The Master of Alkmaar painted the seven part Acts of Mercy in 1504. It shows some interesting architectural and urban planning details. This panel shows the "sheltering of travelers", and in the background we see a clean well maintained prosperous city, let's assume it is Alkmaar itself, with its 10th century origins. The most prominent house is most likely a three story merchant's home: ground floor is a shop with its wooden shutters open for business, doubling as a rain/sun guard. The top attic space has a door facing the street, where a retractable arm and winch operated to lift goods and furniture into storage. Beneath it the windows are typically double-height Dutch style windows to maximize light intake in an age before electricity. The wall irons show exactly where the floor beams are attached and help holding timbre fram together by tying it firmly to the brick shell. You can't tell from the painting but most likely the house leans ever so slightly into the street to better shed rain. The stepped gable allowed better access during construction, and it also looks great. It helped the original (maybe) thatch roof gable sustain winds, and more importantly it works as a fire break or shield. Here the roof covering has been upgraded to slate or tile. The windows probably have wood lintels, that are supported from above by relieving arches in brickwork, nicely shown in contrasting color to offer reassurances: "This wall is well constructed". The brickwork is uniformly covered by lime-wash for protection, made from slaked lime, water, milk, and most likely oxblood for the warm pink to act as a binder and make the lime-wash last longer. Our ancestors did amazing things with very limited resources. Each part of this building could be take down and reused, everything came from within a day's travel on ox-cart and all materials were so clean that it could be composted after use.
https://hell.twtr.plus/media/ca5b7c6049fc12541f798799e33fbc7672ec8aceb08e598e11eed67b57992653.file
https://hell.twtr.plus/media/32406bbed9843e77faf63ff2334a121222d4f57320a755b1ffb15ce542cc00d8.file
https://hell.twtr.plus/media/0d8cb366bdfb4750f066cf3e857036ce924f824300a34217075503b1f010a4ae.file
