I think you are right on most houses. Custom crafted houses were made
on site.

My father-in-law - Sisters that is - had a custom massive house. His
basement had a 4 car wide door on it to park under the house. Heated
and drained. He had room for 20+ servants and his own family. His
living room went on and on - had two fire places on each end.

It was a house of a South & Northern American Lumber Barron. The 4
story home was on one of the holes in Lebanon Ill. golf course. He
imported fine quality wood for the better homes and hotels in Chicago.
He sold a lot of wood from the local region to parts to the east.

He might have used custom houses in the big city but supplied the wood.
Some mansions took years to finish. So much was done there.

Martin

On 2/19/2017 11:04 PM, wrote:

Looking at old homes one wonders on the patience of the stair turners
making spindles for days on end. Then start over for the employee
stairs and perhaps another one or two for the rich end.


Not sure how things were done long ago. But I bet most stairs were made by a few factories.

All home builders used these same few factories. They were not built
individually by the local craftsman.

One guy did not make just the stair spindles for one house. The
homebuilder called, wrote the company

he deals with and asked for 50 spindles for Johnson staircase in a paint
grade. And another 100

homebuilders around the state or area called, wrote the company and
asked for the same thing.

So the stair factory had one or two guys in the factory making the exact
same spindle 12 hours

a day, 6 days a week all year long. Specialization, production has been
going on for hundreds of years now.

The concept started before automated machinery came along.