[MassHistPres] Brick nogging

[Dennis De Witt]

Attached is a ca. late-18th -- early 19th. C example from Brookline -- visiting experts found it hard to date.  The frame was never exposed, but note the gunstock post.  Timbers seemed to be Chestnut.  The house looked from the outside like a modest 1860s mansard further modified ca. 1900 and was believed to have been moved.  By the time the formal demo app was made & anyone bothered to look inside -- and discovered the boxed corner posts -- the development process for the property was too far down the line to save the house in the face of an unsympathetic pro-development establishment.

Had it been identified earlier, so that preservation had a seat at the planning board process, its site might not now be three parking spaces in the corner of a condo project parking lot.

Instead, all that we got out of it was documentation.

Dennis De Witt



On Jan 29, 2010, at 1:13 PM, Zimmerman Sally wrote:

> Re: English building practices and brick infill, Abbott Cummings, Framed Houses of Mass. Bay, p. 11 states: "The use of brick for the infilling of walls, often in herringbone patterns, did not become in any sense widespread in England until the seventeenth century."
>  
> Whether nogging reflects this decorative use, I would defer to Cummings' reticence to ascribe the practice here to an English practice, but that nogging here is deliberate and not a way to dispose of construction refuse is a certainty.
>  
>  
>  
> Sally Zimmerman
> Preservation Specialist
> Historic Homeowner Program
> 185 Lyman Street
> Waltham, MA 02452-5645
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>  
> 
> 
> >>> rebecca mitchell <rufusrulesok at hotmail.com> 1/29/2010 1:01 PM >>>
> James Garvin's Building History of Northern New England has a good photograph and brief discussion of brick nogging on p. 53.  When a north wall of my house (c 1725) was opened for a sill repair we discovered nogging of bricks (whole and broken) and clay.  In addition to the reasons already raised (insulation, fire retarding) I have wondered if the practice might have been simply a vestige of English building practice.  It seems more deliberate than simply a means to dispose of construction refuse.
> 
> Rebecca Mitchell
> 200 Portsmouth Ave.
> Stratham, NH 03885
> (603) PRimrose 8-7979
> 
> 
> 
> > From: masshistpres-request at cs.umb.edu
> > Subject: MassHistPres Digest, Vol 47, Issue 30
> > To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
> > Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:00:02 -0500
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> > 1. Reason fro brick nogging (Anne Grady)
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> > Message: 1
> > Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:46:31 -0500
> > From: Anne Grady <agrady at eonconnect.com>
> > Subject: [MassHistPres] Reason fro brick nogging
> > To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
> > Message-ID: <1764B1A3-2883-41DA-9BF2-23288E11F396 at eonconnect.com>
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> > I concur with the previous writers that the reasons for filling walls with brick were probably for insulation and protection from vermin, but I have never read anything written in the 17th or 18th centuries about the reasons. I remember Abbott Cummings being asked once about brick nogging. He said wasn't certain, but pointed out the great need for insulation. He cited a quote from Judge Samuel Sewall, who said, "The ink froze in my inkwell, though I write by a good fire in my wife's chamber."
> > 
> > Anne
> > 
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