Illustration: Jonathan Rosen
Orange County, Colorado: How a California homebuilder remade the Interior West
Los Angeles Review of Architecture, 19 February 2024
“Framing itself wasn’t new, but its technique was. Previously, framers had worked upright: They put up the home’s corner posts and then built the walls by ‘toe-nailing’ one two-by-four at a time, driving small nails at an angle through the stud and into the floor. The Californians instead lined up two-by-fours and, working on the ground, built freestanding walls they called ‘plates.’ They stood up the plates, nailed them into the floor deck, and instantly the thing started to look like a house.
They derided the old, in situ framing method as ‘New Jersey farmer framing,’ even as they admitted that it required more skill. ‘Toe-nailing is working top-down, getting two little three-inch nails through the stud and not hitting your thumb or ripping the wood up and keeping it on the line and everything,’ my dad says. ‘It’s hard. Whereas we could just get a handful of nails, line it up, put our foot on it, and boom, boom, done.’”
Los Angeles Review of Architecture, 19 February 2024
“Framing itself wasn’t new, but its technique was. Previously, framers had worked upright: They put up the home’s corner posts and then built the walls by ‘toe-nailing’ one two-by-four at a time, driving small nails at an angle through the stud and into the floor. The Californians instead lined up two-by-fours and, working on the ground, built freestanding walls they called ‘plates.’ They stood up the plates, nailed them into the floor deck, and instantly the thing started to look like a house.
They derided the old, in situ framing method as ‘New Jersey farmer framing,’ even as they admitted that it required more skill. ‘Toe-nailing is working top-down, getting two little three-inch nails through the stud and not hitting your thumb or ripping the wood up and keeping it on the line and everything,’ my dad says. ‘It’s hard. Whereas we could just get a handful of nails, line it up, put our foot on it, and boom, boom, done.’”
Caroline Eaton Tracey writes about the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She speaks and works in English, Spanish, and Russian. Her first book, SALT LAKES, will be published by W.W. Norton.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline Eaton Tracey escribe sobre el medioambiente, la migración, el arte y la literatura en México, el Suroeste de Estados Unidos y su frontera. Habla ingles, español y ruso. Su primer libro, SALT LAKES, será publicado bajo el sello de la editorial W.W. Norton.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.