A Note About Rake Boards

In the United States, most homes' gable roofs overhang the walls on which they rest. The majority of gable roofs form distinct eaves, and these eaves often adorn all four elevations equally. But not every building is constructed this way. In Ohio, the absence of distinct eaves is a trait peculiar to Federal-era structures — those edifices built between the territorial era and the dawn of the Greek Revival period. (In a few places, even Greek Revival homes eschew eaves.)

Ubiquitous to such early, eaveless buildings is the rake board, the side elevation's equivalent of a fascia, more or less. In the absence of a roof overhang, rake boards protect the junction between a building's roof and its side walls from water infiltration. Though most common to masonry buildings (1), rake boards aren't unique to a particular construction method — log, frame, brick, and stone structures alike make use of them.

William Knoles House; Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. A stupendous example of early-nineteenth-century construction practices. Note the rake boards, vertical proportions, and steeple-notched logs.

On masonry structures, rake boards tend to coexist, almost by necessity, with flush chimneys. Among higher-style Federal buildings, they occasionally feature dentils or scalloped carvings, and they often terminate, on the facade, at proper cornices.

Travelers' Rest (1812); Greenfield, Highland County, Ohio.

Early house; Clifton, Greene County, Ohio. This dwelling — bizarrely vertical, and almost tower-like, in its proportions — features the usual flush chimney and rake boards.

Jacob Coy House; Beaver Creek Township, Greene County, Ohio. Coy, a Pennsylvanian, built this enormous log house in 1824. In its proportions (and its use of the site's terrain), it falls neatly into the Pennsylvania German tradition. The rake boards, attic windows, and box cornice (barely visible) are typical. Photo by Sandra Shapiro, 1989, from the collection of Donald and Jean Hutslar.

Kitchen wing, John Knott House (1828); Miami Township, Greene County, Ohio. The rake boards may this home's least noteworthy feature. Most fascinating are the two-story porch and divided ("Dutch") door.

Abandoned "saltbox" house; Elizabethtown, Hamilton County, Ohio. Razed. Photo from the Miami Purchase Association collection; digitized by DAAPSpace.

1) Why? Largely because early masonry buildings were more likely to outlast frame and log ones.

Commonplace Classicism in a Michigan City

A few days ago, I spent an afternoon walking the streets of Hillsdale, Michigan — my adopted (and soon-to-be former) hometown. Like a great many small Midwestern cities, Hillsdale has endured its share of economic and cultural oscillations. The community, platted in the 1830s, enjoyed moderate prosperity in the nineteenth century (thanks, largely, to its status as county seat), then entered a full-fledged boom about the turn-of-the-century, when the railroad industry reached its zenith. The city suffered little in the postwar years, but more recent decades have brought stagnation (albeit stagnation of a moderate sort). Thankfully, the presence of Hillsdale College guarantees the community a modicum of vigor.

Hillsdale retains an unusually fine housing stock — a smattering of Greek Revival holdouts, a few examples of the Gothic picturesque, and a bounty of Italianates. (If my experience is any indication, Michigan cities, in general, tend to be architectural treasure troves.) A majority of the town's homes, though, date from the thirty-year period spanning the presidencies of Cleveland and Coolidge — the 1890s, 1900s, and 1910s, when American cities underwent something of a building boom. Stylistically, this era was marked by a return to the classical. Already, by the 1890s, architects at the cutting edge of American design (to use a cliché) were eschewing Romanesque massiveness and ornate scrollwork for entablatures, pediments, dentils, and volutes. The turn-of-the-century popularity of classical forms is evident in Hillsdale, and evident, moreover, in the homes lining one of Hillsdale's streets.

Once upon a time, Howell Street served as Hillsdale's primary north–south thoroughfare. It formed the focal point of the city's commercial activity, constituted one border of the courthouse square, and connected the community to Ohio and points farther south. It also witnessed quite a transformation during classicism's reintroduction.

Some of Howell Street's homes only flirt with classicism. A few date from the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, when the Italianate style dominated. 99 Howell Street is a typical example—a one-and-a-half-story home of "upright-and-wing" form (so popular among the New Yorkers who dominated early Michigan), originally built in a vernacular Greek Revival–Italianate mode and updated, about 1900, with a vaguely Ionic porch. The porch's columns are disproportionately slender, and the volutes jut from the capitals at a 45-degree angle—a feature exclusive to the corner columns of Greek antecedents.

