Doors and More

The Historic Dimension Series
The View through the Door: A Chronology and Identification of American Wooden Interior Doors,From the 18th to Early 20th Centuries
by Sara Lachenman
The purpose of this brief is to aid in the
identification of interior doors. While the
construction and materials for doors have
changed very little over the centuries,
differences in style and treatment reveal details
that can aid in establishing when the interior
was installed or how much integrity remains.
Because doors are inherently moveable and
replaceable, often newer doors will be installed
in older frames, or even salvaged, older doors
can be installed into more recent construction,
belying the age of the building. Knowledge of
the styles and types of interior doors can aid
in evaluation and description of potentially
historic interiors.
Doors have been made in one of two ways for
centuries: with batten planks or with rails and
stiles. Either way, they were always made of
wood, up until the modern era and the advent
of hollow core, metal, and plastic doors. The
type of wood does reveal some differences, as
hardwoods have always been more expensive
and prestigious than soft, and these can be
carved and embellished more than their pine
counterparts. Lesser woods have consistently
been painted to hide their quality and appear
finer, through faux painting techniques.
Likewise, the thickness of the door can also
show where in a home it was used originally,
as will be discussed later.
The major differences from one era to another,
however, was in panel configuration. The
arrangement of the panels could shift the
overall look of the door from horizontal
to vertical, make it match the rhythm of
wall paneling or windows, or stand out
to make a grand entrance into a formal
room. The changes in panel arrangement
follow the shifts in architectural styles, and
understanding their evolution helps to
recognize and appreciate the style’s details.
Batten Doors
Often associated with colonial types of
housing, batten doors occur on structures built
by virtually every European settler group
through the 17th century. After that, they were
used periodically on more vernacular housing
types, barns, and outbuildings. During the
20th century, the Colonial Revival and the
Craftsman movements began to use batten
doors again, in an effort to return to a bygone
era and restore handmade elements to the
home.
Usually made of oak or elm, the batten door
type took less craftsmanship to construct by
hand than paneled doors, and therefore they
show up in all types of Colonial housing in
America, from Spanish to English to German.
The doors are made from a series of wooden
planks that usually run vertically and are
either butt-jointed or tongue-and-grooved.
The planks are nailed to two or more
horizontal wooden battens (perpendicular
to the planks) on the reverse side. Variations
include adding a diagonal board between
the two battens for extra support (fig. 2),
double-boarding or covering the backside
with horizontal planks in place of battens, and
adding ornamentation like moldings or nail
heads to the front side of the door. Sometimes
battens were chamfered to give them softer
edges. In general, they were attached to the frame via
surface mounted hinges, either strap or H-shaped, and the
locks were also simple and on the surface of the door.
Early Paneled Doors
the most typical configuration had six panels, although
two to ten are possible. The panels themselves could be
decorated and carved in many ways, although they have
usually either just flat, or ‘raised and fielded,’ meaning
that the panel raises out to be as thick as the frame.
After 1700, most of the American Colonial houses that did
not have batten doors had a two paneled door with the
panels in low relief. When there were more panels, they
tended to be six panel, with two smaller, nearly square
panels at the top and four equal panels below, with a
vertical orientation. By the late 18th century, this six panel
pattern was common to the Adams and Federal styles
particularly, and doors were most usually pine, maple,
poplar, or cypress often grained like mahogany. Depth
of the panels’ relief and their decoration varied with the
expense of the home in general. Reeded and incised
panels – between the center field and the rail or stile
– were a popular way of adding detail; indeed, that space
between the raised field and the frame around the panel
seemed to be wider in the Colonial and Adams doors than
in any other. When double doors were used during this
era, often they simulated the panel pattern of a single door,
with three panels each. While six paneled doors were
most common, some four or eight paneled doors occurred
on occasion.
Fig. 2 : Interior of a batten door, from laborer’s
house (Farm Security Administration-Office of War
Information Collection)
Fig. 3: Four panel door with raised and fielded
panels (Farm Security Administration-Office of War
Information Collection)
Paneled doors were in the finest houses before the 17th
century, but they didn’t appear in force until the Georgian
era, about 1700. The style is still made today and installed
in structures where a solid wood door is suitable. The
variety in their form is found through the placement of
the panels and the surface decorations, as they are all
constructed in the same way. Using mortise and tenon
joints, a panel door is built with rails (the horizontal
elements of the frame) and stiles (the vertical members).
Panels are set into the frame in regular patterns, and then
molding, painted details, or other ornamentation is added.
