Sunken Treasure

In a world of look-alike architecture and formulaic interiors, custom builders and owners are creating one-of-a-kind homes while giving new life to long-forgotten wood.

It's a new kind of antique hunting, this search for old wood. And those who revive time-aged timber for rustic mantels, paneling, staircases and furniture are just as thrilled to find it as others who discover a plantation-era hunt board or a sterling silver napkin ring in a second hand shop.

There's no duplicating the rich, red-to-burgundy tones of heartwood in old growth pine, old pine's pinstriped or curly grains, or the soft, pale chocolate, gray to golden hues of aged cypress.

The provenance, too, is important, just as it is with antiques. Often the old wood served as underpinnings in 19th century factories and warehouses of America's industrial revolution, or lapped the wall of turn-of-the-century stores, barns, houses and churches that stood up to time but are destined for demolition.

Some of it is a sunken treasure-massive logs of irreplaceable cypress and Southern yellow pine that were felled by hand in the Southeast more than a century ago. Oxen helped haul the logs to the rivers where men as rough-hewn as the wood lashed and pegged the logs together into floating trains and snaking, reticulated rafts-and poled and steered them down the river to sawmills and landings.

Along the way some of the logs sank. Others sank into storage at the landings, then were abandoned and preserved beneath the water. They have tumbled there for years with the shifting currents and freshets of such waterways as the Santa Fe, Apalachicola and Suwannee River in Northeast Florida and the St. Mary's, Satilla, Altamaha and Flint rivers in Georgia.

If wood could talk, the stories it would tell. Especially the newly harvested Savannah River pilings at Hutchinson Island, across from the downtown Savannah settlement, a century of slavery, wars, yellow fever epidemics and several hurricanes, including two in the 1800s that covered the island and drowned hundreds of people. The wharves were built with thousands of pilings as early as the 1760s to serve rice plantations on the island's 500 acres. In the early 1820s a number of sawmill operations also used the wharves.

Today, the salvaged pilings are among the hottest antique woods for homes.

Most of the old wharves were removed within the past year to make way for construction of the $86 million Savannah International Trade and Convention Center and a 36-hole golf course, which opened last May.

Among companies that salvaged the pilings are the Goodwin Heart Pine Company in Micanopy, Florida, and Mountain Lumber Co., in Ruckersville, Virginia.

George Goodwin, who has been recovering sunken logs and salvaging other wood for the past 20 years, says a call from the Savannah Historical Society alerted him to the Hutchinson Island treasure.

"They were interested in seeing the old wood recycled instead of destroyed," Goodwin says.

He bought about 2,000 pilings-65 truckloads-of the estimated 6,000 pilings that were salvaged.

"They were 30 to 40 feet long, untrimmed. Some of the pieces had been used to stabilize the bank and every one is whittled by hand to a point," Goodwin says. "Most of the pilings were pine-about 30 percent was cypress-and they were hand-hewn to a 10 inch by 10 inch square before they were driven into the waterfront. Most of the cross members were 16 inch by 16 inch cypress timbers."

"The docks served hand-dug canals on the island that once berthed commercial schooners, six to eight at a time," Goodwin says.

Mountain Lumber's spokeswoman, Patricia Boden, says the 26 year-old company considers the Hutchinson Island wood "pretty significant heart pine."

The company salvaged an estimated 1.3 million board feet of pine, which she estimated came from 300 to 400 year-old trees.

Both companies salvage wood from other sites-some historically significant, and some that aren't quite as exciting as the Savannah site.

"We're just wrapping up a job on the Anacostia Ricer in Washington, D.C.-a navy pier that housed the USS Memphis, " Boden explains. Their salvagers also recovered a pre-Civil War cannon.

"We have scouts all over the country helping us find sources of wood. We're even looking at old barns in the Allegheny Mountains."

The company reclaims old oak, chestnut, cherry and walnut, and some if its wood has gone into renovation projects at Mount Vernon, Monticello, Blair House and the secretary of state's office in Washington.

"When we sell a floor, we include a nice letter explaining the history of the wood," Boden says. "Every floor has a story to tell."

Says company founder, Willie Drake, "I like the idea of having a business that gave this wood a second chance."

Carol Goodwin, who works at Goodwin Heart Pine with her husband, George, says that reclaimed wood is gaining in popularity and cost. Raw material a year ago cost about $1.00 a board foot and was up to $1.50 last summer.

The company, which has two sawmills and a woodworking shop at Micanopy, has begun using even more of the salvaged wood than before, including pieces that had some imperfections.

"We are using what we formerly would have discarded. We call it 'Legacy,' and it has bolt holes, nail holes," says Carol Goodwin. "Its got cracks and checks, and people love it." And, she explains, they like it cut wider than the typical three to eight inch wide floorboards.

George Goodwin says he has been buying sunken "trophy logs," logs that are three to four feet in diameter to meet the demand for wider boards.

"I didn't know I was a wood nut until I got around wood-I made a living as a carpenter and I worked at Amelia Island Plantation in its beginnings," Goodwin says. "We used cypress siding at two major condominiums and that was my first experience around nice wood."

Then an architect told him about a Virginia company that was recycling heart pine, and Goodwin saw a future in the business.

Some of the wood has humble beginnings as building material.

"In Macon, Ga., they were demolishing a vegetable oils extraction plant." He explains. "It's not a very romantic thing, but it was a three to four story brick building about four feet thick. I put a deposit down on a truckload of beams 20 to 22 feet long."

He bought another truckload of 12 by 16 inch beams that are 24 feet long from a cotton gin in Spartanburg, S.C., more old lumber from vegetable packinghouses in Florida and Alabama and a lot of salvage from Chicago.

"When Chicago burned, in 1871, it was rebuilt with heart pine, and now they're tearing down those buildings," he says.

Goodwin's latest venture furniture maker, Mark Webb is using the vintage wood and old methods of carpentry to make tables, a lady's writing desk, pencil-post beds, chairs and other pieces. "We're using cherry wood and heart pine inlays," Carol Goodwin says. "Mark has done a lot of research and found that people used to make furniture from cherry and pine because the woods moved together in climate changes."

Because the wood has such a history, and because it represents old growth forests long ago cut down and never to return, the Goodwins and the Virginia company know they are keeping that history alive for new generations.

By Susan P. Respess

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