65 Howell Street — occupied, in 1894, by members of the Prideaux family — is a more developed building. An irregularly shaped frame dwelling of side-passage plan, it combines Italianate and Classical Revival details in a way that makes determining a construction date difficult. A bracket-supported cornice crowns each of the home's windows, many of which feature leaded glass. More interesting, perhaps, is the way the eaves are treated — chunky scroll brackets, pierced and paired at the corners; a divided frieze; and an abundance of smaller brackets which rather resemble classical dentils or modillions.

The house's two-door entry is sheltered by a well-proportioned porch — a porch with a full three-part entablature, small eave brackets (similar to the ones adorning the windows and roofline), and fluted columns topped by simplified Corinthian capitals. (This capital design, it seems, was inspired by the Athenian Tower of the Winds.)

Other homes in the vicinity were born in a state of classicism. In general, the earliest turn-of-the-century-era Classical Revival residences combined neoclassical ornamentation and irregular, picturesque late-Victorian forms. (The McAlesters classify such houses as the "free classic" subset of the Queen Anne style.) 93 Howell Street exemplifies this turn. In proper late-Victorian fashion, it's well-supplied with turrets and towers, but it lacks much extraneous adornment. Beyond the turret and the narrow frieze board running beneath its eaves, its only claim to a stylistic identity is its stumpy Ionic porch.

In a similar — albeit later — vein is 75 Howell Street, another balloon-frame dwelling with an Ionic porch and an asymmetrical plan. This house seems to anticipate the Craftsman movement, with its purlin-esuqe modillions and double-slope roof.

96 Howell Street is one of the neighborhood's grander Classical Revival abodes. The omnipresent Ionic columns (and pilasters) may be awkwardly scaled, but the home's irregularity, entablature, modillions, elliptical (and keystone-surrounded) attic window, and two-story porches lend it an air of respectability.

Near Howell Street's southern terminus lie a few gambrel-roofed homes. Though predominantly astylistic, they approach the classical.

By far, the crowning classical jewel in the neighborhood's crown is 147 Howell Street. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The Limits of Grecian Grandeur; or, When Entablatures Metastasize

Sturgis, Michigan, is a peculiar city — it's county-seat-sized, with an appropriately healthy economy and a splendid stock of nineteenth-century buildings, but it lies at the corner of its county, rather far from the usual sources of vitality. (More than likely, the community's survival is a consequence of its proximity to the Indiana Toll Road.) Just south of the business district, on a charming brick-paved street, stands an equally head-scratching home.

They say that the Greek Revival is a masculine style. (1) If so, this is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Greco-American homes, with a great rippling, bulging bicep of an entablature. Now, most Greek Revival homes — whether or not their builders adhered rigidly to classical models — possess some grace; but others collapse (metaphorically, of course) under the weight of their ponderous entablatures. This house, it seems, falls into the latter category (though I'm rather partial to the doorway).

The standard Doric entablature consists of three parts: cornice, frieze, and architrave. The adventurous carpenter who constructed this home eschewed the last two, and instead stacked cornice molding atop cornice molding atop cornice molding, creating, in effect, the architectural equivalent of a multi-tiered wedding cake. The result is . . . interesting. It makes me chuckle with delight. Any well-trained classicist or Athenian architect, though, would surely retch in disgust. (I can hear the great I.T. Frary writhing in his grave.)

The doorway is also a purist's nightmare. The columns are too slender, their capitals are too large, and the engaged, semicircular pilasters slam awkwardly into the flat pilasters supporting the entablature.

What do I know about the house's history? Relatively little. In 1893, it belonged to a "Mrs. H. Church." Mrs. Church may have been Emma (1834–1912), wife of Henry Seymour Church (1831–1910), a native of upstate New York (America's Greek Revival capital, if I may say so). At the time of the 1880 census, the Churches lived alone, and Henry worked as a grocer. In all likelihood, Henry was too young to have commissioned this home, (2) so the identity of its builder remains a mystery. Kathryn Eckert's excellent Buildings of Michigan neglects to mention it, and I have no access to the Michigan Historic Preservation Office's archives. So, as with so many blog posts, I'll end with a shrug of bewilderment.

1) I can't entirely agree with this assertion. The Greek Revival mode indeed emphasizes massiveness and stolidity — at least, more than, say, the Gothic and late Victorian styles do. But Davis, Eastlake, and Shaw would surely object to our labeling their work unmanly.

2) I'd estimate a construction date in the 1840s (at the earliest) or the early 1850s (more likely). Given that Henry Church reached adulthood about 1850, it's conceivable — but, again, unlikely — that he bore responsibility for erecting the house.