They take less wood to build than batten doors, however
the construction is more difficult and time consuming— at
least without automated cutting. When the frame and
panels had to be hand cut and fit together, they were only
found in the wealthiest of homes. Semi-automated cutting
techniques, however, made it less expensive and easier to
make paneled doors starting in the 18th century.
Mahogany, rosewood, oak, walnut, cherry, and maple
are all common options for paneled doors. When softer
woods like pine and fir were used, they were often treated
to look more like hardwood through decorative faux
finishing, or just painted a solid color. The designs of
the doors and configuration of panels were often based
on carpenters’ handbooks or architectural pattern books;
Although six paneled doors were popular through the
end of the Adams/Federal period, by the beginning of
the 19th century the Greek Revival style employed two or
four panel versions, especially with the influence of Asher
Benjamin and Minard Lafever’s pattern books. The four
panels were arranged with a strong vertical focus, with
two small ones on the bottom of the door and two very tall
ones taking up the rest of the space (fig. 3). Two paneled
varieties had a pair of long, narrow panels, which again
stressed the verticality of the door and doorway. Greek
Revival style houses and townhouses often employed
pocket doors, where the door slides into a pocket in
the wall instead of pivoting on a hinge (fig. 4). This
innovation allowed spaces to be closed off or open to each
other without concern for the swing of the door and were
usually used to separate the public spaces in a house. The
pocket door continued to be used through 19th century and
into the Victorian and Craftsman style houses.
Some possible elaborations on interior doors include
decoration like linenfolds: wood carved into ribs to appear
like fabric hangings. This style appeared originally in
wealthy houses from the early 16th to mid-17th centuries,
and experienced a revival during the Victorian era.
Fielded panels, as described before, had a raised center
so that it was as thick as the rails and stiles; this can
be further decorated with patterned moldings. Flush
panels were set even with the frame; the edges were
often delineated with moldings as well. Finally, simple
flat panels had no three dimensional decoration on them,
although they often have a simple molding around each
panel too. Any of these could be painted with a faux
finish, to simulate a more expensive wood such as flame
mahogany, the final touch to dress up a plain pine door.
Victorian Variations
By the mid-19th century and the Victorian era, door
manufacture had become almost fully automated like
many other elements of the construction process. This
industrialization allowed a proliferation of styles and
details to be added to the basic interior panel door, suiting
any of the new Victorian architectural styles. Manufacture
allowed production of more complex pieces for less
than their simpler, handmade counterparts, a fact which
changed much of the woodwork on homes. On the
interior of houses, often the door itself was fairly simple,
and a more complex surround or opening would designate
the style.
Common inside simpler Victorian houses in the second
half of the 19th century were four panel doors, tall and
vertical. These doors were much less thick than the
Fig. 4: Sliding pocket door with five raised and fielded
panels (Farm Security Administration-Office of War
Information Collection)
Fig. 5: Five panel door with raised and fielded panels
(William Paisley House, Greensboro, NC
bottom; vice versa with two squares on top, two verticals
in the middle, and two horizontals on the bottom; or five
panels with the top one and bottom two horizontal and
the middle two vertical. Added complexities came from
the added moldings with gothic points, cut in corners,
chamfered edges, and so on (fig. 7).
Double doors were extremely popular during the Victorian
era, either as pocket doors or on hinges (fig. 8). They were
often tall and thin, with three panels each: a tall single
panel on the top; a thin, horizontal panel at the level of the
knob; and a medium sized panel filling in the space at the
bottom. Also fashionable at this time was glazing in doors,
both on interior and exterior doors (fig. 9). Often the glass
was etched or engraved in order to let in light while still
maintaining privacy, and sometimes colored glass was
used for a similar effect.
After the Victorian
The end of the Victorian era did not bring the end of the
mass production which had brought such a proliferation
of architectural styles at the end of the 19th century. A
number of Revival styles found popularity with the new
century, and with them came a return to past forms of
interior doors. Probably the main change was the addition
of French doors, pairs of doors with the panels replaced
with glass like large windows. The Craftsman and Prairie
styles continued to use rail-and-stile construction but
brought some new door patterns as well; inside the panel’s
field, patterns were often intricate and naturalistic, suiting
the Craftsman style.
doors in more expensive houses, with 1” instead of 3”
thick rails and stiles, for example. The same gradation
in thickness could appear between the main front rooms
and the more private rooms in a given house as well, with
multiple panels and moldings on the principal rooms and
simple, thin, undecorated panels on the back rooms. The
moldings and decorations on those more expensive doors
fit with the styles of the rooms. Gothic style rooms used
moldings to create pointed arches in the panels, or carved
linenfold patterns – also used in Renaissance Revival and
Eastlake style spaces. The last also used chamfered edges
around the panels. Cartouche-shapes connoted Baroque
and Renaissance Revival, while Classical Revival and
Italianate spaces used thin, rectilinear moldings.
