Southeast portion of DeTurk House attic granary showing east eaves wall plate [large hewn beam extending into the corner starting at the left edge of the photo]. This plate is rotated several degrees from the horizontal and curves outward, either from roof thrust or possibly because of a prior structural function, probably in another building{1}. Although insufficient "curing" [drying through evaporation] is possible as a contributory cause of the curvature, it is quite unlikely that the original builders would have installed a "green" timber for the important function of a wall plate deployed to carry the substantial loads of a roof and its timber support structure.
The roof rafters and lath were installed in the 1970s. The early clay tiles were assembled from several sources, including a group found in this 1767 building (see DTHTX18--1001.01.017 manuscript sheet headed ‘[DeTurk] Restoration Plans’ paragraph 2, which states "Enough tiles are available for the roof: 1000? Stored in DeTurk House, 1st floor, 700? Stored at Jack Keller’s farm…600? stored at Dr. German’s house (donated by Paul Blatt, Bernville)."
The iron tie rod on the right (shown more fully in the left half of photo DTR09PH102--1001.01.198) was installed in the 20th century to restrain roof thrust. This retrofit was necessitated by the inadequate integration ["tying"] of the wall plates into the structure in the original building campaign. This problem was compounded by the inability to install continuous tie beams from eaves-corner to eaves-corner because of the chimney in the north gable wall and the granary door in the south gable wall. A secondary possible cause of the partial failure of the roof support system was the replacement of lighter roof covering, wooden shingles, with heavier slate and clay tiles during various re-roofing projects on the building. This would impose substantially greater lateral thrust on the rafter plates and the masonry stone courses supporting them, tension on the rafters and their support members.
FOOTNOTE
{1} The darker vertical bands, possibly from joists bearing on this timber and reducing oxidation from exposure to air, on the inner [west] face of the rafter plate{n} might indicate prior use as a summer beam. The outward curve [which would project downward if the plate were rotated to set the bands facing upward under joists], would probably be caused by deflection of the beam from many years of load-bearing in functioning as a “summer” or girder.
{n}so called because of its primary function as the “wall” plate [generically, any timber borne on, or embedded in, a masonry wall] supporting the roof rafters and the loads they bear.
Laurence Ward, 2009, updated March 2021
East elevation view of house including creek and cow. The exisiting (c. 2009-2010) grades on the north and east sides are higher than those depicted in this photograph.
Image #1 [photo #5579, 11/11/13] and the attached drawing dated 2/18/15, revised 3/12/15 [folder dated 4/14/15] show the two adjacent arch-form masonry vaults in the cellar of the 1765 George Douglass House against the below-grade foundation of the southern gable wall of the kitchen. Photo # 5773, 11/18/13 depicts the shared pier and triangular impost from which both vaults spring.
This illustrated record will discuss the historical origins, structural function, and laterally stabilizing relationship between this pair of classically conceived and mechanically integrated vaults.
Beams and Arches: The iconic Greek lintel, composed of stratified bearing and decorative elements forming a segmented entablature, is functionally a beam. A beam is supported only at its terminals, usually columns or wall sockets, often with no intermediate posts or other bearing points. The tensile stresses on a beam under load are well known, quite predictable, and critical in limiting the spans beams can reliably bridge. These essential mechanical principles accurately define the load-limits any beam can effectively and safely support.
An undersized or structurally deficient beam deflects, deforms, and ultimately fails under strains exceeding its tensile capacity. Beam integrity is determined primarily by the strength of the material of which it is composed and its vertical dimension, which is squared in determining its strength. Stone and similar earthen materials perform far better in compression than in tension. The axioms and calculations predicting timber-beam performance that early carpenters and joiners understood from practical experience, European “guild” training, and durable results are analogous to the stone mason’s instinctive “pocket guide” to arch and vault design and the acquired methodology expressed in their vernacular stonework.
However, the construction methods and risks related to designing and constructing masonry arches and vaults over long spans are exponentially more complex than those applicable to a level horizontal beam. Colonial and Federal vernacular masoning skills were implemented with minimal understanding of the mathematical formulas or mechanical principles governing arch and vault design adequate to resolve a wide variety of structural objectives. Despite these theoretical and technical deficiencies, continental and colonial masons achieved an admirable degree of competence in producing the complex and enduring curvilinear stonework erected in accordance with the ancient techniques and constructive sequences prescribed by the “art and mystery” of their trade. Once they learned which combinations of radial geometry values achieved durable results, masons in the back-country who “paid their dues” in the vernacular guild culture could confidently create the degree of stable consolidation of stone and mortar to produce functionally monolithic arches and vaults.
