Wooden Floors Outdoors

Being Fashionably Late Has Been Fashionable for Some Time

Wood floors go back to before the turn of the century and were installed outdoors.  Apparently if you were fashionably late to the opera house the sound of horse and carriage on the pavement was audible inside and caused a distraction.

End Grain Wooden Cobblestones. Photo courtesy Giorgio Verdiani.

Knowing that people would always be turning up fashionably late, these cobblestone wood floors were installed to deaden the sound of hoofs and carriages outside the opera thus making a late appearance less noticeable.  So much for a grand entrance.

End Grain Wood Cobblestones in a Running Bond Pattern. Photo courtesy of seoulrider.

The basic theory of Wood Block Flooring is centuries old. The ancients used the end grain of logs as “chopping blocks” because the tough end grain surface could withstand the pounding of hammers without splintering. End Grain blocks were once used out of doors as street pavers. For generations, wood blocks served the needs of city streets in Europe and in the United States, many of which still exist today. Edgar Allen Poe wrote an article in 1845 about street paving in Baltimore: “It is generally admitted, we believe, that as long as they last, the wood block pavements have an advantage over all others. They occasion little noise, they save a great deal of horsepower, pleasant to the hoof, and thus save the health of the horse-as well as some twenty or thirty per cent in the wear and tear of vehicles-and as much more, in time, to all travelers through the increased rapidity of passage to and fro”.

Hexagon End Grain Wood Floors. Photos courtesy of Kara Brugman.