The Cluxton Log House

Unlike Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states south of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians, Ohio boasts relatively few double-pen log buildings. (For those unversed in the arcane art of log-divining, a double-pen building is one which contains two structurally independent units, or pens.*) One of the Buckeye State's finest double-pen dwellings stood, appropriately enough, in one of its most "Southern" counties (geographically and culturally) — Adams — just north of West Union, the county seat. Nestled among billowing pastureland within an agriculturally deficient region known, historically, as the "white oak barrens," the house languished in obscurity and decrepitude until Stephen Kelley, president of the Adams County Historical Society, photographed it in 1977. Kelley's images found their way into Donald Hutslar's hands, and thence into two books (this and this). It's scarcely surprising, then, that state and national surveys of historic buildings neglected to include it — and shall always neglect to include it, since the house disappeared in the 1990s.

The house's front (northwest) elevation. Image by Stephen Kelley, 1977, from the collection of Donald and Jean Hutslar.

The home was an utterly classic double-pen structure — precisely the sort of building I'd expect to find within the earlier-settled portions of the Upland South. It made use of two one-and-a-half-story pens, each constructed of steeple-notched logs and adorned with a single window opening. It featured two massive rubble-stone chimneys — one exterior, and one interior (with an exposed firebox). In all likelihood, the passage between the pens was always enclosed (unlike in the case of the archetypal "dogtrot" house), and the braced-frame rear rooms, which lent the structure a "saltbox" roofline, might have been planned at the time of construction.

The rear (southeast) and side elevations. Note the square attic windows, rake boards, and cantilevered porch framing. I must say, I'm a bit baffled by the pole-mounted hoop. Was it a DIY television antenna? A massive dream-catcher? A homing device for extraterrestrial spacecraft?

Kelley, it seems, failed to photograph the interior, but he did have the foresight to sketch a floor plan, which I've adapted into a proper CAD rendering.

In some ways, the house's oddest feature was its staircase. More often than not, early inhabitants of Ohio's southern half jammed their stairways into the space between the fireplace and exterior wall. This house's builder, by contrast, placed the staircase within the "breezeway," but left it accessible only from the home's rear room. This suggests two possibilities — that (a) the building underwent a massive interior remodeling sometime in the nineteenth century, or that (b) the frame rear portion and the log pens were contemporaneous. Either possibility seems perfectly likely.

Dating the house is a tricky affair. Given its existence in Adams County, site of some of Ohio's earliest permanent settlements, it could have been a statehood-era structure. Then again, its placement on less-than-desirable land may mark it as a late survival of archaic building techniques. Tracing its ownership, alas, provides few answers. In 1880, it belonged to one S.P. Cluxton — perhaps Samuel Page Cluxton (b. 1838), a middle-aged farmer of Scots-Irish descent. It's unlikely that Samuel built or inherited the house; if mid-century census data is any indication, members of the Cluxton family lived exclusively in nearby Liberty Township, and their first place of settlement was the Brush Creek valley, several miles distant. (Apparently, Cluxton is a variant of Clugston, a "habitational name from the barony of Clugston in Wigtownshire," Scotland.)

So, the house's origin will remain a mystery — at least, until someone pays a visit to Adams County's courthouse and slogs through nineteenth-century tax records. I'll end my post with a rendering of how the house may have appeared in better days.

The house reconstructed in SketchUp, from the floor plan pictured above.

* Like all definitions, this one is subject to exception. Some of Ohio's seeming double-pen buildings — Brown County's Erastus Atkins House, for instance — are, in reality, unified structures whose rooms are divided by interlocked log walls.

Charles Dickens and the Siegfried Tavern

A mile or two north of Delaware, Ohio, stands a weatherbeaten frame building, vacant since 1985, and bearing the usual marks of protracted habitation — additions, alterations, and augmented apertures. It faces busy US Highway 23, which approximates the route of an early road connecting Columbus and Sandusky. The structure's situation betrays its purpose; it served as a tavern (or inn), operated by Jacob Siegfried (1788–1846), a Pennsylvanian, between 1835 and — I presume — 1846.

Siegfried's tavern in 2008. (Yes, this photo is terrible; but then, a person trapped in a moving vehicle cannot expect compositional brilliance!)

And, Siegfried's tavern before its abandonment. Photo by George Cryder (?), 1969, from the Delaware County Historical Society collection.