By contrast with a horizontal beam, structural arches are able to span wider dimensions because, properly formed, loaded, and buttressed, they counteract and “neutralize” all compressive, oblique, and tangential forces and stresses imposed on the voussoirs forming the arch-ring. This more complex set of force vectors in arched or vaulted systems creates significant horizontal and oblique thrusts acting on the piers, wall abutments, or other fixed mass supporting and laterally stabilizing the arch or vault. An arch more reliably supports loads to a greater degree than a lintel primarily because the arch converts a significant portion of the forces imposed upon it to a compressive [gravitational] vector supported by the earthen or paved stratum bearing its foundations. The gravitational (“compressive”), lateral, and oblique forces consolidated on the impost and its support structure are “taken to ground” or other “footing” base on which the entire mass is ultimately borne. Lateral stability depends on the abutments. The abutments constraining the fireplace support-vault include the smaller arch integrated to it and itself securely abutted by the eastern foundation wall.
The Drawing entitled “Arch Forces” shows with arrows a simplified analysis of the forces imposed on and supported by a masonry arch. The arrow labeled “R” [for “Resultant”] is a consolidated indication of the aggregate of forces generated by the arch and its loads as focused on the “Springers”; the two force “vectors” summarizing the compressive and lateral components of the resultant force are indicated by the arrows “VC” and “VL” respectively.
Arch Origins- The Roman Antecedents:Corbeled “tunnel” vaults with roughly converging apexes appeared in stone walls and passage structures in the middle-east nearly 2000 years ago. More mathematically complex and mechanically effective than the column-and-lintel systems prevalent in monumental Greek structures, masonry arches and “barrel” vaults, most composed of large bricks and mortar, flourished in classical Roman architecture and appeared in stone in cultures east of the Mediterranean Sea during the 500 years BCE. Some vaults intersected, forming groined (and later ribbed), quadripartite vault bays spanning the spacious naves of 10th century Romanesque churches, ceiling a magnificent multitude of even more voluminous Gothic Cathedrals displaying “pointed” arches during the medieval period, and roofing Romanesque and Renaissance cathedrals [cite JSAH].
The Renaissance and its Influence:The Italian Renaissance of the 15th through 17th centuries and its widespread architectural influence produced an abundance of semi-circular and segmental structural arches, little changed from the classical Roman and intervening Romanesque prototypes. The cult of the arch spread rapidly north of the Mediterranean. Large-scale radial arches provided structural integrity in hundreds of major building campaigns throughout the Germanic Principalities during the “Northern Renaissance.” The mechanical success of the Roman Empire’s enduring architectural and engineering achievements for nearly a millennium assured the primacy of the “round-form”{a} arch in structures erected within its vast area of political dominance and architectural influence. Arches and vaults{b} proved to be exponentially more effective than the column and beam [“trabeated”{c}] Greek forms in critical bearing functions in the classical world and all subsequent architecture influenced by it. The semi-circular, elliptical, and multi-radial arch forms spawned by Rome evolved little over the ages because of the structural success and stunning beauty of their prodigious lineage. The lithic DNA of the arch required few mutations to perpetuate its survival into its third millennium and for the foreseeable future.
{a} Generically of two types: (1) semi-circular arches with intrados and extrados tracing arcs with constant radii terminating at the horizontal chord connecting the imposts on the abutting piers; and (2) segmental or elliptical arches with radii converging at a center (or multiple centers) below the impost cord, tracing less than a half-circle or an eccentric arc from impost-to-impost. The various profiles and radial patterns in masonry arches are diagrammed in the “Masonry Arches“ drawing in this record, from the 3d edition of Architectural Graphic Standards by Ramsey and Sleeper (1941 and 1949).
{b} The traditional definition of a round-form vault is: a masonry arched structure with a length longer than its span between imposts. A functional definition, less focused on the dimensional proportions, would refer to the distinction between the typical passageway or arcade openings created by an arch compared to the essential bearing, ceiling, and enclosing purposes of a vault. The Douglass cellar vaults fall into the latter category, relegating the dimensional formula to a lesser significance.
{c} as distinguished from arch-form or “arcuated” systems, with voussoirs [the individual canted stone units forming the arch-ring] of appropriate geometry and sizing to provide reciprocal and monolithic stability crucial to supporting the incumbent load.
The English architectural renaissance:17th century British masons and architects produced and adapted to English design preferences an abundance of buildings derived from Roman [more proximately, northern Romanesque and Italian Renaissance] prototypes, adapting masonry passageways and bearing-arch forms to a variety of functions in vernacular and academic buildings. The architectural results included an impressive array of grand houses in Great Britain and robust symmetrical domestic buildings in the new villages and farmsteads structures in the New World. These American evolutes were often assimilated and adapted by collaboration and parallel development contemporaneously with continental influences and practices. The colonial vernacular expressions in masoned stone became more ingenuously refined and articulated.
