It’s both. I’ve never seen this before, every other support member was a truss, and a truss like I’ve never seen before either.
Ranch home built in 1953.
Ridge
Lower web attach point
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Looks like an engineer designed his personal home.
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Reminds me of site-built trusses designed for metal panel roofing, then modified with fill-in rafters to accomdate the current roofing (assuming asphalt shingles or other heavier covering).
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I’ve seen a few like similar to that. Some real craftsmen back then.
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Reminds me of site-built trusses
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I saw lots of these in the 50’s built houses in Calgary.
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To me, it looks similar to post-war manufactured starter homes built around here in the same era as your subject house. They factory built wall panels and trusses and assembled them on site to quickly satisfy the high demand for homes after WWIi and Korean War. The tell-tell sign here is the thin 2x2 paneled walls.
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Appears to be in excellent condition, especially considering the age.
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there was a time when real carpenters built homes, and they were not completely framed in 12 hours…
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I built trusses when I was younger, but never came upon that type of truss.
We hand built them to mimick todays’ trusses with plywood gussets.
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I’ve done that when I didn’t order enough… 
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Not to be, but I will be… the party pooper to this “they don’t build them like they used to” sentiment. There are a boat load of really good reasons why they don’t build them like they used to. That’s why the IRC exists. All of the worst houses that I’ve ever seen, were built in the good-old age of “craftsmen.” Sure, there were guys who were excellent craftsmen back in the day, but we still have them. No surprise, I never see that kind of quality work on production cookie-cutter houses, but I don’t see skilled workmanship on hundred-year-old production houses either. Then as now, folks with lots of money built rock-solid bomb shelters with eye-popping finish details. Those on budgets cut every corner and with little-to-no codes or code enforcement, some of these houses need only a puff from a big, bad wolf to fall over. At least today, cheap houses are built to some pretty good minimum standards.
In old houses, I’ve seen 1X4" and even 1X3" studs with cardboard covering. I’ve seen 16’-2X4s used as unsupported ceiling joists. (The sag was almost artistic) Many houses with ridiculously over-spanned rafters and joists. Nails must have been really expensive back then, because some carpenters seemed to think one nail would hold everything together.
Portland must have been expensive too. I can’t count how many times I could dig brick mortar out with my fingers. Over and over, I’ve seen cheap concrete mixes that I could take my screwdriver and drill right through the foundation.
And all you can say about some of the electrical mal-feasance is “OMG.”
On a hundred-year-old fixer I did a few years ago, a carpenter had used his framing axe or a hatchet to whack out an opening for the entry door instead of re-framing the opening correctly. On that same house, they just left a portion of the foundation open with a short open dirt wall in the basement. Did they run out of concrete? And around here, long after it was evident that we have very active soils, they persisted for 80 years to build with foundations that break apart.
There are still good craftsmen, but just like then, today we usually only see their skilled work on the jobs where someone was willing to pay the extra for their skilled, quality work.
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The structure was in excellent condition, of course as it the case with all homes, older and newer, condition has as much to do about proper maintenance through the years as it does build quality at the time of construction.
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That’s a lot of lumber!
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Gotta love dimensional lumber! They don’t make em like that anymore unfortunately
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Indeed, nicely done. That roof could last another 70 years.
I’ve built this style of truss when all I had available was 1” thick material. Which is what these are made of I believe.