadelphia, the high land between the Delaware River and what is now Eighth Street has a storied past. In the late 1700s, a London development company called the Society of Free Traders sold building lots there, and soon Colonial- and early National-era movers and shakers lined the narrow streets with handsome houses. Thus “The Society’s Hill” came to contain one of the largest concentrations of 18th- and 19th-century houses in America, most of them the brick row houses for which Philadelphia has become famous.

By the 1970s, the neighborhood had become the setting for yet another success story—the renewal of its old buildings’ luster and its cachet as one of the city’s most coveted residential addresses. Today’s Society Hill—a near neighbor to touristy Independence National Historical Park, prestigious mixed-use Washington Square, and Philadelphia’s noisy urban core—is an intriguing architectural blend of sedate antiquity and in-your-face modernity.

Rows of compatible houses build the charm of Society Hill.

Fighting Times

In between these ups, however, were some very conspicuous downs. After the Civil War, Philadelphia’s upper crust moved out, and a myriad of less prestigious tenants moved in, including produce warehouses, slum tenements, saloons, and factories. By the 1960s, Society Hill was deemed “blighted”—fair game for massive redevelopment under Urban Renewal. The proposed revitalization project, intended partly to spruce up the area surrounding nearby Independence National Historical Park and partly to upgrade a notably rundown neighborhood, suggested demolishing hundreds of dilapidated 18th- and 19th-century buildings. These “relics,” including some of the country’s finest Georgian- and Federal-style architecture, were to be replaced by modern high-end residential and commercial new construction.

Historic preservationists, however, begged to differ with that plan. Since the late 1940s, a few dedicated souls had been buying, restoring, and fixing up old Society Hill buildings, risking life and property in the crime-ridden area. Urban Renewal gave them a rallying point and a broader audience, and they sprang into action to save the historic neighborhood. Their efforts helped pave the way for a thoughtful redevelopment-cum-preservation plan put in place by Edmund N. Bacon, Philadelphia’s legendary postwar planning czar.

Though some was indeed lost in the redevelopment, much also remains to be admired in 21st-century Society Hill. In addition to the many cherished antiquities that have been restored or rehabilitated, numerous mid-20th-century infill buildings blend fairly comfortably, if not altogether seamlessly, into the rows of 18th- and early 19th-century buildings.

The house that carpenter Thomas Nevel built for himself in 1770 has a decorated dormer window and an uncommon mutule cornice—good Georgian features.

Construction Clues

Since fire was an ever-present danger in densely built areas, most Philadelphia houses are made of brick. The various brick bonding patterns used in a building’s façade give clues to its date of construction. Decorative Flemish bond, with alternating dark glazed headers (bricks with short ends facing out) and unglazed stretchers (long sides out) with prominent mortar joints, characterize the Georgian style, while the calmer plain Flemish bond (unglazed headers and stretchers) with thinner mortar courses is typical of the Federal style. Common bond later became the norm, as it did everywhere.

Generally, 18th- and early 19th-century houses have gable roofs, although there are a few gambrels. Georgian gables tend to be steeper than Federal ones. As the decades wore on, roofs generally became flatter, and by the 1850s, completely flat roofs had come into use. A few of the earliest houses have pent eaves extending between stories on the front of the house, sheltering the walls and windows below, but these are rare after 1760.

The size and shape of dormers and the size of windows and panes also helps date buildings. Early dormers were plain, usually with shed roofs, but these also appear frequently on small houses of later periods. Georgian dormer roofs are pitched and often pedimented, with elaborately trimmed windows bearing fancy scrolled consoles at the cheeks. In the Federal period, arch-head dormers became fashionable.

Doorways in Georgian houses are often elaborate, with classical frontispieces featuring columns, pediments, and semicircular fanlights, as well as recessed doorways. Simpler houses often have plain doorways, perhaps topped by a transom. Six- and eight-panel doors are standard.

The projecting pent eave between floors and the plain doorway on the 1758 Rhoads-Barclay house are typical of earlier homes.

Georgian Highlights

Largely because of the early Quaker influence in Philadelphia, Society Hill houses tend to be somewhat restrained compared to those in cities like Boston and New York. That said, some of the earliest—and showiest—of the big houses in Society Hill are in the Georgian style. The Powel House on South Third Street, often considered the finest of its era in the city, was built in 1765 for a wealthy merchant, but it’s better known as the home of Samuel Powel, Philadelphia’s first mayor under the new republic. It is known for its elegantly restrained façade and rare side yard. From the outside, lead tracery turns the arched fanlight gracing its front door into a rayed flower of glass beneath a dignified classical entablature. Now a decorative arts museum, the house’s interior contains a dark-mahogany-paneled staircase and handsomely carved mantelpieces with classical motifs.

More subdued is the 1787 Bishop William White House, also a museum house, located on the edge of Society Hill at Third and Walnut streets. The Reverend Dr. White, chaplain of the Continental Congress, chose this handsome brick Georgian-style row house as his residence because it sits midway between the two churches he served. Other houses in the row are all in the Federal style.

