The Historic District

3 - pages 6, 7 & 8, one for each floor! No elevation pages, but the room layouts are there at least - which make so much more sense than the current configuration. The woman we had met previously at the historical society told us her parents had found them rolled up and tucked into the back of a closet shelf. They're not in the best shape, but we're thrilled to have gotten the chance to see them and snap some pictures. Once we find someone, we've got permission to bring a photographer in who can make high resolution images of them for us.

They're smaller than I expected, about 20x30, and there are some notations that we're unsure the meaning of. For instance, what does WP Trim stand for?

"WP" is likely white pine.

Nice find! Even though it's only a partial set, it's hard to top a find like that.

Fantastic find!

If those are sheets 6-8, I wonder what was on the first 5 sheets, and if there were any additional sheets after the plans. I've never seen a set of plans for a house from that era, but I have seen plans for larger buildings, and the number of sheets in a set was surprisingly small.

For example, this is the McKinley Memorial, in Niles, Ohio: http://www.scenicusa.net/121012.html It was designed by McKim Mead and White. If I recall correctly, there were less than 2 dozen sheets in the original set of drawings!

I agree with 1918ColoinalRevival on both counts.

Wonderful find!

JRC wrote:Fantastic find!

If those are sheets 6-8, I wonder what was on the first 5 sheets, and if there were any additional sheets after the plans. I've never seen a set of plans for a house from that era, but I have seen plans for larger buildings, and the number of sheets in a set was surprisingly small.

For example, this is the McKinley Memorial, in Niles, Ohio: http://www.scenicusa.net/121012.html It was designed by McKim Mead and White. If I recall correctly, there were less than 2 dozen sheets in the original set of drawings!

My guess would be: grounds plans that show any extant landscape and outer building(s) placement as well as elevations.

On seeing it written out, white pine makes sense. These are certainly going to prove helpful over time - especially if/when we can get the copies done at a reasonable price.

I would have loved to see elevation plans, but am grateful these exist!

More than likely, the white pine trim would have meant that it was originally painted. Your house appears to be a transitional style that incorporates both Queen Anne and Colonial Revival elements. Painted wood trim with finished oak, gum, or birch doors was especially popular in Colonial Revival houses built in the Northeast and Mid Atlantic between the 1890s and 1910s.

A note on taking pictures of plans: even if you're only using a phone, you can get fairly decent pictures if you try to get as much light as possible (but if you can soft light that doesn't cause reflections and glares) and shoot straight down to keep distortion at a minimum. If you're taking pictures of larger plans and are interested in details, do a panoramic shot (i.e. take a bunch of small pictures and have them stitched together by software). The result won't be perfectly straight or to scale but fairly useful in general (at least if measurements are drawn in properly, if not you'd definitely want plans that are to scale).

Awesome find! did you know the name of the architect beforehand?

Painted makes sense, one of the WP rooms has a note about enameled finish.

I'll have to see about talking them into unrolling them again for us and arranging for a ladder, or a lower table.

Actually, yes we knew the architect's name - Bretherick. On one of my internet searches about the house and the Flory family, I came across the town's National Historic District application - the house is a contributor building, so they had a bit of information about it included. Although he designed several buildings here in Bangor, as well as in Philly from what I've been told by the historic society, I've found little else about him so far. My next stop is the local library to look through their archives.