A Window into Historic Character
The Baxendale Schoolhouse near Helena met with serendipity recently when the National Guard demolished a historic building on its Fort Harrison campus. The schoolhouse, owned by statewide nonprofit Preserve Montana, needed new windows—and the windows from Fort Harrison just happened to be the perfect size.
Preserve Montana prepped the windows for their new home by offering a window restoration workshop supported by the MTHS State Historic Preservation Office and held at Helena College. Students tried their hand at several tasks as they rehabilitated the wood windows, including priming the sashes with linseed oil; applying shellac; cutting glass to replace broken panes; and reinstalling the glass panes using glazing putty.
At the time of writing, the Baxendale Schoolhouse has modern vinyl windows that were installed sometime in the last thirty years. Though these vinyl windows will soon fail, they are still functional for now. So why replace modern windows with historic windows? Or similarly, why repair historic wood windows at all when you could just put in insulated modern windows? These are questions that historic preservationists get all the time from property owners.
What is historic character?
Your reasons for preserving your historic windows will vary depending on your priorities, but hanging onto a building’s historic character is a big motivator for many homeowners.
Historic character includes all the visual aspects and physical features of a building that contribute to its historical appearance. Character-defining elements include the overall shape of the building, its materials, craftsmanship, decorative details, interior spaces and features, as well as the various aspects of its site and environment.
Windows are one of the most obvious things we notice about a building’s appearance. They are visible from a distance, forming patterns on and breaking up a façade. When a building has too many windows for your taste, or maybe not enough, you notice right away. When you get closer, a window’s material and craft details reveal glaring differences between replacement and original windows. Vinyl windows are much smoother-looking than wood windows, and often sport muntin tape to mimic the look of historic windowpanes. Once you see the contrast between vinyl and wood windows, you can’t unsee it.
But historic character goes beyond aesthetics. As physical evidence of a building’s past, historic character tells a building’s story better than almost anything else. One of the many special things about old buildings is how they connect us to the people who once occupied them. Even though we may never know for sure who built a historic home or lived in it, we do know that we share at least a few experiences with those who passed before us. Everyone goes through times of joy, grief, and hardship, and a home bears witness to all of it.
In The Poetics of Space, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard muses, “How concrete everything becomes in the world of the spirit when an object, a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, desire, security, welcome and respect. If one were to give an account of all the doors one has closed and opened, of all the doors one would like to re-open, one would have to tell the story of one's entire life.”
Doors, windows, staircases, built-ins, crown molding—all these physical pieces of historic homes were crafted and touched by people who lived their lives in the same space that you are living yours. A historic building is in this way both a tangible and imaginative connection to the past. If that isn’t historic character, then what is?
