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Tallyhouse

what one wisconsin city is made of

Eau Claire, WI

The catalogue

Eight Materials, In Order of Making

The whole catalogue on one page, laid in the order the making groups run: cut, fired, cast, sawn, rolled. Two entries were cut, three were fired, and the last three are one each.

All eight, in making order

Made by cuttingThe soft bed under the slopeSills, lintels and one belt course, cut close to home out of a sandstone that came away easy and hardened afterwards.Made by cuttingDimension stone from the far end of the stateBrownstone quarried at the northern edge of the state, dressed before it left, and bought here for the one job a soft local bed could not take.
Made by firingCommon brick, and the back wallThe cheapest fired unit in town, soft molded from clay dug within a wagon haul, and the whole reason a rear wall is a different color from a front.Made by firingPressed face brickA harder, truer, dearer brick bought for the one wall the street could see, priced by the thousand and chosen from a card.
Made by firingCream brick from the lakeshore countiesA pale brick out of a clay that ought to burn red, and the chemistry that gave a whole region walls the wrong color for their own ground.Made by castingRock faced block, poured on the groundHollow concrete units made on the site with a hand machine, in a mold cut to imitate a stone that was never quarried anywhere.
Made by sawingMill sawn dimension timberFraming cut to a number rather than to a shape, out of the one trade this city was built around, and the material that decides what a wall is under its skin.Made by rollingSheet metal, delivered by railGalvanized sheet, sold by the sheet and by the catalogue, pressed into the one part of a front that nobody looks at and everybody sees.

Sorted by how each one got here

Carriage is the shortest way to see what the five groups have in common and where they part, so this table prints that cell alone.

Material Making How it got here
The soft bed under the slopecutA wagon haul, no more
Dimension stone from the far end of the statecutBy rail, and the freight is most of the price
Common brick, and the back wallfiredBy wagon from the yard
Pressed face brickfiredBy rail from the larger works
Cream brick from the lakeshore countiesfiredBy rail across the state, in small quantities
Rock faced block, poured on the groundcastNot carried at all
Mill sawn dimension timbersawnHauled to the mills, then out by wagon or rail
Sheet metal, delivered by railrolledBy rail in crates, cheaply

Read down that last column and the rule in the freight that set the price is visible without being argued: the two cheapest materials never leave home, the lightest one came the furthest, and the one with no bed at all never moved.

Why the groups are what they are

The five groups are not a taxonomy anybody else uses. They were chosen because they are the last thing that happened to a material before a builder could buy it, and because each one imposes something on the result that nothing else does.

  • Cutting produces a piece, which means an order, a number and a drawing
  • Firing produces a unit, which means a thousand interchangeable things and a kiln that graded them
  • Casting produces a unit too, but on the site, which removes the carriage from the price
  • Sawing produces a dimension, which turns a wall into a repeated operation
  • Rolling produces a sheet, which is the only way to cover a large area with almost no weight

Five group pages