Old Glass in a New Setting: reclycled glass

OLD GLASS IN A NEW SETTING

Mark Ward's recycled greenhouses are resurrected gems

Should you be lucky enough to find Mark Ward and engage him, he will, in his own good time, build you a custom greenhouse. He may use old glass and parts salvaged from abandoned carnation houses, and wood milled from antique beer tanks, discarded fire escapes, or yard-sale window fans. The result will look like an integral part of your house, perhaps suggesting the quiet, functional elegance of a bygone day when even commercial glasshouses had style. If you use the space as intended, it will do just what a proper greenhouse should--shed moisture, circulate air, and ventilate surplus heat. It will not do things that a greenhouse shouldn't--overheat, corrode, or decay. If you use it to grow plants, his clients report, you will be happy for many years to come.

Such happiness is not easily bought, as too many greenhouse owners--purchasers of modest kits and opulent 19th-century conservatory clones alike--can attest. Ward is often called to counsel such owners, and to repair or replace misguided attempts to introduce growing spaces into homes. Among the sorry consequences he has counted are withering or sickly plants; ruined sills, furniture, books, and fine art; and desperate owners who've found themselves frying under glass in the brutal spring sun. Many so-called greenhouses do not work well, Ward says, because they're improperly designed or built or they're made of the wrong materials. He believes that owners often complicate the problem because they're ill informed and confused about what they really want, and that many become victims of inflated expectations, sacrificing performance and durability for the allure of trendy looks, greenhouse cachet, boudoir comfort, seductive price, or the false promise of a magical solar space that will provide everything from free vegetables to cozy, year-round living."

Use dictates design," Ward says. "If you need to be dry and snug out there in your jammies any time of winter night, you have few options. If you can adapt your needs to the climate, you'll have a much happier relationship with the greenhouse and get a lot more space and style for your money."

Ward has built custom spaces at a rate of four or five a year for 16 years, working within a two-hour radius of his Concord, Massachusetts, home. They range from tiny pit and courtyard greenhouses, enclosed porches, and rooftop sunrooms to historic restorations, commercial growing houses, entire houses, and even a college classroom. At a glance, his style seems eclectic, even protean. On closer inspection, one finds that his structures share elegant utility, an unaffected intelligence, and a spare grace. His projects show profound respect for traditional form and function, a deep affection for old materials, and a religious attention to the fine details of engineering and construction.

In the modern construction business, Ward is an anomaly. Schooled as a social psychologist, he's become a draftsman, engineer, carpenter, cabinetmaker, mason, welder, sheet-metal worker, mechanic, electrician, and glazier in pursuit of his craft. Though he never advertises, he's always busy. He keeps only one assistant, rarely subcontracts, refuses to expand his operation, and works at being hard to find. He does business only with people he likes, and who have the patience to put up with him. ("If we don't get along," he says, "there's not much point.") At 39, Ward is already something of an old Yankee--frugal, finicky, slow, taciturn, opinionated, pragmatic, and romantic (though he rarely shows that hand). He's also self-deprecating, inclined to describe himself as a "classy junkman driven by a pile of old stuff that won't rot. I have an eye," he concedes, "for things that can be put to use."

Ward expects his projects to be functional 50 years hence, and so it pains him when his carefully selected materials go to waste. He has learned that some owners, despite initial avowals, don't always use his spaces as designed. Because he feels the customer is always right, he is determined to help them "square the real possibilities with the images in their heads," and understand what the costs and compromises are before he invests his efforts. He admits that he spends an exasperating amount of time with client and architect to that end, and often talks himself out of a job when he finds that a person "really wants a living room with lots of windows, and a good sun-space kit will do. I have nothing against sun spaces," he adds, "except that most are sinfully ugly."

The time it takes Ward to achieve this goal is a frequent source of client humor. "There was only one man in the Western world who could help us enclose our porch and maintain the Victorian ambience of the house," says Cambridge psychiatrist Robert Gardner. "It took a long time to get him here and a long time to get it right. As a space, it does far more than we thought it would. Mark's motto should be `Greenhouses worth waiting for.'"

"There was," Ward allows about that particular project, "a lot of fussing in it." But for him, there always is. The interface of glass, iron, steel, copper, and wood is far more complex than modern plastic and aluminum systems, he says. Configuring them is never a matter of mere assembly; there is fabrication, restoration, modification, invention. Despite the best plans, all jobs require changes on site, and he reserves the right to change his mind midstream.

Ward got into this business shortly after college in 1974 when, working as an environmental intern, he dismantled a 3,000-square-foot commercial growing house for an urban group that planned to construct a community greenhouse. That project fell through. Left with piles of parts in his parents' backyard, he commenced to sell "build-your-own" kits through the newspaper. He was hired to assemble one, figured out how, and soon found himself "actually living off this stuff." He found and dismantled many more abandoned greenhouses, and in two years he had accumulated 50,000 square feet, or 100 tons, of glass, galvanized steel frames, cypress and redwood roof bars, and cast-iron machinery. Although these parts were already 30 to 180 years old, they still had many years of good life left in them. Recycling old materials also met Ward's "earth-centered" objectives, because, as he observes, "they cost less, work as well, last longer than most exotic modern materials, and don't require new energy or resources to make. They're modular, flexible, and ideally suited to custom construction."

