If we’re being technical about it, the oldest building in the eastern US is La Fortaleza, Puerto Rico being part of the US, and all.
No. Almost all of the structures that have survived that long are abbeys and castles and the like, rather than houses, and most are uninhabitable.
There are heaps of houses from the 15th century onward, though. Most are stately homes.
All right I blew it on the East Coast thing, so let’s go back to the Newport Tower.
I just read an evidentially shaky book called 1421 that expounds the idea that it was built by a Chinese expedition. While most of the book is a little histrionic they do talk about some of the architecture and construction methods of the tower and it might make sense.
Not common, but not all that rare either. Churches are commonly that old, although they don’t count as habitation, of course. Worst thing is it is probably a Listed Building so the government tells you what you can and can’t do to it.
I’d guess that 90% of people in the U.K. live in buildings constructed in the twentieth (or twenty-first) century. Most of the remaining people live in buildings constructed in the nineteenth century. There are lots of buildings in the U.S. built in the nineteenth century too, for that matter. (I grew up in a farm house in Ohio built about 1867.) There are a fair amount of dwellings in the U.K. that predate 1800, but it’s hardly typical to live there. The TV show you watched is in no way representative of dwellings in the U.K.
When you start getting into the market towns and villages in the UK, there are a surprising number ot 18thC buildings.
Certain towns within city walls have a significant proportion of old buildings, York being one of them.
In the great Victorian cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, much of what existed prior to 1860 is gone, but go beyoned these and there are quite a few Georgian towns.
My house was built before 1760. That it is when it first showed up on census records. There are lots of houses in my immediate area from that period. However, there are at least four houses from the 1600’s very close by. One is just a mile away and used to be a tavern and home. George Washington dropped in with his army. I know lots of places claim that but it is well documented that he and his army used that route. The road is called Washington Street so maybe that is how he knew to follow it.
Here are pictures of my house to illustrate what a 1700’s true colonial looks like. Most of it is remarkably original with fireplaces in every room and a working, swinging cooking hook in my office.
There are a surprisingly high number of them in the Metrowest suburbs of Boston.
I pay attention to period houses and I swear that I read a whole magazine article years ago about the oldest house in the U.S. It was in Connecticut and someone bought it and shipped it out west. There was (is) a fad for Californians to buy very old barns in New England and move them elsewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if the oldest building is a barn. They don’t require huge amounts of maintenance and a properly built one with a good foundation could last for centuries. However, it is hard to document the age of barns.
The Balch House in Beverly, MA, is also 1636.
JUST FTR that list should include A Colonial era 1683 Spring House in Prince Georges County Maryland. It doesn’t pre-date the things here or there but would be about no.12ish on the list of “English” Colonial era structures.
Ahem, St. Augustine was founded in 1565.
I find Chinese construction of the Newport Tower incredinly absurd – the tower practically screams European ancestry. Means’ claim of Vikings, or Bolan’s claim of Norwegian bishop seem a helluva lot more likely.
But, as I’ve noted, archaeology seems to set it firmly in the colonial era. They found stuff under the foundations that’s pretty late.
That was my initial thought, too, thinking about that fort there. But for the first 100 years, they used a succession of wooden forts. That masonry fort went up after some of the bbuildings mentioned in this thread. And no homes seem to predate it.
Incredinly absurd doesn’t seem very objective.
Since the Op asked about the oldest building and this could potentially be it, I ask that the evidence be looked at as to whether this is Norse, Chinese, Pre-Columbian, or simply early Colonial and if it could in fact be the oldest building. The information gathered is all over the map so to speak but as an aggregate seems to point towards something odd which deserves to be examined in a scientific manner.
Godfrey’s report, however, demonstrates his bias towards the “Arnoldist” theory from the first chapter: “… [Benedict Arnold] purchased some of his Newport property, specifically the section on which he later built his house and the stone mill, the year before he moved… At some period before 1677 Arnold built the Old Stone Mill.” The bulk of Godfrey’s report is not concerned so much with the actual archeology of his digs, but rather by personal attacks on those who are proponents of opposing views referring to them as*** “crackpots”, “pygmies”, “zealots”, or “the lunatic fringe”***. Godfrey admits in the final paragraph that, “This study has strayed far from ‘pure’ archeology.” According to James P. Whittal, Jr. of the Early Sites Research Society, who worked on the tower for over twenty-five years, no artifacts recovered by Godfrey can lead to a firm conclusion as to the date or the origin of the structure.
Interestingly, in Godfrey’s report, he dismisses the Chesterton Mill theory,claiming that “On the other hand, there is very little probability that Benedict built his Tower as a mill… the tower mill form, as contrasted to the smock, post and composite forms, was not common in England until the beginning of the 18th century,…” Though this reflects the orthodox view of the use of windmills (and the original purpose of Chesterton Windmill) prevailing at the time of Godfrey’s report, as noted below this aspect of Godfrey’s work has been overtaken by later research.
Similar situation to Mobile, Alabama. The city was founded around 1702, but the oldest authenticated building in the city limits is from the 1840s. (Fires, time, hurricanes, etc., same as with St. Augustine.)