Affixed to the building is a metal plaque, rendered unreadable (during summer months, at least) by unkempt bushes. In my many years of passing the tavern, I could decipher only one word — "tavern" itself. Imagine my surprise, then, when I browsed the Delaware County Historical Society's slide collection and found this:

The plaque. Image by George Cryder (?), 1969, from the Delaware County Historical Society collection.

At first, I accepted the claim with delight. I'd long known about Dickens's 1842 excursion to America, recounted, with invaluable cynicism (1), in American Notes for General Circulation. But, after a moment's thought, I felt a twinge of uncertainty. Though I'd read (and reread) the portion of American Notes covering the Ohio leg of Dickens's journey, I could recall no mention of Delaware.

In the fourteenth chapter, Dickens describes his sole jaunt through Ohio's interior (2):

There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we wished to take, I hired 'an extra,' at a reasonable charge to carry us [from Columbus] to Tiffin; a small town from whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stage-coach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers, as the stage-coach would, but was exclusively our own for the journey. To ensure our having horses at the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole way through; and thus attended, and bearing with us, besides, a hamper full of savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine, we started off again in high spirits, at half-past six o’clock next morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the roughest journey. 

We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs . . . we went forward again, gaily. (3)

As I feared, not so much as a mention of inns, taverns, or Delaware. (I doubt even Dickens, contemptuous of America though he was, would dare to call Siegfried a "cottager.") In the following pages, Dickens describes only one stop between Columbus and Tiffin — Upper Sandusky, which lies well north of Delaware. If Dickens hired an "extra" for the sake of "being incommoded by no strangers," and dined (while sitting on a fallen tree) from his coach's supply of "savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine," why would he stop at Siegfried's tavern? Why inconvenience himself with the company of strangers? And why avoid writing about the sojourn?

Dickens's diary provides few answers (though, unlike American Notes, it does mention that his coach changed horses several times). A folder labeled "Siegfried Tavern" — held by the Delaware County Historical Society — contains property research and biographical information about the Siegfried family, but barely mentions Dickens's supposed stay. The 1842 copies of Delaware newspapers seem to be lost.

The plaque's claim, then, is neither provable nor falsifiable. The weight of evidence may lie on the side of doubt, but mere weight is scarcely proof. I've no choice but to speculate.

Perhaps the story is merely hearsay — a local legend repeated by innumerable Herodotuses, and having no more credibility than the 6.2 x 10^14 similar tales about George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps "Dickens passed this tavern" mutated, as verbal accounts are wont to do, into "Dickens stopped here." Or, perhaps, Dickens gave a hearty wave from his coach; Siegfried noticed and passed the impression to his descendants, in whom it transformed into today's story. Or Dickens indeed paused at Siegfried's tavern, albeit briefly, and simply for a change of horses or a bit of leg-stretching.

1) The best nineteenth-century descriptions of America tend to be those given by foreigners.
2) Though Dickens twice visited Cincinnati, he ventured into the state proper only once.
3) American Notes for General Circulation, Volume II (1842), 133–134.

The John Moomaw House

I've devoted a few posts to Ross County buildings, and I could pen a thousand more. Among the most charming (though scarcely the grandest) of these structures was a Paint Township farmhouse, reportedly erected by one John Moomaw.

John Moomaw's residence (with requisite leaning chimney). Photo by Mrs. A.W. Geissinger or Mrs. D.N. McBride (?), from Historic Landmarks in Ohio: Volume II, compiled by several chapters of the United States Daughters of 1812 in 1953. Scanned by Columbus Memory.

Moomaw's abode stood on sloping land in the valley of Upper Twin Creek, due west of the Paint Township-Twin Township border. To the south, beyond Farrell Hill (home to a delightful sandstone cottage), lies the verdant Paint Valley, site of Ross County's earliest settlement. Though Moomaw's farm — which, in 1860, occupied 210 acres — contained plenty of arable land, little remains cultivated; the tract has, by and large, reverted to scrubby grassland and second-growth forest.

The Moomaw family appeared in America between 1731 and 1732, with the arrival of Jacob and Leonhard Mumma. (Many descendants anglicized their names; this page mentions "at least 18 different ways to spell the surname.") Whether the Ross County branch could trace their descent from Jacob or Leonhard, alas, is difficult to determine. A 1937 Scioto Gazette article describes John Moomaw as an "enterprizing [sic] German settler" and member of a German Baptist congregation.