Federal Characteristics

Perhaps the easiest way to differentiate between Georgian- and Federal-style houses is to take stock of their visual weightiness. Comparatively speaking, Federal houses usually seem lighter, taller, and less bold than Georgian ones. The Hill-Physick-Keith House (1786) on South Fourth Street offers a low-hipped roof, flat string-courses of stone at the second and third floors, and an impressive entrance with delicate tracery in its arching fanlight and sidelights.

Unlike most Philadelphia houses, which are party-wall row houses, the Hill-Physick-Keith House is a freestanding mansion with a restored side garden. Now a museum, it provides visitors a glimpse of Federal-style furniture in an appropriate setting.

Probably the neighborhood's finest Federal house, the Hill-Physick-Keith House features a distinctive entry with an elaborate fanlight.

Greek Revival Features

Often called America’s first national style, the Greek Revival is well represented in Society Hill. Girard Row, located in the 300 block of Spruce Street, is a set of five row houses built as an investment in the Greek Revival style in 1833 by Philadelphia financier Stephen Girard. Distinguished by high, marble-faced basements and first stories, with elaborate cast-iron railings beside the marble steps, they remain a handsome intact grouping. The identical Winder Houses on Third Street (1844; architect Thomas U. Walter) have remarkable cast-iron balconies at the second floor, one featuring griffins; the other, lions.

Of course, not all houses of note in Society Hill are mansions or even upper-middle-class residences. There are still plenty of small, working men’s two-story houses mixed in with the three- and four-story dwellings of wealthy merchants and gentry. The 1770 home of master carpenter Thomas Nevel on Fourth Street is a good example—one of many buildings grand and small worth visiting on any tour of Society Hill.

The 1931 uncut stone house was hand-built by a New York state trooper gifted the land (in Sound Beach, a then-remote area of Long Island) as a value-added premium on a newspaper subscription.

A stone cottage with a front door made of tree trunks and a portal for a window? It may sound like the forest dwelling shared by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but it’s actually the home of Lou and Denise Tortorelli in suburban Sound Beach, New York. The 900-square-foot house, located 65 miles east of Manhattan, was built by hand in 1931 by a New York state trooper who got the land when the New York Sun offered small plots in a then-remote area of Long Island to anyone signing up for a subscription. From first glance, the home’s whimsical nature appealed to Denise’s artistic side. “I think our house looks like something out of a fairy tale,” she says.

Stone Dreams

As a young married couple on Long Island, where real-estate prices are relatively high, Lou and Denise had accepted the fact that their first home would be a small one. “I was okay with a small house,” Denise explains. “I never imagined we would find something so incredibly unique with the sort of stone exterior I’d only seen on larger homes in elegant, affluent neighborhoods.” Adding to the home’s unique appeal is its one-of-a-kind log door, which had originally come from a clipper ship. Framed by oak trees, the door’s unusual design required creative restoration work, including heavy insulating with adhesive foam.

The charming stone exterior also needed some work. “Some of the stones had fallen off, others were cracked, and all of them were in dire need of cleaning,” explains Lou. The couple wanted to restore the luster of the stones—a combination of granite, feldspar, basalt, felsite, and pumice, a variety that gives the house a unique multi-toned, multi-textured exterior—without deflecting from their rustic, natural appearance. Cleaning the stones required careful power washing and hands-on scrubbing with nylon brushes. Denise and Lou avoided using harsh chemicals or extensive force, which could loosen or damage the stones, and they paid special attention to the original “luck brick” near the front door, a symbol of good fortune traditionally built into stone cottages.

The house’s solid, impressive log front door began life on a clipper ship, and has a cutout portal window (here partially hidden by a wreath).

The thorough cleaning made the stones’ colors pop in a palette of pretty pastels. Lou and Denise wanted to keep this natural look, so they opted not to have the exterior of their home coated with sealant, fearing it would appear artificial.

The next outdoor project was cleaning up the well-house and its now-sealed well (originally a source of water for the entire town of Sound Beach) in the front yard. Denise and Lou repaired the well-house’s rotted roof and made it a usable space by adding a picnic table nearby and filling the lawn around it with perennial plantings. The resulting landscape is inviting, and ensures that the couple will be surrounded by colorful bursts of nature when dining alfresco.

An Inside Job

Inside the house, visitors are greeted by a great room with wide plank floors, a massive stone fireplace, and a plaster ceiling with oak trees used as beams. Here, Lou and Denise have sought to bring the home into the 21st century while retaining its unique features.

The fireplace, a focal point of the great room, is made from a selection of stones from the home’s exterior. Lou and Denise cleaned it with a specially formulated no-rinse soap that leaves a light, protective film while enhancing the luster of individual stones. Again, they opted to avoid sanding or staining to maintain the same earthy appearance as the home’s façade.

