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Mark Swann '62 in his element. Photograph by Jacob Swann
Fired-up about Fireplaces
If Mark Swann '62 had his way, you'd never think about your fireplace
in quite the same way again. "I love the idea of having an open fire
right in the house," he says. "Here you have a highly combustible
drawing room, with paint and wood and all this stuff, and right in the middle
you have this roaring fire. It's amazing." As the owner of Top Hat
Sweeps, a fireplace and chimney cleaning and construction service in Washington,
D.C., Swann has been cultivating this fascination for more than 15 years.
Although he started out sweeping chimneys-which prevents chimney fires-he
learned quickly that customers thought he was solving their smoke problems-which
generally require structural repairs. Now most of his work, and his main
interest, involves chimney design and energy efficiency. He says he has
discovered a way to damper a fireplace more than 80 percent, meaning less
smoke is drawn up the chimney before the particulate matter it contains
can be burned up, which in turn means more heat and less pollution. He estimates
that he's about two-thirds of the way through a book about fireplaces and
their design that will describe his various innovations.
Swann's discovery of his vocation was, he admits, a bit circuitous. At Harvard
he studied English. (Now he says, "Even an English major can learn
technical things-his analytical powers get so trained writing all those
damn papers that he can even correct chimneys.") Eventually a newspaper
job drew him to Pennsylvania, where he bought a farmhouse with an old wood
stove that started chimney fires. "I got interested in fireplaces and
also in nuclear power, because there was a plant nearby," he says.
(The plant happened to be Three Mile Island.) In 1974 he ran for Congress
on an antinuclear platform. He sees his past political aspirations and current
work as improbably but fatefully linked: "There really is a connection,"
he says, "between being fearful about nuclear energy and constructing
highly efficient fireplaces."
Swann says that much of what he's taught himself can't be found in books,
even those "that purport to tell how to build a fireplace." He's
found inspiration in centuries-old fireplaces encountered on the west coast
of Ireland and Maryland's Eastern Shore. "They really knew some things
we've lost touch with," he says. "But now I can see what works
and what doesn't."
For the fireplace and chimney connoisseur, form is as important as function.
Swann is something of a purist. Gas log fireplaces? "Dreary and predictable."
Pre-fab? "Hideous." Glass doors? "An affront." His ideal
fireplace, "a modified Rumford design," includes a shiny black
hearth that reflects the flame when other lights are turned off. "A
fireplace is a primordial moment," he declares. "To some degree,
the pleasure we get from a fireplace is based on the fact that somewhere
in our collective memory it's a familiar and comforting experience to sit
inside and have a roaring fire right next to you. We remember being in the
cave."