Moomaw, apparently, relocated from Virginia (1) about 1812 and held several offices in Paint Township's fledgling government — in 1813, he worked as an overseer of the poor; and, in 1816, he served as fence-viewer. According to local legend, Moomaw's bank barn — a double-pen log structure — hosted German Baptist ("Dunkard") meetings.

The precise history of the Moomaw residence is difficult to determine. Geissinger and McBride, in Historic Landmarks of Ohio: Volume II, place its construction within the second decade of the nineteenth century:

The date of the house has not been determined, but certain architectural features lead us to believe that it is within the 1812 period.

Rex Hagerling, by contrast, gives the date 1838, presumably gleaned from Ross County tax records. (2) Kevin Coleman writes that "[the Moomaw home] was built about 1820" and classifies the structure as "[having] genetic similarities with the Grenier form." (The "grenier" house, as Coleman defines it, is marked by "[a] symmetrical gabled roof around the loft [which] projects forward, creating an incised or cut-in porch which appears to be carved out of the body of the house instead of being added on." Apparently, the geographer Allen Noble identified this building-type in 1984.)

Indeed, the two-story inset porch — a distinctly Germanic trait — is (or was) the Moomaw home's outstanding feature. This porch; along with the massive sandstone (?) chimney, basement kitchen, exterior staircase, and bizarre window configuration; placed the John Moomaw House among Ross County's finest rural buildings. Its demolition (circa 2000), then, can best be described as "calamitous."

The Moomaw residence after its abandonment. Image by Rex Hagerling, May 1978, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form.

The Ross County Historical Society's collection contains other photos of the Moomaw home.

1) County histories also mention a Henry Moomaw (1791–1871), born in Virginia, who, like John, moved to Paint Township during the War of 1812. Henry's farm existed a few miles west of John's, near the Upper Twin Road-Fordyce Road intersection. No doubt, Henry and John were related.

2) In 1978, Hagerling finished an Ohio Historic Inventory form (ROS-262-11) describing Moomaw's house. In the "Sources of Information" section, he cites "Auditor's Tax Duplicates: 1836, 1837, 1838," and "Ross County Deed Records."

Russell Kirk and the Octagonal House

Once again, I stray from my blog's title, and blather about that peninsular state immediately north of mine. Ohio is not the country's only — nor, arguably, its most — architecture-rich state. Much as early Christianity syncretized classical culture, I'll pluck post-worthy material from even heterodox sources. This is not a political blog; I don't intend, by quoting Kirk, to promote his philosophy (nor do I, by writing this disclaimer, seek to slight it).

In A Program for Conservatives (1954), political philosopher Russell Kirk eulogizes an octagon-shaped farmhouse:

When I was a very small boy, I used to lie under an oak on the hillside above the mill-pond, in the town where I was born, and look beyond the great willows in the hollow to a curious and handsome house that stood on the opposite slope, away back from the road, with three or four graceful pines pointing the way to it. This was an octagonal house, its roof crowned with a glass dome — a dignified building, for all its oddity. Well, the county planners have chopped down the willows and converted the land round about the old mill-pond into what the professional traffic-engineers and town-planners think a 'recreational area' should look like: a dull sheet of water with some dwarf evergreens to set it off. And the octagon-house was bought by a man with more money than he knew how to spend, who knocked the house down . . . and built upon its site a silly 'ranch-type' dwelling vaguely imitated from Californian styles. As Thoreau used to buy all the farms round Walden Pond in his fancy, so I had made myself, often enough, proprietor of the octagon-house in my mind's eye. But I do not care to look upon the spot now. The old genius is departed out of the town and the country about it. We do our best to assimilate every community that retains something of its peculiar character to the proletarian cosmopolis of modern mass-society.

Kirk, forever a Michigander, spent his childhood in Plymouth, taught at Michigan State University, and retired to Mecosta, an isolated village in the north-central portion of the state. The octagonal house in question, apparently, stood on Wilcox Road in Plymouth Township, Wayne County — due west of Detroit proper. The ever-useful Octagon House Inventory provides a photograph of the dwelling (for copyright's sake, I'll avoid posting the image here), and mentions a demolition date of "about 1955." Given Kirk's comments, this date seems reliable enough (though a tad late).

The building in 1951. Photo from the USGS collection, downloaded from EarthExplorer.

Just as Kirk describes, the home was topped by a glass dome — a feature uncommon even to octagon-shaped dwellings — and four conifers indeed lined its driveway. The 1876 Illustrated Historical Atlas of the County of Wayne, Michigan lists J.H. Phillips as holder of the 53-acre tract; by 1883, ownership had passed to one H. Heide. Phillips, like most of southern Michigan's early residents, hailed from New York. The octagonal house's replacement — the "ranch" dwelling Kirk decries — survived for a mere four decades before succumbing, like its predecessor, to the bulldozer. Today, a condominium complex occupies the site.

