Heart Pine Floors, in Northern California Home and Garden, July/August 1993

Architects, designers and homeowners around California are reaching out across the country to retrieve a bit of Early American heritage southern longleaf pine, commonly known as heart pine. From muddy river bottoms and homes built in the mid-1800s that are now slated for demolition, heart pine, prized for its lasting hardness and outstanding beauty, is being salvaged and reclaimed for reuse in environmentally and aesthetically conscious homes of today.

The durable antique wood has been increasingly recognized by woodworking cognoscenti as a fascinating, limited-supply natural resource whose time has evidently come around again. Formally named Pinus Palustris, meaning "pine of the marsh," heart pine is one of the most durable woods available, hard as oak but with more interest and color. Purveyors in the southeastern United States obtain the distinctive heart pine lumber now prized for flooring, cabinets, stairways, wainscoting and moldings either from the salvaging of structures dating from the 19th century or from river bottoms in the Southeast, where logs sank in transport a century or more ago.

The first generation southern longleaf pine was primarily indigenous to the southernmost parts of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and northern Florida. Very slow growers that took from 200 to 450 years to mature, the straight, tall trees had relatively few branches near the base and consequently the desirable attribute of very few knots. With the natural predominance of the tight-grained heartwood at this center and relatively little outer, softer sapwood, it was attractive to the lumber industry in the 1700s for its incredible strength, hardness and resistance to insects and rot.

Used widely in shipbuilding and railroad bridge construction, by the end of the 19th century heart pine was the major source of wood for construction of all types and was the country's leading export wood as well. (Indeed, the keel of the USS Constitution was made from a single southern longleaf pine timber.)

However, as conservation and forest management were not widely practiced 200 years ago and the lumber industry had not yet recognized the necessary of reseeding, by 1800, due to unremitting clearcutting, the trees were just about timbered out. Southern longleaf heart pine was basically forgotten as an architectural resource.

But in the past several years, a few progressive lumber companies have discovered the virtues inherent in the wood for fine flooring, cabinetry and other finishing uses. These same companies are pioneering innovative salvage and retrieving operations, both from rivers in the southeast and from pre-1900 factories, warehouses and private residences.

The river-reclaimed heart pine that Goodwin Lumber, in northern Florida, offers its aesthetically and environmentally conscious clientele was cut between 100 and 200 years ago and lost to the river bottom while in transit from the forest to the mill. Rivers were the major route of transportation in those days, as the rail system had not been extensively developed in the south and our modern-day logging trucks were not even a twinkle in Henry Ford’s eye. As the logs were floated down the river linked together, it was common to lose several at one time. Often entire rafts of the very dense logs sank quickly to the river bottom, where cold temperatures and a lack of oxygen acted as natural preservatives—the logs never deteriorated, even after centuries submerged in the rivers.

Today, Goodwin’s “rescuers” done wetsuits and retrieve by hand lost logs that never completed the journey downstream to the sawmills back in the 1700s and 1800s. never having been used, they are unspoiled by saws or nail holes. According to George Goodwin, owner of Goodwin Lumber, “This wood is in the same prime condition as when it was lost a hundred years ago.”

Other companies salvage the antique wood from old buildings slated for demolition. The old beams and lumber are salvaged, nails are pulled out, and the lumber is checked with a metal detector to catch any hidden or headless nails embedded in the wood. Then the lumber is taken to a sawmill where it is resawn, kiln-dried and remilled. The prize of the lumber is the inner wood—untouched, wonderfully toned and very dense, weighing about 3 ½ pounds per square foot. This is quite a significant difference form the 2 pounds per square foot for newly cut pine.

Benjamin MacAdoo, of Benjamin’s Hardwood Floors in Pasadena, a distributor of Mountain Lumber Company located in Ruckersville, Virginia, thinks the fact that purchasers can obtain a genealogical record of sorts of the antique lumber and the historical background of the old structure from which it came is another intangible asset to the heart pine wood. “It’s wonderful,” he adds, “that the lumber of perhaps 150 years ago is now recycled into second use and you’re getting another 100 years of use from the wood.”

Actress Jill Eikenberry and her husband, actor Michael Tucker, like the look of the lumber so much they used over 3,200 square feet of it for flooring, cabinets and stair treads in their new rustic log home, situated on a magnificent ridge overlooking the Pacific near Big Sur. Not only did they pick 1-by-8-inch straight, random-length heart pine for most of the public floors and the stairway in the main house, but they used it in the caretaker’s unit elsewhere on the grounds as well.

The dense hardwood was also perfectly suited for the beautiful, custom-built kitchen cabinets, which were designed in the style of the American arts and crafts movement under the supervisions of contractor/architect Joseph Stevens of Carmel. In keeping with the movement’s preoccupation with simple styling and authentic details, the cabinets include details of cherrywood trim—a natural against the warm-hued heart pine lumber.

“This is the first time antique longleaf heart pine has been used for this type of cabinet,” Stevens remarks, noting that as most of the resin is locked into the ancient wood, the cabinets have beautiful amber-colored grain patterns. “We loved it. It’s something unusual. It’s a little expensive, but it’s worth it.”

A number of renovations to historical buildings included heart pine. Because many strict historical renovators prefer to use materials that date to the time of a building’s original construction, heart pine is a natural alternative. The Blair House in Washington, D.C.; the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville; and the American Wing at the Baltimore Museum of Art are just a few of the prestigious renovations that have utilized heart pine in their reconstructions.

Like any valuable antique, this authentic American treasure increases in worth as its popularity once again rises and its supply swindles. For conservationists and ecologists, architects, designers and homeowners alike, who rejoice in the fact that every foot used is a foot saved from a still-living tree, it is also a downright environmentally sound choice.

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