Early Modern Mouldings

Designs for door and window trim from the 1910s

By Gordon Bock

A lot changed in residential architecture with turn of the 20th century. The image of the ideal suburban dwelling began to shift from large, historically based styles like the Queen Anne and early Colonial Revival to new kinds of houses that were either geared to a different lifestyle, like the bungalow, or simply more practical, like the Foursquare. Interior decoration changed, too, and the millwork industry was quick to follow suit. While Victorian mouldings, with their corner blocks and vaguely Gothic patterns, still held on, millworks catalogs blossomed with pages of novel, square-line style mouldings that suited a wide variety of tastes. Clean and modern in appearance (not to mention uncomplicated and affordable to install), these new treatments fit Foursquares and bungalows with equal ease, and found their way into Tudor Revival houses as late as the 1930s. How did millworks, architects, and carpenters squeeze variety and visual interest out of a stripped-down look that was based on little more than 1 boards? A look at the detailing behind three of the most common door and window casing treatments in old houses, and their associated components, shows how it was done in countless early 20th century living and dining rooms, and how it can be recreated today by anyone with basic carpentry skills and perhaps a good table saw.

   Curved Header with Neck Band
Practically universal in middle-of-the-road Foursquares with no strong stylistic pretensions,this treatment is common in bungalows, too, but separated from overtly Arts &Crafts woodwork by the spare use of a few rounded edges. Most obvious is the header,which though primarily a flat board about 5 wide, is crowned by a minimal cap mouldingthat is returned at the sides. What makes the header so characteristic of the 1910sis the small neck band—only a half-round board around 1/2 thick—that runs acrossthe door or window opening and between the header board and casings. The casingsthemselves are flat, 4-wide boards rounded on one or two edges and installed with asetback of 3/16 or so on the jamb to produce a shadow line.




Square Header and Neck Band
This treatment is a fraternal twin to theCurved Header design, but one that producesa different effect simply by relyingonly on square-cut material. Here, theheader casing is again a flat board, butthe cap moulding is a strip milled withtwo rabbets to produce a stairstep-likepattern. The neck band is thin board thatprotrudes beyond the casings, and thepicture rail is another rabbeted boardattached to a wide base. The remainingcasings are all square boards.Should there be a call for an even simplerdoor or window header, another commontreatment from the 1910s creates acap, head casing, and neck band usingjust three square-cut boards and nomilled edges. Casings are equally utilitarian1 boards that run to square-cutplinth blocks of slightly larger thickness.Baseboards, though, are lavished with ashallow rabbet to produce practically theonly shadow lines in the room.




Headerless Square Casings
Lest you assume that only avant-garde architects like theGreene brothers or the Prairie School group surroundingFrank Lloyd Wright made a conscious effort to break awayfrom trimwork conventions, consider this planbook designfrom 1909. Composed almost exclusively of square-cut 1boards, is it noteworthy not only for the absence of anyrounded edges but also for the way horizontals are treated.Windows and doors are not capped by individual headersbut instead connected by a continuous square-cut band thatcircles the room. In the same way, windows dispense with thecharacteristic apron below the stool (the indoor sill) in lieuof another square-cut board. In fact, window treatments areall the more striking because the side casings extend to thefloor the same as a doorway, thereby nicely integrating all theopenings in the room. Other clever ideas are the baseboard,which is milled with a long bevel so that it nearly disappearsinto the wall, and a picture rail of similar design that addsanother horizontal band in spaces like dining rooms.

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