Keim Homestead NHL Nomination

NHL SCRIPT - KEIM HOMESTEAD Presenting a rich array of architectural elements and details from the German-American vernacular architecture of the mid-eighteenth century, the Keim Homestead stands in the first rank of domestic properties that portray this important tradition within America's vernacular architecture. The Keim Homestead is nationally significant under Criterion 4 as an exceptionally illustrative and intact example of early German-American domestic vernacular architecture. The two nationally significant buildings on the homestead, the Main House and the Ancillary Building, both constructed circa 1753, represent methods of construction, elements of architectural decoration, and patterns in the layout and design of dwellings and domestic outbuildings that were characteristic of the German-American tradition in its period of fullest expression circa 1740 to circa 1775. In plan, the two buildings embody the lifeways expressive of the culture of the eighteenth-century German-speaking immigrants from the upper Rhine Valley and adjacent European regions as this pattern for social and economic life evolved amidst the conditions encountered by the settlers in the New World environment. The Main House exemplifies the Flurküchenhaus or entry-kitchen house type, the predominant multi-room plan constructed by German-Americans in this period, particularly prevalent in the early German-American "heartland" extending in a crescent-shaped region between the Delaware and Shenandoah valleys. It appears that this specific house type represented an American development evolving over the years about 1690 to 1720, one in which German-speaking immigrants in Pennsylvania adapted elements, such as the five-plate jamb stove and the centrally positioned chimney, which were derived from the European vernacular tradition. The German-American ancillary building was an auxiliary structure that effectively served as an extension of the main dwelling under a separate roof.Ancillary buildings could be built later to augment the domestic arrangement, or could represent an older cabin adapted for the purpose, or as in this case they could be built en suite with the main dwelling. Another example of a form that evolved in America incorporating elements derived from the European tradition, the ancillary was typically constructed on an embanked site and housed discrete spaces devoted to residential purposes, craft work, and food processing or storage. In the Keim Ancillary, an unusually early surviving example, the first-floor level served primarily as a workshop. The significance of the Keim Homestead is heightened by the presence of the remarkably well preserved turner's workshop room, quite possibly the earliest extant essentially intact woodworking craft workshop in the nation. Overall these two buildings maintain a high standard of integrity in design and intactness of historic fabric relative to their age of more than 260 years. Modern plumbing and heating were never installed. With the noteworthy exception of Schifferstadt (also present for current NHL review), virtually all individually owned examples of German-American domestic properties had their jamb stoves removed, and that was done at Keim. In the ancillary, the partition walls and the workshop workbench were removed, though clear evidence of their former locations remains, so that the way in which the building originally functioned is clearly discernible. "Philip Pendleton, May, 2016"