Another Regional Quirk: Southwestern Ohio's Conspicuous Built-In Gutters

As I've said ad nauseum, every locale has its own architectural flavor (if you will), and that flavor tends to be a function of certain circumstances — when the community happened to develop, where its inhabitants originated, and so on. Often, clusters of distinctively similar structures betray the influence of a particular builder or carpenter. Other times, though, the origin of a locally (or regionally) distinctive architectural quirk can be more difficult to trace. The "monk-bond"-brick farmhouses near Bellevue, Ohio, are one such enigma; so are the myriad southwestern-Ohio homes adorned with built-in gutters.

Gutter, John Elliott House (1802); Symmes Township, Hamilton County, Ohio. This NRHP-listed stone dwelling was built within a year of Ohio's statehood. The frieze board, cornice, and gutter likely date from mid-century.

Describing these gutters — and what differentiates them from their counterparts elsewhere — is a bit of a challenge. They're scattered widely across Ohio's southwestern counties (historically, the state's wealthiest region), from Preble and Darke (in the northwest) to Clermont and Brown (in the southeast), with the densest concentration in the Cincinnati orbit; occasionally, though, examples appear farther north. They're formed when a cornice reaches its wall's plane, then juts out horizontally, creating a distinctive "kick." As far as I can tell, they seem to be a mid-nineteenth-century innovation — most common to Italianate-era structures, but sufficiently abundant in other contexts to leave me scratching my head.

House; Eaton, Preble County, Ohio. This building's cornice is more developed than the John Elliott House's, but the integral gutter remains equally striking.

South gable, Van Ausdal House; Eaton, Preble County, Ohio.

Lest anyone think I'm inventing my assertion, I searched my database of historic rural residences; the distribution of built-in gutters is striking: 48 examples in Warren County, 17 in Butler, at least a dozen in Hamilton,* 10 in Clermont, and nine in Preble; but three in Greene and Montgomery, one in Brown, and none in Clinton and Adams.

Workers' cottages in Columbus's German Village neighborhood — well outside the integral gutter's core region of popularity. Compare the foreground home's eaves with those of its neighbors.

Now, whenever I happen upon such a localized — nay, regionalized — quirk of architecture, I begin wondering about the origin (regional or ethnic) of those who employed it. (Of course, in this case, the method seems less useful, given the great temporal gap between the element's appearance and the settlement of the region in question.) The built-in gutter seems to correlate with concentrations of New Jerseyans, who flocked to the Symmes Purchase and surrounding lands. But such gutters aren't common in Ohio's other significant region of New Jersey settlement — the southwestern portion of the U.S. Military District. And, obviously, plenty of non-New Jerseyans employed the method, too. (It appears in Columbus's German Village, for goodness' sake!)

So, why are built-in gutters concentrated in Cincinnati and bordering counties? I don't know. A bit of meticulous research — tracing particular buildings' owners' immigration and combing through other states' NRHP listings — might reveal something, but I'll leave that research for the future.

* As of October 11, 2017, I've finished only part of my Hamilton County survey.

The Garden of Eden

Just as Petrarch sought to revive Romanitas, so I must resurrect this blog. I might as well begin with what'll hopefully become a recurring feature: a piece about the architectural and geographical peculiarities of a particular place.

Every locale — every nation, every region, and every community — has its own je ne sais quoi, formed by the melding of its people, landscape, and buildings. These local characters vary in distinctness. Some scarcely distinguish one community from its neighbors; others impart state-level significance. In Eden Township, Wyandot County, Ohio, exists one such cluster of sublime individuality. In summer 1985, David Scott — perhaps one of the students who completed much of the Ohio Historical Society's pre-1990 survey work — combed Eden Township and discovered a grouping of board-and-batten-sided homes. Though associated with Davis and Downing's Gothic experimentation, board-and-batten siding enjoyed only middling popularity in Ohio, even within regions where Gothic Revival buildings abound. Of course, today's distribution differs, no doubt, from its nineteenth-century equivalent. If Albert Ewing's photos are any indication, board-and-batten siding was common in Appalachia. But it's rare enough elsewhere. (The difficulty of attaching boards and battens to a vertically oriented frame might also explain the method's scarcity.)