Phillips's eight-sided abode weathered nearly a century; its successor existed for less than half. Will the condominiums persist for only twenty years? I don't know. Only time can tell.

Ohio's Log Buildings

In 2011, after reading Donald Hutslar's book, The Architecture of Migration: Log Construction in the Ohio Country, 1750–1850, I began compiling information about my state's log buildings. Hutslar, in his introduction to The Architecture of Migration, lamented that "only a small amount of serious survey work [had] been accomplished" before 1986 (Hutslar published his treatise that year). I resigned to finish this "serious survey work" and create something hitherto unknown — an exhaustive list of Ohio's historic log buildings. For years, I stored the information in scattered folders, a .kml file, and a halfheartedly-maintained ArcGIS map. (Such chaos would have me jettisoned from any office.) Recently, I discovered Google Fusion Tables, which, it seems, is precisely what I've long sought — a way of collecting mountains of information, and displaying it in the form of a map.

For organization's sake (and to prevent the map from crashing viewers' computers), I've broken my (crude) database into 86 pages. To view a list of log buildings in a particular county, click that county's name. To view a map of log structures in that county, click the tab labeled "Map of Location." Blue circles denote extant log buildings; red circles, destroyed log buildings; green circles, extant buildings that may be log; yellow circles, demolished buildings that may have been log; and question marks, buildings whose locations I've yet to discover.

Adams; Allen; Ashland; Ashtabula; Athens; Auglaize; Belmont; Brown; Butler; Carroll; Champaign; Clark; Clermont; Clinton; Columbiana; Coshocton; Crawford; Cuyahoga; Darke; Defiance; Delaware; Erie; Fairfield; Fayette; Franklin; Fulton; Gallia; Greene; Guernsey; Hamilton; Hancock; Hardin; Harrison; Henry; Highland; Hocking; Holmes; Huron; Jackson; Jefferson; Knox; Lawrence; Licking; Logan; Lorain; Lucas; Madison; Mahoning; Marion; Medina; Meigs; Mercer; Miami; Monroe; Montgomery; Morgan; Morrow; Muskingum; Noble; Ottawa; Paulding; Perry; Pickaway; Pike; Portage; Preble; Putnam; Richland; Ross; Scioto; Seneca; Shelby; Stark; Summit; Trumbull; Tuscarawas; Union; Van Wert; Vinton; Warren; Washington; Wayne; Williams; Wood; Wyandot.

This file includes supplementary information. (Alas, Google's program permits no footnote-writing.) For those interested, here's a tabulation of buildings included in the database.

A Most Delightful Description

With the rise of the social sciences, architectural historians (and, for that matter, professionals in other fields) substituted accuracy and objectivity for creative or poetic description. New works of history, though hardly condescending, lack the vigor of their predecessors. I.T. Frary's Early Homes of Ohio is an excellent example of the "old" way of writing about architecture. In Chapter 6, for example, Frary observes:

A most curious illustration of the naïve manner in which the builder blithely rang the changes on staid classic details is to be found on a doorway near Medina (Plate 128). The crude pilasters on either side are built with entasis, but, apparently feeling the need for more tapering lines to satisfy the eye, the builder deliberately ran flutings which converge from the base, toward the capital, thus solving, for his mind at least, the problem of giving entasis and lightness of proportion to the shaft. 

But this genius did not stop there. He also introduced turned columns, with acorns at the top, on each side of the door and, surmounting each with one volute of an Ionic capital, he stretched that capital, in a triumphant flourish, completely across the doorway, making one capital to grow where two had always grown before.

The home in question stands near Seville, in Medina County, Ohio.

Plate 128, from Early Homes of Ohio. Scanned by Christopher Busta-Peck.

Chalets in Ohio

By 1880, Ohio contained eight distinct Swiss communities, covering portions of Allen, Belmont, Columbiana, Fairfield, Fulton, Hardin, Holmes, Monroe, Putnam, Stark, Tuscarawas, and Wayne counties. Of these, the Holmes County–Tuscarawas County settlement (in today's "Amish Country") was by far the largest, and perhaps the "purest."

Swiss settlements in Ohio. Data sourced from the 1850, 1860, and 1880 censuses, transcribed by FamilySearch.