Other projects beckoned, both overhead and underfoot, as both the ceiling and flooring needed work. The plaster ceiling, held together with an unusual mesh of chicken wire, was spackled and painted to remove staining that had occurred over the years. The couple also reinforced the decorative oak-branch beams, and secured or replaced the more traditional wooden ones. The wide-plank maple floors were sanded and coated with polyurethane to enhance their sheen.

The dining room’s ceiling appears good as new after spackling and painting.

“We opted to keep the existing wood paneling on the walls,” says Denise. “With a great room interior composed of wood and stone, paneling seemed the most appropriate option.” The couple scrubbed the walls repeatedly, and were pleased with the glowing hue that emerged. “As we worked, the home began to look less dismal and to show the distinct potential we’d envisioned,” says Denise.

The great room was reconfigured to include two distinct living spaces. Denise designed a full dining room area that accommodates a breakfront and a table for six. The living room, centered by the spectacular stone fireplace, became home to a full-sized couch, loveseat, and a mother-of-pearl coffee table that’s been in Denise’s family for generations.

“We used furniture that would compliment the décor and brighten it up,” says Lou. “Finding the right furnishings turned out to be less of a challenge than getting them into the house.”  Maneuvering pieces around the knots in the door jamb proved particularly difficult.

To separate the eat-in kitchen from the living and dining areas, the couple built an open-arched wall. “The original kitchen had sparse, dark cabinetry with a gigantic slop sink,” Denise explains. “It was quaint but impractical, with very little storage space and virtually no surface on which to prepare food.” The couple’s kitchen renovation project included covering a window and adding cabinets, a granite countertop, a tiled backsplash, and new appliances. Denise chose cream-colored cabinets and tiles to brighten the room.

“We’re fortunate to have a number of craftsmen among our family and friends who worked with us on projects,” Lou says. One relative installed the kitchen cabinets, another installed a new lighting fixture, and Denise painted and decorated. On a small budget, they transformed the kitchen into a bright, cheerful eatery.

When late-afternoon sun hits the stones, it highlights their variety and depth of color—yet another reason the Tortorellis appreciate their one-of-a-kind abode.

In the bedroom, Denise’s father built an unobtrusive closet that wouldn’t interfere with the old-fashioned look the couple sought to maintain. Lou and Denise added lighting fixtures with dimmers, painted the walls a soft cream color, and furnished and decorated until the formerly dank room was transformed into an inviting boudoir with a whimsical feel, in tune with the rest of the house.

With storage space at a premium, the couple installed several additional small closets and incorporated a series of beautifully crafted trunks throughout the house for both added storage and decoration.

Home Sweet Home

Denise, a true Renaissance woman whose avocations include music, writing, painting, and dance, makes a living as a marketing manager, but stays true to her creative nature by playing electric bass in a local rock band on weekends.

“Living in such a special—almost enchanted—house enhances my creative spirit because I’m surrounded by such whimsical beauty,” says Denise. “I would never find the kind of inspiration I’ve found here in a more traditional house.”

Over time, these portables have evolved to more closely resemble their professional counterparts, minus the bulk. The biggest breakthrough came a couple of years ago, when a new wave of feature-rich portables hit the market, combining details and small size in the same package. This newest fleet of compact saws boasts some advanced features I really like.

What to Look For

Power. A table saw’s stock-in-trade is ripping (cutting along the length) of 1-by and 2-by lumber. (Note: No table saws, even the big old ones, were designed to cut sheet goods like plywood.) A motor powerful enough to smoothly devour sawn lumber—at least 15 amps—is key to me. All the pro-grade compacts on the market have the muscle. Less expensive saws still make the cut, but you can feel the difference.

Fence. A stout, straight fence that stays parallel with the blade is essential for accuracy and efficiency. One that stays parallel and adjusts easily—i.e., doesn’t stutter or catch on sawdust in the rails—is even better. A rack-and-pinion fence adjustment generally delivers on both counts.

Blades. For rough work, the included blade will probably get the job done. For jobs where swirl marks from your cuts will show—like on a saddle threshold or a custom doorjamb—a higher quality blade is a must. They’re more expensive and cut slower, but they deliver smoother, cleaner cuts, reducing or eliminating sanding requirements in trim pieces.

Portability. As important as portability is, it means different things to different people. If all you’re talking about is a manageable size and weight (around 50 pounds), most compacts fit the bill. But if you move the saw around a lot—whether it’s to job sites or up and down stairs between a workshop and projects within your own house—you might benefit from some of the newest portability add-ons like over-molded rubber grips at carry-points or a handle that allows you to carry the saw like a suitcase.

The Bottom Line

If you depend on larger portables for woodworking (which will give you more comfort, stability, and cutting options) you might find the compacts…well, too compact. But if you’re moving around or have a confined shop space, and depend on a table saw for a combination of rough carpentry (fences, porches, framing) and trim (cabinet fillers, flooring, thresholds), then a compact with a powerful motor, primo fence, and small footprint can deliver big work without taking up much space.

Carpenter Mark Clement is working on his century-old American Foursquare in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and is the author of The Carpenter’s Notebook.