Veneer Floors: A Common Phenomenon in Historic Wide Plank

I first ran into wide-plank veneer floors at one of my first major preservation projects, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens in Akron, Ohio. In 1992 we were tasked with refinishing the 20,000 square feet of wood flooring in the 60,000-square foot house (it took us a minute!). The curator and staff were unaware the 12-inch-wide teak floors were a veneer product, which is actually typical in many old homes. I was working on a section in the music room, and they had a built-in organ. They left the organ in place but removed the seat. I was able to see a cross-section cut of the wood and saw it was a veneer with a heavy ¼-inch wear layer. I also saw they had installed a fine inlay piece of rosewood between each piece to replicate a gap that old, solid teak would likely have. Here are some photos from that project:

The teak veneer flooring in the music room at Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, after refinishing—the white board in the photo on the left is a "witness" board showing the original condition of the flooring before we started. Note that there is a rosewood inlay between each board.

The entry to the music room at Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, has this sunburst medallion. ("Before" is on the left; the "after" shot post-refishing is on the right.)

The flooring was supplied by Indiana Flooring Company, and you can see in their ad that they have an image of the exterior of Stan Hywet Hall along with a client list that includes F.A. Seiberling, the owner of Stan Hywet Hall, as well as a reference to teak in the product description:

I’ve seen other ads like this for other fine homes that bought Indiana Flooring products, and I think they eventually opened a showroom in New York City. It’s possible Indiana Flooring, or a company like them, supplied the floors for the gallery and cloister at Ford House. After my work at Stan Hywet Hall, I ran across a number of other handsome, high-end wood floors designed by well-known architects, some of which dated to the late 19th century, so veneer floors have been around a long time.

With all that in mind, the first time I walked into the cloister and gallery at Ford House, I knew it was veneer. The wood is quartersawn pegged white oak with a lot of character. The widths vary from 4 inches up to around 10 inches, and you feel like you’re walking over granite—it’s a very solid and stable floor. The challenge was finding somewhere I could get a side view. The most natural places to get a side view is inside a heat duct, but that was not to be, as the openings had flush-mounted brass support for the large, heavy grates. I wasn’t willing to run the risk of messing those up! Another potential site would be flush-mounted hardware for the door bolts to secure French doors, but those, too, proved to be not an option. Then I got lucky: Next to one of the large heat ducts, I spied a small opening in the oak where it had been chipped. It might have been 1 inch long and maybe ⅜ inch wide. With good lighting, I was able to see down into the cavity and saw some of the glue that had been under the piece of oak that had been chipped out. I took a small wood scrape and carefully cleaned the glue off to uncover the substrate under the oak. It was clear the graining of the wood was running at 90 degrees to the direction of the oak on the surface:

I kept looking and found another location that had been a knot or defect in the wood (aka “character”) and saw the same there:

The whole hunt probably took me an hour, but it was a fun scavenger hunt. 

See Michael Purser’s vlogs about refinishing the wood floors at Ford House at the WFB YouTube channel.