Cape Breton's Magazine

The Duhaget House, below, seen from the back too badly off. We also tend to believe that he built that rather big house, plan? ning to have a family, but he didn't have any. And then, there was a later view of it which showed it fairly high. Therefore, it was quite a substantial house. We had a terrific controversy about the roof. When I arrived, they were just starting to work on it, whether it should be the gable roof or the hip roof. Some of the views were contradictory. Working by team, you see, and working by a sort of majority vote--it was not easy for an architect. The placing of board: vertical on the up? per part, horizontal on the lower part. We knew this house was framed--we found traces of the posts and all that. And therefore I think we presumed it was boarded, or maybe we had some reason to be? lieve it was boarded. Now, as it was high, and a sense of the place, that it was a fairly large house, boards all the same width could have been very dull. Since we do see buildings with a different kind of finish on the ground floor part and on the upper part--well, using wood both places, the only possible way to vary it was one horizontal and one vertical. So that's really how we came to that. It's purely to give it a bit of a shape, of a look, on ac? count of the size. That's the only reason we did that. And it's quite plausible. Most of the houses that I worked with, what we find--the foundation and the loca? tion of the fireplace--usually gives us a pretty good idea of how it was divided in? side. But this one has me stumped. The way the fireplace is--I haven't found an inter? ior distribution of rooms which makes any sense. So it's got me stumped. It's the on? ly one, really. But when there's something definite, we of course try to stick to that. For the Lar- tigue house, for instance, we have a docu? ment which is dated 1753--probably done af? ter that--when Widow Lartigue was showing the state of her estate, the houses she owned, pieces of land here and there. So we followed this, but with great, great care. There are so many errors, we had to make up our mind on a lot of things. There's a note on it saying how the pieces of frame were 12 by 12 pouces pine wood, filled with rough stone between the posts-- put on a foundation of stone, about one pied and a half above the street. (One pied is 1.066 feet.) So we could observe that very well. But there are little mysteries again. Here we found the foundation. What was found did not completely reflect the drawing. For instance, there was very clear evi? dence of the floorboards and joists and things. But they were found below the top of the foundation wall. That would mean that you would have gone up two steps, and then gone down. That doesn't add up. We never figured that one out. Also, there was some paving in the house, at the back, some stone and brick paving at two spots, which were down at the level of the floor. We know, that this building was used much later by the English as a stable or some? thing else like that. And for the moment, we attributed those things to that second occupation, and had to leave the mystery. The mystery is still there. We're building for 1744, and all we can surmise is that the floor was at the level of the bottom of the door. That's the way we built it. But we haven't really solved the mysteries yet. CONTINUED NEXT PAGE