Drawing on more than four decades of research, Tennessee Log Buildings
examines one of the Volunteer State's most precious--and
fast-disappearing--traditions. From the pioneer era through the
mid-twentieth century, folk builders in Tennessee used logs to construct
cabins, barns, other outbuildings, schools, and churches. In warm,
accessible prose that often makes this deeply researched work read like
guidebook, John Rehder explores the varied styles and architectural
characteristics of these fascinating structures, including their floor
plans, the types of timber used, and the different notches that were cut
into the logs to secure the structures.
Profusely illustrated with over one hundred images, Tennessee Log Houses
traces the evolution of log houses from one-room (or single-pen)
dwellings to more elaborate homes of various types, such as saddlebags,
Cumberland houses, dogtrots, and two-story I-houses. Rehder discusses
the historic settlement patterns and building traditions that led to
this variety of house types and identifies their particular occurrences
throughout the state by drawing on surveys conducted in forty-two
counties by teams working for the Tennessee Historical Commission (THC).
Similarly, he explores disparate barn and outbuilding types, including
the distinctive cantilever barns that are found predominantly in East
Tennessee. Sprinkled throughout the book are engaging anecdotes that
convey just what it is like to conduct field research in remote rural
areas. Rehder also describes in detail a number of the state's
exceptional log places, among them Wynnewood, an enormous structure in
Middle Tennessee which dates back to the early nineteenth century and
which suffered severe tornado damage in 2008.
As the author notes, many of the buildings originally identified in the
THC investigations have now vanished completely while others are in
serious disrepair. Thus, this book not only offers an instructive and
delightful look at a key part of Tennessee's heritage but also makes an
eloquent plea for its preservation.
Until his death in 2011, JOHN B. REHDER was a professor of geography at
the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He first joined the UT faculty
in 1967. He was the author of Appalachian Folkways, which won the
Pioneer America Society's Fred B. Kniffen Book Award in 2004, and Delta
Sugar: Louisiana's Vanishing Plantation Landscape, which won the
Vernacular Architecture Forum's 2000 Abbott Lowell Cummings Award.
