{"id":4672,"date":"2021-11-05T18:45:29","date_gmt":"2021-11-05T18:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/?p=4672"},"modified":"2021-11-05T18:45:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T18:45:29","slug":"and-you-think-your-log-house-is-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/and-you-think-your-log-house-is-old\/","title":{"rendered":"And you think your log house is old?"},"content":{"rendered":"

While touring the Lake Garda area in northern Italy last month, my wife\u00a0<\/span>Nancy\u00a0<\/span>and I visited the\u00a0<\/span>Museo Rambotti<\/em><\/span>, an archeological museum in Desenz<\/span>a<\/span>no. This museum features the prehistoric \u201cpile dwellings\u201d (we might call them stilt houses) which were built around Lake Garda and other pre-Alp sites\u00a0<\/span>dating from the Neolithic to the Iron Age (spanning the period 5500 \u2013 500 BC).\u00a0<\/span>The area has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My jaw dropped when I saw the log construction in a replica of a house of the style used around\u00a0<\/span>4000 years ago<\/span>, during the Bronze Age (pictured above).\u00a0<\/span>It wasn\u2019t all that different from the log structures we can still see<\/span>\u00a0in the Lovettsville area \u2013\u00a0<\/span>the area\u00a0<\/span>once known as \u201cthe German Settlement.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>It got me to thinking, and to looking a few things up.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Log construction of houses was brought to the North American colonies in the 17<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0and 18<\/span>th<\/span><\/sup>\u00a0centuries by Scandinavians and Germans, including Swiss-Germans.\u00a0<\/span>(The English did not build log cabins and houses when they first came here.)\u00a0<\/span>Much of our earl<\/span>y<\/span>\u00a0architecture in th<\/span>e Lovettsville<\/span>\u00a0area came from the Germans and Swiss who originally settled in Pennsylvania and then migrated south through Maryland into the Valley of Virginia. In past issues\u00a0<\/span>of this newsletter<\/span>, we have featured articles on the German\u00a0two-door house<\/a>\u00a0(said by some to have originated in the Tyrol region, a German-speaking area of Austria, now part of Italy), and the Pennsylvania\u00a0bank barn<\/a>\u00a0(also brought to American from German and Swiss part<\/span>s of Europe).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Just earlier this year, we wrote about<\/span>\u00a0Ruse property on the outskirts of Lovettsville (now the Community Park site)\u00a0<\/span>which\u00a0<\/span>had both a remarkable bank barn\u00a0<\/span>which was called a \u201cSwitzer,\u201d\u00a0<\/span>and a less-remarkable\u00a0log house<\/a>\u00a0whose log structure was exposed when the County prepared to dismantle it.\u00a0<\/span>We have lost both of those buildings. Let\u2019s hope we can preserve others which reflect thousands of years of European heritage.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Ed Spannaus\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While touring the Lake Garda area in northern Italy last month, my wife\u00a0Nancy\u00a0and I visited the\u00a0Museo Rambotti, an archeological museum in Desenzano. This museum features the prehistoric \u201cpile dwellings\u201d (we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4673,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4676,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672\/revisions\/4676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}