My website on Brooklyn parquetry floor borders

For the past year I have been visiting houses in Brooklyn taking pictures of the floors. I go to open houses and take house tours. Before I created the site I was unable to find any resources on floor borders. So I created the site for me and others to use.

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In addition to all my pictures, I include what I learned when I installed a face-nailed floor in my new kitchen. So that information would be useful to anyone working on their floors.

Don.

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(e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss
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Wow! Excellent! And, obviously, a significant time sink!

Reply to
Don Y

Great job. I had no idea so many different floor designs existed, let alone in Brooklyn.

Thanks for taking the time to put it all together.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Beautiful work. Thank you. I've used the "knot of eternity" motif in vinyl and ceramic floor tile. It's interesting to see how many variations there are. And your website is very functional. (A relief these days.)

One thought: You might consider a black background for the wood images, with white text. I often see photographers display that way and I like the way it brings out the image.

Reply to
Mayayana

I was floored by this too ;}

Reply to
Frank

Oh. You mean the knot has a name? What I know has been what I've been able to figure out. Looking that up I see the floor corners are simpler, but the same idea.

The more pictures I get the more organization I can give them. And I want to keep them all Brooklyn.

I am a minimalist when it comes to coding web pages. And I've tested at w3.org to make the pages bug-free. Most web pages are riddled with HTML bugs. You don't see them as the browser has worked around them. Though different browsers may do this differently.

This project is built on things I've done in the past. I'm going off for planned bicycle trips to take pictures. I was doing that for my Brooklyn Storefronts project, but that is long dead. This time I have to precisely time the stops.

There is a lot of programming to build the site. Something I like to do. Much of it is based on my other sites, like the catalog slide shows come from my jwissandsons.com site. The scraping of information off pages to build other pages comes from paleofood.com. And I have a lot of little utilities to help with code creation.

The one photo site that I frequent that uses that scheme -- dpreview.com -- has just switched to a white background. But the banner is still black, and it doesn't fit.

But back to me. Not all of this site is a photo site. And I want to remain a minimalist.

With a holiday weekend coming up there will be no open houses. But I'll get a batch of pictures on all the following Sundays. And I will merge them in.

Don.

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(e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss

| > Beautiful work. Thank you. I've used the | >"knot of eternity" motif in vinyl and ceramic floor tile. | >It's interesting to see how many variations there | >are. | | Oh. You mean the knot has a name?

I've also heard "endless knot" and similar. There are probably other names. The endless/eternal names derive from the under/over design that leads the eye in an endless loop.

Reply to
Mayayana

Did you know many Brooklyn apartments had parquet floors also?

Mine did. Maybe it matters that it was built as a luxury apartment in

1930. I didn't get there until 1972, but some of the original tenants were still there then. 420 Clinton Avenue. Which used to be an even more expensive n'hood until 1898 when Brooklyn and NY merged, and the richest people started building houses on Park Avenue, NY.

We had parquet in the dining room and living room. I can't remember if all 49 apartments had some, probably not the 6 studios and 6 or 12 one BR, but certainly the 10 in the front (which had maid's rooms too).

Other buildings on the street, like 430 and 431? probably had parquet too. Also Washington Avenue, two blocks to the east. One of my 6th floor n'bors used to talk on the phone for long periods while watching the friend she was talking to, who lived on the 5th or 6th floor on Wash. Avenue.

Time for dinner. I saw a little bit and I'll look at your webpage later.

Reply to
Micky

Some of my pictures are from apartments. I miss some, as they would be priced below the $1,000,000 minimum that I look for.

Borders were not common by 1930. By 1930 tongue-and-groove took over and they were no longer face nailing floors. The only borders they were getting by then were plain strips.

And what mansion was torn down in 1930 to build it? Clinton Ave was mansion row before the two cities merged.

There are not that many floor borders in Clinton Hill. The houses are too old. They were built before floor borders became popular in the US. I do have one house there that was refloored in the early 1900s, about 30 years after the house was built.

On my page is a link to a Google map with pins for all the picture locations.

Don.

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(e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss

| Borders were not common by 1930. By 1930 tongue-and-groove took over and | they were no longer face nailing floors. The only borders they were getting | by then were plain strips. |

That's an interesting point. I sometimes see face-nailed flooring in Boston, but it's very rare to see it in good shape. Usually it's cracked and/or warped and/or has ugly patches by now.

Reply to
Mayayana

The building of Back Bay coincides with the era when these floors were popular. I would expect Back Bay to be filled with them. But with local tastes and local suppliers they won't be all the same as I see here.

The more decline the neighborhood had in its past, the worse shape the floors are now in.

Don.

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(e-mail link at home page bottom).

Reply to
Don Wiss

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