The old greenhouses held yet a deeper fascination for Ward, who came to marvel at the beauty of their designs and the ingenuity of their systems: luminous, 6-12 pitched rooflines; slender cypress roof bars, double-grooved to hold glass and collect condensation; sculpted, cast-iron vent wheels and worm gears. As he digested manufacturers' catalogs and manuals dating from 1880 to 1935, he felt as if he'd stumbled upon a lost civilization: an industry devoted to the growing of plants indoors, which over a century's time had evolved to a high art and suddenly disappeared with the advent of costly oil and labor.

Ward became a devotee of this technology, incorporating its mechanics and aesthetics into the structures he was building for clients. In 1977, at the crescendo of the alternative energy movement, he was invited to present a paper at a major solar greenhouse conference. He'd already seen prototypes of these "revolutionary," hyperinsulated structures, which were being heralded as a populist panacea for the nation's energy ills. Ward was sympathetic to the movement's aims but recognized some grave design flaws. The structures were homely, even crude; they overheated; many were already rotting; and plants didn't grow well in them. He knew that unless they were modified, they would prove an embarrassment to all concerned. (Indeed, the celebrated greenhouses built on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, by the alternative technology New Alchemy Institute were eventually taken down.)

At the conference Ward found he was the only person among a swarm of solar engineers, consultants, theorists, and enthusiasts making a living building greenhouses. "These people were trying to reinvent the wheel," he says. "They had no idea that an entire industry already existed."

He showed the 800 attendees slides from 1920 greenhouse catalogs, describing the systems and why they worked. He told them that a solar greenhouse is inherently a compromise between efficient heating and good growing, because heat collection and horticulture have competing needs: To trap heat, a greenhouse needs to be made airtight with multiple glazing, heavy framing, insulated walls, dark absorbing surfaces, and an optimally pitched roof--all features that seriously reduce light. Plants demand maximum light as well as good ventilation and humidity, Ward explained, and therefore grow best in a greenhouse with thin glazing, minimal frames, reflective surfaces, and a good drainage system. Because moisture wreaks havoc with standard building materials, Ward noted that greenhouse construction should be more like making a boat than a frame house. Instead of trying to conquer the climate, he suggested, work with it. Live in the solar collector, where it's toasty and dry, and build an adjoining space for plants. Trade January shirtsleeve comfort for good growing conditions in March and April. Use single-glazing and recycled materials and put the money saved into a larger, more attractive greenhouse.

Almost 200 of the people attending the conference showed up for a workshop after his talk. He had become an authority at age 25. "I make a good expert," he says, "when I know what I'm talking about."

Since then, Ward has often combined traditional materials and designs with new solar technologies when appropriate, although his preference is to build traditional greenhouses for people who are serious about growing plants. Using his services makes sense, he says, when you want to match an architectural style or a specific roofline; solve an unusual design or construction problem; assure performance and durability; or when "you'd rather have a Duesenberg than a Honda or a Ford." For all their charm, he warns, old systems require more maintenance.

Many projects can be done adequately with sunroom or greenhouse kits, which are easily installed and have predictable costs. He cautions, however, that many kits have limited applications and are expensive to customize; vary widely in quality; and aren't designed to be greenhouses, even if they are offered as such.

Despite his success, Ward keeps a low profile, in part because he doesn't enjoy fixing problems caused by kits. He suspects he ought to make himself more available, but he's not set up to handle lots of inquiries and doesn't pursue leads. "It's not my style. Whether it serves me or not is another question." He's been known to chide himself because he's "still reacting to what the world presented me with 16 years ago," and to make noises about taking up another line of work.

Yet, he admits, "I'm driven by a responsibility to the materials," by the limitless possibilities of design (he's saving choice pieces of a vintage conservatory for his own home), and by the relentless volume of stuff. He has already had to move three times to accommodate his collection, most recently to a dairy barn 60 miles west of Concord. Now he's just been informed that he's got to move his materials again. The good news is that there are only 60 tons of it left.

PHOTOS: Caulk gun in hand, Mark ward sees to the details of greenhouse construction. Above: This single-glazed, steel-frame downstairs area functions as a growing space for market-garden produce. Upstairs is a sundeck (made from an old fire escape) that looks out over field and woodlands.

PHOTOS: Opposits, top: Ward replaced an old Lord & Burnham greenhouse witha double-glazed structure that keeps thetemperature at 62 to 65 degrees Farenhei--perfect for the owner's orchid collection. Opposite, bottom: Inlike most of Ward's projects, this greenhouse--whose roofline perfectly mirrors the 45-degree pitch of the garage behind--was conceived as part of the house's orginal design. Above: For this Victorian duplex in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ward converted an uncovered entryway into an enclosed entry-sunspace, using a traditional, conservatory-style, single-glazed window with a grateful curved top and sides.

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By Jerry Howard

Jerry Howard wrote about the vegetable garden at the Allen C. Haskell nursery in the August/September 1992 issue of this magazine.