No matter how many buildings you’ve seen, you can always find something that will surprise you. The picture above is not an underwater shot from the Titanic, it’s the cellar of a circa-1900 rowhouse. This was a house of some pretension when first built. As in most wider rowhouses, the stair-hall partition is a wood-stud bearing wall, cutting the span of the joists from 25 feet down to about 18.
Usually, the bottom floor of that partition in a house consists of masonry piers supporting heavy wood beams. Sometimes it’s timber posts supporting wood beams. A few times, I’ve seen brick piers supporting steel beams. But this is the first time I’ve seen cast-iron columns in the cellar of a house supporting steel beams to support the bearing partition.
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