The panel arrangements during the Victorian era
could be in almost any configuration (fig. 5, 8, 10). The
simplest varieties included five or six horizontal panels
running the height of the door, but many more existed:
five panels total, with the top two vertical, an the lower
three horizontal; six panels, with a square pair on top,
two horizontals in the middle, and two verticals on the
Fig. 7: Detail of chamfered panel edges (William
Paisley House, Greensboro, NC)
Fig. 6: Chart with general door forms for each era.
At the same time there was more simplicity: by the 1920s
there were flush doors with no panels at all, or only simple
moldings hinting at the existence of a single, center panel.
Horizontality was definitely stressed, with up to six panels
all on the horizontal (fig. 9). Some patterns reversed
the weight or orientation of previous patterns with two
panels, a large one on the bottom instead of on the top.
Technology also changed as the century progressed, with
most doors made of a cheaper wood interior with veneer
or laminate on top. French doors continued to be popular,
with different light patterns to suit the style of the house.
Also, the ‘mirror door’ with a single panel, filled by a
large, full-length mirror was advertised as a necessity in
any dressing area, as swinging doors were for kitchen
areas. The materials of wood and glass were no different
than earlier doors, although plywood’s development at the
beginning of the 20th century, used particularly for door
construction, certainly marked a change.
In Summation
The panel configuration is the easiest way to distinguish
between doors of different eras, because material and
assembly stayed the same for centuries. After 1700, when
the door construction switched from battened to rail-andstile,
doors gradually became more intricate. The most
common door during the Georgian era (1700-1780) was a
low-relief two-panel door. The Adams and Federal styles
(1780-1820) featured six-panel doors, with two square
panels on top and four below. A strong vertical pattern
with two or four panels was most common during the
Greek Revival (1820-1860); then a plethora of types and
panel patterns were produced during the exuberant
Victorian era (1860-1910). After the Victorian, door styles
either mimicked past configurations for the various
Revivals, or got a more horizontal focus from the Arts-and-
Crafts and Prairie styles, and mechanization changed the
materials and construction of doors entirely.
The purpose of this brief is to provide distinctions
between different door types, with the intention of aiding
identification within structures where new doors may
have been added to replace the originals. Focusing before
World War II allows discussion to steer clear of various
technological changes from later in the 20th century. Mass
production and new materials have changed the average
door radically, although there is still effort of retain the
look of the rail-and-style form from previous centuries.
Fig. 8: One of three panel, Queen Anne light double
door pair with flat panels (William Paisley House,
Greensboro, NC)
Fig. 9: Six horizontal panel door from early 20th
century (107 Center Street, Carrboro, NC)
Bibliography
Blakemore, R. G. History of Interior
Design and Furniture: From Ancient Egypt
to Nineteenth Century. New York: Van
Nostrand Reinhold, 1997.
Calloway, S. ed., The Elements of Style:
A Practical Encyclopedia of Interior
Architectural Details from 1485 to the
Present. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1991.
Carley, R. The Visual Dictionary of American
Domestic Architecture. New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1994.
McAlister, V. and L. McAlister, A Field
Guide to American Houses. New York:
Knopf, 1982.
Miller, J. Period Details Source Book.
London: Mitchell Beazley, 1999.
Tuthill, W. B. Late Victorian Interiors &
Interior Details: a Facsimile of Wm. B.
Tuthill’s Interiors and Interior Details.
Watkins Glen, NY: American Life Books,
1984.
Valley, L. The Victorian Design Book: A
Complete Guide to Victorian House Trim.
Ontario: Firefly Books Ltd., 1984.
Valley, L. Homes & Interiors of the 1920’s: A
Restoration Design Guide. Ontario: Firefly
Books Ltd., 1987.
Walker, L. American Homes: The Illustrated
Encyclopedia of Domestic Architecture. New
York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers,
1981.
The Historic Dimension
Series is a
collection of briefs
prepared by UNCG
students under the
direction of Professor
Jo Ramsey
Leimenstoll. All
rights reserved. For
information on other
topics in the series,
copies of specific
briefs, or permission
to reprint, contact:
Jo Ramsey Leimenstoll,
Dept. of Interior
Architecture, 259
Stone bldg., UNCG,
Greensboro, NC
27412-5001.
Tel: 336/334-5320
Fax: 336/334-5049
Fig. 10: Double doors with nine
panels and one light, each panel
has chamfered edges. See figure 7
for detail. (William Paisley House,
Greensboro, NC)