Reading the clues from an old building

Finding out the date of your home can be quite challenging, but often there are clues from the fittings and finishes. If the building is quite old, it may have had minor or even extensive renovations at some point, so there are no hard-and-fast rules, but rather pointers that can help us understand how it was originally designed.

One of the first things we notice in an older building is the woodwork - floors, windows and doors. A clue to the date of a house or apartment with parquet flooring is that it probably dates from 1910 to the late 1940s. 

Parquet flooring
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Before this era, timber flooring was usually made of planks of varying widths, with the wider ones being of an earlier era. These are jointed with tongue and groove which is gradually worn down through sanding and re-finishing, so finding a house with boarded floors is quite rare. Parquet is far more resilient, and we are also seeing a revival of this floor finish with recycled wood or even new timber blocks. Likewise, tongue and groove boarding is coming back into fashion for refurbishments and new-builds because of its warmth and timeless quality.

Internal doors are also a useful indicator of the date of our building, with highly elaborate panels and beading in older buildings. In the Cape Dutch style, dating to 1800 and before, the internal doors were often made of stinkwood with contrasting yellow-wood panels. We see this reappearing in the early years of the 20th Century, in Cape Dutch revival examples, and these decorative doors can now be purchased new, but slightly simplified and using less expensive wood. 

A modern copy of a Cape Dutch interior door
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In the early half of the past century, doors with multiple panels were quite common, and it is only after the 1940s that we see completely smooth doors as modernism with its minimalist aesthetic became the dominant style. 

Five panel door in a 1930s building

Wooden windows can sometimes give us a clue to the date of our building, with quite distinctive styles in different periods. Steel windows were introduced into South Africa in the 1930s, sometimes being used to replace timber in older buildings, especially in drier climates where the wood is more vulnerable and require lots of maintenance. We also see the replacement of original steel windows, either with timber for a warm aesthetic, or with aluminium for a more weathertight and sound-proofed solution. In apartment blocks, it is interesting to see how different fashions have directed these sorts of alterations, with several generations of refurbishment visible.

Door handles can also be useful indicators of a building's age, with quite distinctive patterns in different eras. In general, styles have become simpler over the years, with large and elaborate handles found in buildings older than 100 years. You may be lucky to have examples of Art Deco ironmongery, placing your building in the 1930s.

Art Deco door handle

Other clues may be found in electrical fittings, such as lights and light switches, although these are often replaced as the homeowner's needs change and building regulations require am upgrade. You may also be lucky to have some of the original tilework and bathroom fittings - in one of Johannesburg's Art Deco apartment blocks from the late 1930s, there are still some of the original bathroom features, including a built-in metal laundry basket!

Pressed metal ceilings sometimes survive in buildings constructed before the 1930s. These were usually found in the more modest houses, as they were replicating the elaborate plasterwork found in the more grandiose ones. The pressed metal ceilings are experiencing a revival, with manufacturers of new panels appearing.

Most of the fittings and finishes go through fluctuating fashions, with many revivals, so we need to view the building as a whole - what are the tell-tale signs that would help us to narrow down its dating and what has been adapted over the years?