William Gibson once wrote “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” That’s true now and was also true in the past. Just because something new and useful has arrived on the scene doesn’t mean it’s everywhere and doesn’t mean it’s being used in its “modern” form everywhere.
The picture above is from a circa 1900 house – a very large, very fancy house in a wealthy suburb of New York – and shows an interior stud wall with the plaster removed from one face. We’re looking at the studs and the back of the plaster on the far face. If this house had been built twenty years earlier, the plaster would have been applied over wood lath; what we’re seeing is expanded metal lath (the dark part of the checkerboard pattern) and the plaster keys (the white part of the checkerboard) that have squeezed through the lath.
Metal lath was widely used up until the point where the introduction of gypsum board more or less eliminated the use of wet plaster. Plaster and metal lath over steel studs was the 1920s lightweight alternate to the use of gypsum block and terra cotta block for non-structural partitions in steel- and concrete-frame buildings. But…those are wood studs in the picture above. Despite my emphasis on systems, this is a hybrid using pieces of two systems: the ancient use of wood studs for a vertical wall or partition, and the modern metal lath.
What happened? The house was built before modern styles of architecture became popular for residences and, in doing so, made the use of traditional construction techniques impossible. At the same time, it’s a big house, and a lot of money was saved in construction by using the modern metal lath. The builder picked and chose, as people always do, the new technologies that helped him construct the project at hand and that fit the overall architectural and structural scheme.
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