Time Travel
Collecting Houses
“Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do. With such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.” - Virgil
by M.A. Black
An author, restoration contractor, architectural historian and consultant was ahead of her time finding structures about to be destroyed and salvaging the stories held in 300-year-old timbers and how structures were sited.
Passion cannot be faked or replicated. People either have it or they don't.
In Collecting Houses, author Anne Baker displays her passion for old (and I mean three centuries of history) houses and hard work.
Anne (called "Pete") discovers a treasure trove of house photographs in the attic when she is 12 and is hooked by the layers of time and lives lived that emerge from the collection of images.
Years later, Anne, accompanied then by her family of five young children, a husband, and the inheritance of Matunuck Brook Farm, decides to unlock the history of her home, which she inherited from her grandmother. The house stands in Wakefield, Rhode Island.
The “Big House,” as her father names it, is a 1690 gem with additions from 1851 to 1890.
Baker’s rescue of a disappearing past was ahead of the crowd. She’s a pioneer in the field and is often called in as a consultant when a structure must be moved from where it stands.
Details of the framing of an old farmhouse.
Some books jump with life and lively story-telling. This is one of them - more like a conversation with a good friend who has adventures while creating a business. Her discoveries are a sort of time travel, and the stories bring a sometimes forgotten (or gone) house to life.
"Pete" is not shy when it comes to getting the work done. She not only talks about saving structures, but also does the work to hoist beams and carefully save handmade nails and other one-of-a-kind hardware.
The story details told by the wear patterns or how a building is sited are especially poignant.
The book is an outspoken and entertaining account of Anne Baker’s life’s work. The author, a restoration contractor, architectural historian and consultant, lives in Westport, Massachusetts, but her tales include a wide range of travel, including meeting with Connecticut house aficionados - including the late Myra Linton of Norwich, Connecticut.
An old photo album with images of houses, being researched.
Baker writes “…She was barely beyond intriguing herself when she told me that she collected parts from old houses. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It never occurred to me that there was somebody out there doing the same thing I was. I don’t remember how she discovered me. It didn’t matter; we were just delighted to find each other . . . and made plans to meet the following week at a house she was dismantling in the Connecticut town of Ledyard.”
Baker taps more than 40 years of work with more than 200 antique structures. As a restoration contractor, architectural historian and consultant, she has worked with building owners, private agencies, historical commissions, historical societies, archeologists, and taught classes in historical skills. She lives in Westport, Massachusetts.
A science applied in collecting or saving buildings is dendrology, which is the study of tree rings, used to date timbers in old structures.
The wooden “bones” of this house in Suffield, Connecticut, were salvaged as the land was developed.
“Once we get the master reading, and at times it’s from 300 years ago, it’s possible to see climate changes in the growth rings. It takes a small sample from timbers in a house, which can then be read and combined with deed research and other resources to come up with a circa date," said Baker.
Resources:
Collecting Houses by Anne W. Baker; publisher is Xlibris Corporation, visit www2.xlibris.com or call (888) 795-4274; (610) 915-5214. E-mail request to orders@xlibris.com.
For more about the people who inhabited the old structures in the region, talk with the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), the oldest genealogical society in the country.
NEHGS has helped researchers (of all types) track down their heritage in New England and around the world. Visit their Web site at www.newenglandancestors.org.
Historic New England, presented by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional preservation organization in the country. They are a dedicated group that focuses on the "lives and stories of New Englanders through their homes and possessions." Headquarters is 141 Cambridge St., Boston, Mass., 02114; call (617) 227-3956, or visit www.historicnewengland.org.
To preserve cultural history on a site, Public Archaeology Survey Team, Inc. (PAST) uses an "interdisciplinary research into the prehistory and history of the peoples of the Northeast, with a particularly strong focus on southern New England." They do all types of historic property documentation. Mary Harper is director. For more information about PAST, located in Storrs, Conn., call (860) 429-1723, or e-mail info@past-inc.org. Web site is www.past-inc.org.
A wealth of information awaits visitors at the Connecticut State Library in Hartford. The state library has many sources that can help; visit www.cslib.org to learn more.
"Connecticut History Online" is a collaborative project of the Connecticut Historical Society, the Connecticut State Library, the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, Mystic Seaport, and the New Haven Colony Historical Society. Online are some 14,000 images of photographs, drawings, and prints which may be searched or browsed; visit www.cthistoryonline.org to view.
The Old House Parts Company does architectural salvage and is an interesting place to browse. Find it at 1 Trackside Dr., Kennebunk, Maine; call (207) 985-1999. Visit part of the inventory online at www.oldhouseparts.com.
