The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors

February 10, 2014
In 1997, Duke University engineering and history professor Petroski (The Pencil) and his wife bought a summer house in coastal Maine. Although it was the riverside location that initially enchanted them, Petroski soon became intrigued by the house itself, which was built by its original owner, Robert Phinney, also an engineer, in the 1950s. This leisurely narrative of a house and its environs and community, with photographs by the author’s wife, Catherine, is an architectural detective story that meanders like the river the house overlooks, and which Petroski likens to a game of Clue. He admires impeccable “fits,” speculates about empty beam recesses in the basement walls, and slowly peels away the mysteries of an oddly configured closet. But this investigation of a painstakingly crafted, idiosyncratic cabin does not end at its walls; Petroski nests his discoveries in the local historical, geographical, natural, and human events he encounters, chatting with neighbors, making repairs, sitting with Catherine on matching glider chairs, and watching river activity flow by. Petroski’s prose, as carefully crafted as Phinney’s workmanship, will make satisfying reading for architects and carpenters of the professional, amateur, and armchair varieties, as well as local history buffs and Maine lovers. 80 photos.

April 15, 2014
Revealing the secrets of a quirky house. Petroski (Engineering and History/Duke Univ.; To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, 2012, etc.) and his wife, Catherine, bought a house in Arrowsic, Maine, for their summer retreat. Due to its unique design and craftsmanship, Petroski, whose curiosity (about toothpicks, pencils, bridges, assorted useful objects and feats of engineering) knows no bounds, set out to investigate the house's history. The result is a charming book that will delight fans of PBS's This Old House and, for that matter, anyone who has ever owned, remodeled or admired a house. This one was the handiwork of Bob Phinney, built about 60 years ago when, in his late 30s, he moved with his family from New Jersey. He was a "folk architect," Petroski writes, who designed "a machine for living in" and "a structure worthy of an engineer...." A compact 1,200 square feet, the house consisted of three small bedrooms: one for his three sons, a master bedroom for him and his wife, and a tiny room for his daughter. Half the house was a living room and kitchen, divided by a massive stone fireplace. What caught Petroski's attention was Phinney's meticulous workmanship: nailheads, for example, aligned precisely and were flush with the surface of the wood; pine used for wall boards was chosen for its elegant and distinctive delineation, with no "incongruous juxtapositions of incompatible grain patterns and edge knots." With the help of historical archives, friendly neighbors and photographs, Petroski creates a biography of the house, a natural history of coastal Maine and a portrait of Phinney himself: "Like Frank Lloyd Wright, he may not have been tall," Petroski infers from the house's short doorways, "but he had high aspirations for his art....His unerring care is manifest in every detail." Petroski, too, has an unerring eye for detail, which makes this admirably crafted book a delight to read.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 15, 2014
Since penning his first book on design failures in 1985, prolific author and civil engineer Petroski has also written at length about design successes, including such previously unheralded implements as paper clips, pencils, and toothpicks. In his latest work, Petroski picks a much more personal topic on which to focus his manufacturing expertise, his own second home on a riverbank in coastal Maine. When Petroski and his wife, Catherine, bought the cabin-like retreat several years ago, he had little idea it would be filled with enough design quirks to provoke him into a full-scale investigation of its construction history. Along with knotty pine walls and oddly built closets, the house features its own secret passage. Petroski's research included surveying the building's unusual environs and interviewing former owners and surviving relatives of its eccentric builder. Though this fascinating history of a house includes painstaking attention to woodcrafting techniques that may excite professional and amateur architects and carpenters a bit more than general readers, the book is replete with Petroski's usual fascinating details and elegant prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)