A CENTURY (OR MORE) OF STACKWOOD HOMES

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In the year and a half since this magazine began singin' the praises of stackwood houses ("We Built a $75,000 Home for Only $10,000", MOTHER NO. 48, pages 96—99), we've been asked a lot of questions about this type of lowcost construction. Most of the folks who've written to us have been curious—and some of 'em downright skeptical—about the durability of these easy-to-construct, wood-and-lime-mortar dwellings. So, we've prepared this little "history lesson", to show you the kind of life span these structures can have, and to maybe give you some "brand-new old" ideas on how to build your own house or barn out of cordwood.

Stackwood (also called stovewood, stackwall, cordwood, etc.) architecture, you see, isn't a new development at all. In fact, structures of this kind have been around for so long that the origins of the technique have been forgotten.

Some very old stovewood buildings (some of which are shown in the photos that accompany this article) are still standing, however, and many interested groups and individuals have begun to look into the history of this form of construction.

For example: The University of Manitoba's Northern Housing Committee—which advocates stackwall construction—believes that the idea came to North America from the Scandinavian countries, where lime and/or clay were supposedly used to mortar short lengths of wood into extremely low-cost but durable walls. Most other "authorities", however, including Milwaukee architect Richard W.E. Perrin—a part-time stackwood historian—feel that "woodmasonry" is a Canadian invention.

Wherever the construction method came from, however, we know that it was practiced in the United States in the mid-1800's, thanks to the discovery—by the Reverend Paul B. Jenkins—of a stackwood home built in Walworth County, Wisconsin in 1848. Mr. Jenkins described his find, saying "the remarkable feature about this house is that it is con structed entirely of 'stovewood'. That is to say, instead of brick or stone, David Williams [the builder of the house, and a descendant of Rhode Island's founder, Roger Williams — BW] prepared with infinite labor an immense amount of wood, cut, sawed, and split into sticks fourteen inches in length, exactly such sticks as are used for all kitchen cookstoves where wood is burned today."

Unfortunately, though there were several attempts to preserve the Williams home, it was torn down in 1950 . . . a century and two years after it was built.

It's no surprise, by the way, that this "granddaddy" of recorded North American cordwood structures was discovered in Wisconsin, because historians do agree that stackwall architecture was introduced into the Badger State (as well as Michigan's Upper Peninsula) by either Canadian or Scandinavian immigrants during the first half of the nineteenth century. The stacked-stovewood homes built by these newcomers really "caught on" in that cold and heavily timbered country, and a "golden age" of stackwood construction took place there in the early 1900's.

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