Most of the Swiss newcomers built log and braced-frame homes of a type common in German-settled regions. The Swiss settlement near Bluffton, Ohio (in Allen and Putnam counties), for example, contains many such dwellings. Traditional chalets were much rarer.

A truly "Swiss" house, sketched by Henry Howe in 1846 for his Historical Collections of Ohio. The building, which stood in Knox Township, Columbiana County, had disappeared by the 1880s. Apparently, other dwellings in the vicinity were of similar design.

I know of only three chalet-like houses constructed in Ohio, all of which, alas, have been destroyed. Henry Howe drew one (illustrated above) for the Columbiana County chapter of Historical Collections of Ohio. He wrote:

[S]o much attached is [the German immigrant] to his fatherland that years often elapse ere there is any perceptible change. The annexed engraving illustrates these remarks. It shows the mud cottage of a German Swiss emigrant, now standing in the neighborhood of others of like character, in the northwestern part of this county. The frame-work is of wood, with the interstices filled with light-colored clay, and the whole surmounted by a ponderous shingled roof a picturesque form. Beside the tenement hop vines are clustering around their slender supporters, while hard by stands the abandoned log-dwelling of the emigrant — deserted for one more congenial with his early predilections.

Howe's remark about German resistance to change is interesting, though hyberbolic, of course. Germans tended to assimilate less quickly than, say, the Scotch-Irish, but assimilate they did.

A second Swiss house stood in York Township, Tuscarawas County. Like the Columbiana County residence, it featured a hybrid hip-gable ("jerkin") roof, central chimney, and cantilevered side porch. The wall beneath this porch was plastered.

Photo from the Donald Hutslar collection; used courtesy of Jean Hutslar. Date unknown. Depicted are members of the Zurcher and Trachsel families. The house overlooked Stone Creek.

A few miles northwest, in Wayne Township, Tuscarawas County, existed another blatantly Swiss home, which, astoundingly, lasted into the 1970s. It, too, had a central chimney and "ponderous" hip-gable roof supported by curved brackets. Michael Miller photographed the building in 1972 for his article "Half-Timber Construction: A Relic Building Method in Ohio" (co-published with Hubert Wilhelm in a 1974 issue of Pioneer America), but, in the piece, he completely overlooks its "chalet-ness."

Photo, 1971, used courtesy of Vintage Aerial. Unfortunately, the dwelling was razed about 1978.

Photo by Michael Miller, July 1972, from "Half-Timber Construction: A Relic Building Method in Ohio," published in Pioneer America.

In "Half-Timber Construction," Wilhelm and Miller describe another "Bernese" half-timbered dwelling, apparently situated in eastern Tuscarawas County. It's not clear, though, whether this home (abandoned in 1972, and certainly demolished) was a proper chalet. If other chalet-like houses remain in Ohio, I've yet to locate them.

Overhanging Plates, Again

I've penned a few posts about the mysterious overhanging plate, which, though common in the Upper South and Midwest, remains largely unstudied. Last month, while idling in my college's library, I discovered an early (1952) mention of the overhanging plate in Hugh Morrison's Early American Architecture. On page 168, Morrison writes:

The topmost logs at the ends of the cabin were projected to carry the wall plate forward, thus offering a modicum of protection from rain to the lower wall.

This "cabin" (truly a log house of "saddlebag" plan) stood in Caldwell County, North Carolina, near Blowing Rock. In 1938, Frances Benjamin Johnston photographed the home, then inhabited by one Mrs. Mary Gregg, for her Carnegie Survey of Architecture of the South.

Photo, 1938, by Frances B. Johnston, from the Carnegie Survey of Architecture of the South. Scanned by the Library of Congress.

In Early American Architecture, Morrison suggests the overhanging plate exists to shelter walls from rain, a theory equally plausible as mine (that the overhanging plate evolved from the butting pole). Of course, neither conjecture is provable.

The Gregg residence's logs were unusually well-handled; if I knew no better, I'd describe them as "circular-sawed."

Note the steeple notching, closely-fitted logs, and overhanging plate. The chamfered side log is standard.

An Unnamed House-Type

Contemporary architectural historians tend to classify buildings by type, much as a biologist groups plant leaves by size and shape. Thus, we see, in books and survey reports, such colorful terms as "I-house," "Foursquare," "gable-front," and "shotgun." Though useful, these terms are often ill-defined, and, in my opinion, little better than the stylistic labels they supplanted. (Most early historians of American architecture, like I.T. Frary and Rexford Newcomb, saw buildings as works of art, and described them accordingly.) For the sake of this post, though, I'll abandon my skepticism and invent a house-type of my own.

