The following is an article from the Albany Evening Atlas of June 23, 1849: CALIFORNIA HOUSES Our estimable fellow citizen Dr.
Knower, who is to start for California by the Crescent City via Panama, is about
to ship to that place twelve houses, complete and ready to put up on arrival at
San Francisco. The venture is a costly one, the freight on the material
approaching the cost of as many frame buildings in this quarter, and the
projector, we think, has managed the speculation with great foresight and
judgment. The best timber has been selected, and the best work men employed, and
a plan of architecture pursued, which is supposed to offer the greatest
advantages with the most economical expenditures of material. Four of these
buildings are 18 feet front and 25 feet deep. A partition running lengthways
divides the buildings into two rooms, and the stairs leads to a second platform,
which is large enough for bedrooms, or for storing materials and tools of
miners. Two others are 18 feet front and 18 feet deep, with a small extension in
the rear of 8 feet. Two are 16 feet in front and 22 feet deep, with the entrance
on the gable front; and the four others are 18 feet front by 14 deep. The sides
of the building will be composed of a double framework of boards planed, grooved
and tongued, fitting air tight on each side of the timber, the interval between
them being either filled with the moss of the country or left vacant, the
confined column of the air being found sufficient to keep off the excess of cold
or heat. The roofs of all the buildings shed from the front, except two of which
are of gable shape. The roofs are to be made of solid, close-fitting planks,
covered with fine ticking and coated with the patent indestructible fire-proof
paint, and applications which our citizens have just begun to use here, and
which they have, found entirely successful. Back to: The Adventures of a Forty-niner
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