If you want them to look more old-fashioned, you use round, half-circle gutters with round downspouts--as they were in the 1800s.
These tend to be a lot more expensive though...
Interesting...but gutters and downspouts?
I remember being an innocent 18 year old living next door to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, which is levels and levels of roofs. I ran out in a rainstorm to watch the water cascade from roof to roof, only to learn about rain gutters. Such a disappointment.
Quaint house, looks like a neat place to visit and explore.
But, the gutters do stick out like a sore thumb.
If you want them to look more old-fashioned, you use round, half-circle gutters with round downspouts--as they were in the 1800s.
These tend to be a lot more expensive though...
Masonry foundations as we know them were often not used with very old log structures built in the colonial frontier era, you’ll even encounter frame structures built with one end lying on the ground with fieldstone placed merely to level out the floor. These places often started out with a dirt floor anyway.
So, as incongruous and unattractive as modern gutters and downspouts might appear, they do serve a very useful purpose in directing rainwater runoff from the roof away from the wooden structure(s) or logs that are on ground level. It prevents not just rot but settling due to saturation.
Other descendants in my direct paternal line had possession of the original chestnut log cabin built by my fifth great grandfather after they came to NC from VA in the 1760’s, very impressive diameter of the logs, chestnut trees were absolutely gigantic then. The house was unfortunately burned due to a lightning strike in the early ‘80’s. Talk about irreplaceable.