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The Preservation Maintenance Guide
At Catoctin, both type and style operate at different levels and scales, but both are significant in describing and defining the many structures that were designed to serve camp activities and establish their individual character.
Classification into groups based on physical features or attributes is a common method of descriptive analysis. For classifying things, methods of typological analysis are based on the ability to separate and identify basic physical components or “attributes” that, in combination, create different or similar types. An attribute is “any logically irreducible character or property of a system having two or more states, acting as an independent variable and assumed by the observer to be of significance with reference to the frame of his study.”
One obvious benefit of such a system is to name and organize things into taxonomies or imposed classification schemes that might help define temporal or functional contexts. Typological analysis has long been employed to define and classify buildings. Style is a more fluid concept, but generally viewed as outside of type. Style enjoys a range of meanings depending on the discipline (e.g. art history, architecture, and archaeology); however, it generally means the manner or character of expression unique to an individual or group. It can be explicit, such as in archaeology, signifying a motive or pattern), or implicit, such as in art history, signifying the conscious and unique expression of an artist or school.
Catoctin’s cabins have been in continuous use for more than 80 years, which is a testament to their historical value, and the experience that Catoctin offers has never gone out of style. As such, buildings that are now considered historical, are still in constant heavy use.
While the biggest threat to the interior of the cabins of Catoctin is human use, nature will take its toll as well, exemplified in a tree fall that destroyed the roof of one of the cabins of Misty Mount. Fortunately, all the materials used in the construction of the cabins are generally robust, but damage can happen. When building parts are broken beyond repair, they need to be replaced, and it is through this replacement process that changes in design and fabrication methods can begin to appear, resulting in variations on the original design, known as “style creep”.
Style creep can be found in features both small and large, and the causes are typically not intentional, but can be insidious by allowing small changes over time to cumulatively result in large changes.
It can lead to the loss of character-defining aspects of the buildings that make them special. Style creep is often the result of a need to quickly resolve a problem, but can also result simply from a lack of observation. To best understand style creep, consider the sliding door latches used on the majority of the cabins. There is no way to know if there was one uniform style to these latches since there is so much variation and no original documentation, but many of the newer latches lack some of the decorative qualities found in the older ones . Additionally, a roof that was destroyed by a recent tree fall, lacks the fascia boards found on all of the cabins that surround it, suggesting that during the reconstruction, this minor detail was overlooked.
What can be challenging in identifying style creep without good documentation is that these variations may have been original, the result of different original builders choosing different solutions.
One possible example of this is found in the evidence of the barge boards. For almost 75% of the cabins across both camps, a double barge board exists, but for 9% of those cabins, the double barge board does not use the evenly spaced blocking to separate the two boards. While the majority of the buildings have a double barge board, the small percentage of buildings that did not use the blocking can be found in a set of cabins that are all next to each other in the lower camp of Misty Mount. In a place like Catoctin, where so many buildings exist, roof repair is not uncommon, and overlooking these small blocks could easily happen.
But with the buildings all existing under very similar conditions, each serving more or less the same function, if this variation were the result of style creep it would likely be distributed more evenly across the two camps, the result of different roofs needing repair over a long period of time. While it is possible that this sub-set of cabins was hit with the same damaging wind, requiring all their roofs to be replaced at once, since these cabins are so close together, when their roofs were replaced (historic documentation shows that all the original roofs, initially built with furring strips and shingles, were replaced with full planking) it is possible that they were built by the same team resulting in a clustered set of roofs that are different from the rest.
Handles on different cabins show that style creep has likely been an issue through the years.
The photograph above shows how barge boards on the gables were built from two boards with blocking between blocked out. The graphing just above shows the percentage of blocked double barge boards on the left, Double barge boards with no blocking in the middle and single barge boards on the right. Clearly the blocked barge boards were dominant throughout the two camps.
The Catoctin Architectural Style Guide was designed to identify the different stylistic variations found within and across different building types and to a lesser degree, posit if and how these variations contribute to temporal, spatial, and programmatic differences between the two camps.
By identifying a common set of attributes between the two parks, and then using them to characterize each building, the similarities and the differences are highlighted. While each building is potentially unique, their similarities tend to overshadow their differences. This type of obvious similarity can present an easy resource for finding solutions when repair work is needed. When having similar buildings, the tendency is to look at others to determine the best approach when something is completely lost and needs replacing. While the style guide is not a perfect solution for identifying all of the unique qualities of Catoctin, the hope is that it can function as a reference when a repair is required.
In addition, it is hoped that the guide will inspire all park staff to play a part in the long-term maintenance of these buildings by beginning to recognize the nuanced differences in them, finding attributes that are not included in this guide, and documenting them well through photography. The more that is seen, the more that can be protected. But without good documentation and a common repository for that data, there will be no resource for future park staff to maintain the buildings to the same level of quality that they are maintained today. While this guide cannot easily be expanded, the digital age offers the necessary tools for a constantly growing resource.
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