There’s an interesting question I’ve had about old houses as well. Artist rendering of the house in 1636 and the house today you’d never know the same structure was still in there. There are probably lots of homes like this in New England and Virginia especially in which the oldest portion is a LOT older than the newer. There’s a plantation mansion in Alabama, for example, that began as a 2 room frame house but grew as the family got richer into 20+ rooms- Gaineswood- the original rooms are in there. I also remember seeing actress Jane Seymour’s English home on some show- it was referred to as a 9th century castle- in fact it was built in the 1800s but there are some stone steps that date to that era and like many great houses in England it’s on a sight that was occupied for many centuries. It makes you wonder at what point the original structure should no longer be counted in dating the house.
Sampiro, you’ve hit on an interesting conundrum sometimes called Trigger’s broom. Look at the last 20 seconds of the clip if you don’t have 3 minutes to spare.
The theories on that place are almost funny: Phoenicians, Egyptians, Irish monks ca. 1000 (one of the site’s owners spent many years and a small fortune trying to prove that one), and I’m sure Atlanteans and grey space aliens are in there somewhere.
I’ve been there and I’ve researched the place over the years and the general consensus is that nobody really knows. There’s proof that parts of it were there by the late 17th century due to trees that are that old that obviously grew up around and through some of the rock formations- could have been settler’s basements (in addition to cellars many pioneers built what we’d call “panic rooms” in case of natural disaster or Indian attack). There’s also substantial evidence that many of the stones were moved into place at a later date than that.
Best evidence seems to be that Indians probably arranged the stones in a ceremonial formation at some point pre-Contact, though how far pre-Contact is dated as anywhere between 3000 BCE and 2 minutes before the whites got there. The “sacrificial table” is probably a creation by Euro colonists for making dye or even cider that was moved into place later.
The Rock Eagle (Putnam County, Georgia- about 75 miles south and east from Atlanta) had its origins pre-Contact. There are boulders there that seem to have been placed there as well that supposedly line up with the solstices and equinoxes (though you read this of every stone ever picked up by a native person anywhere I think).
Heh heh-- what show is that?
A very good example is the White House. Early under W it celebrated its 200th anniversary and it’s almost always dated to 1800. (There’s a very good depiction of Adams living in the unfinished shell in the recent HBO miniseries.)
It was built in 1800, no question, but it was gutted when the British burned it a few years later (portrait). Most of the exterior had to be plastered over and painted, which is when it became White- til then it was gray-white and known as “The President’s Mansion”.
The White House was continually redecorated and renovated for more than a century. Most of the carpeting and wallpaper and some of the marble and floors of the public rooms had to be replaced after Jackson’s disastrous “y’all come on back to my place” 1829 inauguration party when thousands of people traipsed through it, many spitting tobacco or pissing on the floor or taking pieces of curtain and wallpaper and splinters and china and chairs as souvenirs- Jackson had to appropriate $50,000 from the public coffers to repair it (well over $1 million today).
Mary Todd Lincoln famously remodeled and renovated it to the degree she was able (which included embezzlement and “gifts” after Abraham cut her off, understandably refusing to pay more than necessary when soldiers needed shoes and ammo), then under Chester Arthur (a fur coat wearing metrosexual dandy) it got a real going over- rooms were rebuilt from floor up, the “early modern whorehouse” furniture popular at the time as well as some Tiffany stained glass that’s still beautiful, and most of the hardwood floors were replaced with virgin longleaf pine from Alabama and Georgia. (During this same remodeling some furnishings and knick knacks that dated back to Dolly Madison were literally just thrown out- many made their way from the trash heap into private collections and still sell occasionally.)
All through the first 150 years walls and doors and staircases were taken out and moved and rebuilt with different materials as needed. Nothing compared to the renovation under Truman however: for those who’ve never seen it, this is the interior of the White House in May 1950, after Truman ruled the place (with a lot of justification) a disaster waiting to happen [among other things a grand piano in the family apartment had fallen through the floor into the room beneath it). Truman lived at Blair House (which was then newly acquired and also had just had to be remodeled, and was remodeled again to accommodate the First Family and their secret service [which Truman could not dismiss, especially after his assassination attempts]) and even in hotels during most of his terms.
While many of the original boards and wainscoting and railings were brought back from storage and replaced (though often not in the same location as before), many more were replaced; the frame of the house was redone with iron and steel (it could currently withstand a pretty decent sized bomb blast), and staircases were completely rebuilt as the old ones could not be salvaged.
So anyway, the question is begged “is the White House 208 years old or not?” Certainly part of the shell is, and some of the boards are, but what’s there now that was there in 1800 would probably be less than 10% of the structure (and that’s not counting the wings that have been added but just the “original” rectangular part of the house).
Long running Brit-com Only Fools and Horses.
The “Trigger’s Broom” idea is well-known as a philosophical problem:
Considering that he’s proposing that a Chinese fleet sailed around the world to build it, and has no corroborative evidence, I’m not about to retract it.
And of course there’s the human body. By the time a person’s an adult, does he or she have any cells that were there when they were born? Yet, they’re the same person.
I lived in France for 5 years, and we lived in a renovated 12th century farmhouse. 3 foot thick stone walls and everything. It was pretty cool.