Eden Township, home to 1,026 souls (about 275 of whom reside in the border-spanning village of Nevada), straddles the eastern edge of Ohio's former Wyandot reservation. Until 1843, when the U.S. government resettled the remaining tribesmen in Kansas, a sizable tract surrounding Upper Sandusky remained under Wyandot ownership. By the time of their relocation, most of the reservation's inhabitants, it seems, had adopted certain Western customs, and many lived in log houses and managed subsistence farms. (1) After 1843, the region witnessed explosive population growth. In 1880, Eden Township could boast a population of 1,793, composed largely of native Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, and Germans. It's impossible to determine precisely where Eden Township's settlers originated, but the area's surviving buildings suggest a diverse population. (Some Edenites may have been New Englanders, or else natives of the culturally English region encompassing New England, New York, and northern Pennsylvania.)

Wyandot County, with Eden Township highlighted. Map sourced from Wikimedia Commons; created by Frank12.

The homes in question vary in form and age. The earliest, likely erected in the 1850s or 1860s, have the boxiness and rectangularity typical of antebellum American abodes. Other, later buildings make use of standard late-nineteenth-century vernacular forms — "upright-and-wing," "gabled ell," and the like.

Gregg House. Extant. Note the twin entries and window "dripstone" moldings — an undeniable nod to the Gothic Revival. Photo by David Scott, August 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-571-9).

Why these houses exist, I can only speculate. Perhaps a local carpenter preferred the method and used it to mark his handiwork. Perhaps a building boom occurred at precisely the "right time" — that is, during a national surge in board-and-batten siding's popularity. Perhaps one Eden Township resident employed the technique, and his neighbors, smitten by the odd verticality it lends, followed suit.

Samuel Storm House. Demolished. Perhaps the earliest of Eden Township's board-and-batten-clad houses, this building may have been of log or braced-frame construction. Photo by David Scott, August 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-558-9).

William Case House. Extant. Set into the west elevation's frieze board (not visible) are three lacy frets (or grilles) of a type common to ostentatious Greek Revival-era buildings. The dwelling's rear is covered with conventional beveled siding. Image by David Scott, August 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-538-9).

Conger House. Razed. Photo by David Scott, August 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-539-9).

The finest of the township's board-and-batten-sided houses belonged to John Walton, an Ohio native whose parents hailed from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Walton's residence, a cube-shaped structure of side-passage plan, borrows liberally from Downing's and Davis's designs. The fully functional shutters (a few of which cover door-height windows) are a rare relic, as is the decorative frieze board, which sweeps down, at the corners, to meet narrow corner boards. (These boards evoke pilasters.)

John Walton House. Image by David Scott, August 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-589-9).

The John Walton House's distinctive frieze.

In nearby Sycamore Township, due south of Sycamore village, stands another Gothic Revival-era house of exceptionally fine design. The siding isn't of the board-and-batten variety, but the house shares other features with buildings in the Eden Township cluster — most notably, intricate grilles similar to those adorning the William Case House (see above). J.A. Van Gundy, the dwelling's first owner, apparently bred Merino sheep.

J.A. Van Gundy House. Extant. The exterior wainscoting is unusual (though not unheard-of). Photo courtesy of Google Maps.

Grille, Van Gundy House. Image by David Scott, July 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-306-4).

I know of two other Wyandot County homes garbed with board-and-batten siding, though they stand (or stood) outside the Eden Township grouping (and may be wholly unrelated to it).

Charles Passett House, Richland Township. Demolished. An early, comparatively crude "settlement" home. Note the pent roof and central chimney. Image by David Scott, June 1985, from an Ohio Historic Inventory form (WYA-368-5).

Adam Keller House, Crane Township. Extant. The structure is similar, in some ways, to the John Walton House. Photo taken from Google Maps.

Crawford County and Seneca County — which border Wyandot County to the west and north, respectively — are also well-endowed with architecturally romantic buildings, though neither shelters such a dense cluster of boarded-and-battened houses.

1) Donald Hutslar's The Architecture of Migration describes (and quotes) a few of the documents cataloging the Wyandots' possessions. In these, log buildings are often mentioned.