Interesting tiny historical house

Started by Homegrown Tomatoes, March 13, 2008, 09:18:53 AM

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Homegrown Tomatoes

The kids and I went to a local museum the other day, Harn Homestead, to have a picnic and look around.  The last time I was there I was probably 5 or 6, but I still remembered it being a neat place, so wanted the girls to see it.  One thing I didn't remember from my last visit was a tiny house called the Shepherd Homestead.  It was said to be the first two-story house with an indoor staircase in Oklahoma.  The footprint of the house was 15 by 25', which isn't really "tiny" until you consider that 10 people lived in it!!!  That's right, the Shepherd family had 8 kids when they moved into that little house.  There were two rooms and sort of a mud room downstairs and a corner staircase off the mudroom.  The upstairs had two rooms.  The upstairs wasn't a true two-story, but had knee walls that were about 3-4' high, MAYBE.  The lower floor had really low ceilings, making it seem even tinier... it looked like an oversized doll house.  There was another cabin on the property, too, that had been reconstructed from another location in the 1960s.  Even though the footprint was only slightly larger than the Shepherd house, it felt a lot bigger because there were no interior walls dividing the downstairs.  There was a loft, but we couldn't see up there.

It was funny to look at the little 15' by 25' house and make comparisons with what we hope to build... If we were to build a 14' by28' little house, I would hope to make the ceilings higher so that it didn't feel so incredibly small.  When we visited Old World Wisconsin, I remember a little cabin that had housed 16 people through a northern winter, and it also felt larger because of the open first floor and higher ceilings, as well as a taller second floor.

glenn kangiser

We many times compare the apartment section of the underground complex to the size of cabins or houses being built, for comparison.  It is 16 x 28 in the main part and is quite comfortable for the two of us or more - without the rest of the cabin.
"Always work from the general to the specific." J. Raabe

Glenn's Underground Cabin  http://countryplans.com/smf/index.php?topic=151.0

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