Building a complete pole-frame cabin is not much different from erecting the basic platform described. In each case, pressure-treated poles are planted in the ground and sturdy horizontal beams are bolted to them to sup port an understructure that serves as both foundation and floor.
The pole-frame cabin, of course, re quires longer poles on the sides, to sup port additional beams for roof rafters or trusses. The result is a rustic vacation home that has even greater resistance to storms and floods than a structure that simply rests upon the platform.
A one-story cabin is built around two outside rows of 15-foot poles and one or more intermediate rows of 6- to 7-foot poles, all sunk and secured like those of a pole platform (Steps 1-2) and spaced no more than 8’ apart. For a structure up to 16’ wide, like the one illustrated, one middle row is needed and single 16-foot 2-by-los serve as support beams. For a wider cabin requiring additional intermediate poles, you must span the width with beams in sections that are lapped at the intermediate poles (Step 4). To install the eave beams, use adjustable metal scaffolding, which can be rented. And because the high outer poles are so heavy and cumbersome, you should work with at least two helpers to set these poles into their holes.
After you have set the poles in the ground, the techniques of bracing and aligning them vary only slightly from those used for the pole platform. Plumb the inner surfaces of the side poles, using a 4-foot level and a longer piece of scrap wood for a straightedge; as you plumb each pole, leave the tapered side out ward and brace each pole two thirds of the way up. When you cut daps (Step 3) in the side poles for floor beams, you will have to complete the recesses with a chisel. Cutting daps for the eave beam can be handled entirely with a saw. Once these supports are in place, your pole-frame cabin is ready to be roofed and walled.
64 A cradle of high and low poles. Two outer rows of high poles and a middle row of short ones support and frame this cabin. Double 2-by-10 beams set in daps and bolted to each row of poles support the joists. Double 2-by-8s set in daps and bolted to the outside poles support the roof framing. Blocking—2-by-6s toenailed at right angles between joists every 4’—stabilizes the joists and provides a nailing surface for ply wood subflooring. Because the walls support no weight, any kind of curtain wall’ can be used to enclose the cabin—this example has stud walls like those used to erect the frame cottage. A prefabricated set of steps completes the exterior of the structure.
Building the Frame to the Eaves
1 Putting up the poles. For each outside pole, set a length of 2-by-10 into the hole, projecting about 10” aboveground. With two helpers, butt one pole end against the board and raise the other until the pole drops into the hole. Sink the middle poles and mark all poles for beams.
2 Attaching floor beams. Using a chisel to complete the daps, install the inner part of the double outer floor beams as for a platform. Next, use a combination square to measure across and mark the opposite side of each pole for the outer dap. Cut these daps with buck saw and chisel, then attach the outer part of the beam, bolt the pole-beam sandwich together and install the middle floor beam.
3 Installing joists. Beginning inside the corner poles at a distance equal to the thickness of the exterior sheathing, nail framing anchors every 16” to the inside beams and to one middle beam, and attach the joists. Nail blocking between joists and attach a subfloor.
4 Attaching cave beams. Measure up from the subfloor 8’ to mark daps on the outside poles for double 2-by-8 eave beams. Then cut daps and attach beams to the outer rows of poles, following the procedures given for the floor beams of a platform.
65
When a Cottage Was a Mansion
“Is this really America or have I landed on some enchanted isle?” exclaimed Grand Duke Boris of Russia in 1902 upon seeing the “cottages” of the New port, R.I., seaside resort.
The Grand Duke was familiar with the sumptuous summer residences of Europe’s rich in Cannes, Deauville and Biarritz, but Newport was altogether different. Running along the rocky Atlantic shore as far as the eye could see were estates that their owners, with audacious understatement, insisted on calling summer cottages. They were vacation homes of a splendor unmatched by any built before or since. Although occupied but 10 weeks a year, they were imperially scaled mansions of as many as a hundred rooms, and each of them cost millions of dollars to build.
At the turn of the century, homes like Commodore William Edgar’s Sunny Wide Place (right, above) went up all over Newport as millionaires tried to outdo their neighbors. Sportsman Oliver H. P. Belmont built 52-room Belcourt Castle, which boasted a vaulted ballroom, stained-glass windows that were really doors leading onto balconies, and a towering fireplace topped with miniature battlements.
One of the most nouveau of the nouveau riche at Newport was Tessie Oelrichs, daughter of a Nevada miner who had struck it rich in the Comstock Lode. When she asked architect Stanford White to design “something special” for the summer season in Newport, he responded with a 40-room French Renaissance-style palace that she called Rosecliff. Behind its gleaming marble façade were the largest ballroom in the United States and a heart-shaped marble staircase around which hundreds of guests swirled. At one party—!e Ba! Blanc, or the White Ball—white swans floated in marble pools while a dozen white-hulled ships, specially built for the occasion, were anchored offshore. Sumptuous though they were, the Belmont and Oelrichs places were over shadowed by the most opulent of all Newport’s cottages—the huge Italian Renaissance-style palace that railroad mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt called The Breakers. Appropriately, The Breakers had its origin in a spirit—indeed, a passion—of competition. Mrs. Vanderbilt wanted to upstage her sister-in-law, whose husband had spent two million dollars to erect the neo-classical Marble House and another nine million dollars for an interior that included solid- bronze furniture, a ballroom paneled in gold and a dining room sheathed in Algerian marble.
Mrs. Vanderbilt’s sister-in-law got her comeuppance as The Breakers slowly rose beside the sea. Five stories high and built of close-cut stone, the Vanderbilt “cottage” sat in 11 manicured acres on a small promontory jutting out into the Atlantic. The house cost five million dollars—a truly fabulous sum at a time when laborers earned a dollar a day—and it took two years to complete. As it went up, interior decorators and an army of workers struggled with the tons of paneling, gilt, statuary, wrought iron, brass and bronze arriving each week from France and Italy.
Tapestries, fireplaces (one inscribed with the motto, “Little do I care for wealth”) and rare alabaster pillars were taken from the estates of impoverished European noblemen. Everything in the grand salon—walls, gilding, furniture— was built in France by master craftsmen who then traveled to Newport to super vise the installation.
Bathrooms at The Breakers had sinks with solid-silver faucets that spewed hot and cold fresh water and hot and cold sea water; bathtubs were carved from blocks of solid marble. There were 70 rooms all told, of which 33 were reserved for a huge staff of summer servants. Some 150 tons of coal were used to heat the building every winter, though it was occupied at that season by only a handful of servants.
Though all this grandiose construction produced a confusing potpourri of buildings that ranged from French chateaux to English Tudor mansions, Newport’s monumental cottages did magnificently what their creators—a clutch of millionaires and a pantheon of American architects—set out to do: overwhelm everyone who saw them.