Scattered throughout Ohio are homes of strikingly similar design (as similar as, say, the state's many "I-houses" or "upright-and-wings"), but which, so far as I'm aware, remain unmentioned in architectural literature. Buildings of this type are invariably one-and-a-half stories in height (the upper half-story being wholly tucked beneath the roof) and quite "deep," with long side walls. In form, they vaguely resemble the braced frame "Cape Cod" residences of coastal New England. Where they stand, they predominate. These buildings have long intrigued me, but, until recently, I knew little about their origin.

Before continuing, I should give a few examples:

House, Miami Township, Greene County, Ohio. Owned by William R. Corry (1826–1885) in 1874; Corry was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Photo, 2012, from the Greene County Auditor's website.

House, Bethel Township, Clermont County, Ohio. Inhabited by Joshua Smart, a native of Pennsylvania, in 1870. Image, undated, from the Clermont County Auditor's website.

House, Brush Creek Township, Highland County, Ohio. Occupied by S.C. Seaman in 1880. Photo, October 2008, from Google Maps.

House, Nottingham Township, Harrison County, Ohio. Owned by one S. Ramsey in 1875. The Ramsey family emigrated from Ireland to York County, Pennsylvania, in the 18th century. Photo, June 2012, from Google Maps.

Homes of the form I've described, it seems, are unique to regions of Scotch-Irish settlement. In The Architecture of Migration, Donald Hutslar briefly describes the group's history:

These people were the Scotch-Irish — Protestant Lowland Scots who had largely resided in stone cottages in northern Ireland a few generations before emigrating to the [American] colonies in several waves[,] beginning early in the eighteenth century.

Between 1800 and 1830, many families of Scotch-Irish descent moved from Pennsylvania to eastern Ohio, settling, primarily, in the Seven Ranges and U.S. Military District. The counties of Guernsey, Harrison, and Jefferson, especially, contained concentrated Scotch-Irish populations. Scotch-Irish, from both Pennsylvania and the Upper South, also settled in the Virginia Military District, and elsewhere in Ohio (though in lesser numbers).

Interestingly, the house-type I've described seems confined to the Midwest. Most extant Scotch-Irish dwellings in southwestern Pennsylvania bear little resemblance to the Ohio house-type; neither do buildings in Virginia and the Carolinas. Precisely where, and when, the "Scotch-Irish box" (inelegant, yes, but so is "upright-and-wing") arose is unclear. Its origin may lie in Pennsylvania, or in Ireland or Scotland.

Dublin's Log Houses

Dublin, platted by John Sells and John Shields about 1810, is one of Franklin County's oldest settlements. According to legend, Shields, an Irishman, named the community for his nation's most prominent city. About 1812, when the Ohio legislature chose to move the state capitol from Chillicothe to a more centrally located city, Dublin was briefly a contender. Despite recent suburban growth, Dublin retains quite a few of its early buildings, two or three of which are log.

Sands House

A standard single pen log building, now vacant. The gable-end entrance is certainly an alteration, as is the shed-roofed dormer. This home retains no original interior features, though, according to a 1976 Ohio Historic Inventory form, its "log construction [is] visible in [the] attic." In 1872, the heirs of one J. Sands owned this lot. Precisely who erected the home, and when, will likely remain a mystery.

The sill is half-dovetailed. Note the faux "foundation," visible to the left; this house, like most log structures, rests atop stone blocks placed at the corners.

Black Horse Tavern

Though several books label this a log building, the Ohio Historic Inventory describes it as, simply, "frame." Eliud Sells, son of Dublin's founder, built (or enlarged) the structure about 1842; the log section, if it indeed exists, may predate the 1840s. The name "Black Horse Tavern" has been applied to multiple Dublin buildings (one being Sells' house, an 1824 stone structure), the earliest of which was no doubt constructed of logs.

The exposed firebox enjoyed its greatest popularity during the Federal era (in Ohio, roughly 1800–1835).

Board House

This home, though early, receives scant mention in city histories; indeed, Dublin's first Ohio Historic Inventory survey, completed in 1975 and 1976, overlooked it entirely, and one later survey misidentified its construction date as "circa 1910." Whether it is truly a log house — or simply a frame building with unusually deep thresholds — I can't say with certainty.

The small, off-center window, barely visible to the left of the conifer, is a feature standard to early 19th century homes.