The peripheral support elements abutting an arch or vault must be sufficient in mass and lateral integrity to neutralize the outward stresses generated by the arch or vault and the superincumbent loads borne by them. Not all of the gravitational load supported by arches and “barrel” vaults are “converted” to compressive gravitational loads and fully borne by the imposts [“I” on Drawing GDH vaults color] through the springers [“S” on Drawing GDH vaults color] and borne by the piers or wall ranges abutting the arched span. Arches and radial vaults depend on stable abutments as well as compressive gravitational bearing piers to fully restrain and counter all force vectors, particularly lateral forces, and superincumbent loads imposed and “acting”{d} on the arch. The ultimate durability of the finished structure is dependent on the quality of the wall-builder’s “laying-up” technique, most importantly the transverse bonding patterns conceived and implemented to compress and thus secure joints between stone units. The impressive result of the form and laying-up techniques producing these arches is masonry cohesion achieving a functionally monolithic stability.
{d} A misnomer, since the ambient loads and force vectors borne by an arch or vault are static [“dead”, not “live”], when in equilibrium. Properly designed arch-form bearing structures resist and neutralize live or “dynamic” loads and “charges”, as well as static burdens. However, this discussion will consider only the static aspects of arch-theory, since most Pennsylvania structural arches were built to such a redundant mass and scale that they easily absorb and dissipate the live loads periodically occuring.
Master masons designing and supervising stone building projects on the Continent and in the British Isles assiduously trained their corps of journeymen{e} and apprentices in the “art and mystery” of their trade. In the following centuries, including the 17th and 18th century era when William Penn was “planting” his vast American colony with immigrants and their craft-cultures, stone buildings (and many of brick in urban centers such as Philadelphia) began to appear throughout the settlement areas of Pennsylvania. Many masons, journeymen and “masters” working within a hierarchy of artisanship commensurate with their levels of spatial perception, acquired skill-set, and applied workmanship, emigrated to the American colonies, transplanting with them those prescribed and creative means and methods engrained in their individual and collective craft-memories and imprinted on the fabric of completed structures in which they were engaged. The Germanic form of the Romanesque arch crossed the Atlantic in the custody of a large corps of stone masons skilled in its use and capable of transmitting its traditions to fellow Germanic and non-Germanic artisans in the Atlantic colonies.
{e} The status of "journeymen" in the various construction trades in the English craft tradition designated someone who had completed his apprenticeship and was deemed qualified to "journey out" to construction sites to work within his craft for wages. In the continental Germanic Trade-Guild tradition, this was called “Wanderschaft Peregrination”, a one or two year journey to “ausland” regions and cultures designed to afford knowledge and experience in trade practices and techniques outside the apprentice’s home region, and to broaden the experience and skill-set of the “Handwerks-Bursch” [Traveling Journeyman] beyond the local methods and specialized techniques learned in his youth; cfr. Rush’s Account of the Germans in Pennsylvania, as published in the Proceedings of the Pennsylvania German Society, Vol. XIX, at page 50, especially Rupp’s footnote 23, ibid.
???????????Thousands of records of Indentures binding a large percentage of immigrants to work in Pennsylvania from 1771 to 1773 recite that the “Apprentice” or “Servant” was to be taught the “art, trade and mystery” of the designated occupational category; see records published on pages 1 to 325 of Pa German Society Proceedings, Vol. XVI (1907), in the essay entitled Record of Indentures of Individuals Bound Out as Apprentices, Servants, Etc. and of German and Other Redemptioners…October 3, 1771 to October 5, 1773.
Most of the Germanic immigrants settled and began working in Pennsylvania. The English artisans, trained during the 17th century “post-fire” building boom, also understood and utilized the structural arch, and possessed the requisite skills to produce enduring stone structures in the Atlantic seaboard “plantations” emerging in the colonial period. In southeastern Pennsylvania, masonry techniques and constructive protocols, informed by Continental and English practices and training requirements, found expression in a variety of structural applications in vernacular buildings crafted in the piedmont and burgeoning farmland settlements radiating out from Penn’s “Green Country Town”.
It is reasonably well documented that Germanic masons worked on Anglo-Pennsylvania [“Georgian”] houses in Germantown [1740s] and at Pottsgrove [c. 1752], and a few miles east in the George Douglass mansion [1765]. Farmstead buildings, Taverns, crossroads log and stone houses and their dependencies displayed arch-form doorway “heads”, segmental [“elliptical”] “relieving” arches spanning door and window openings, and durable vaults in cellars and ground-level stables designed and sized to support fireplaces and chimney stacks, wagon ramps, and to “ceil” “tunnel”- [barrel-] vaulted root cellars [also called “ground”{f} or “cave” cellars]. The work product derived from this craft history and tradition was durable and highly functional, and remains so where preserved.
{f} see Williams, David G., The Lower Jordan Valley Pennsylvania German Settlement, August, 1950, pp. 151-2 and following plates, observing that “Almost every farm of any size included one of the ground cellars among its buildings”, with arches “which vary from quite flat…to almost [semi-] circular…”
Vernacular Masonry: Early “back-country” masons possessed little or no knowledge of classical or Newtonian mechanical principles or the mathematical calculations{g} necessary to precisely calibrate the forces acting within an arch-form masonry structure. They lacked the formulas developed by solid geometry and force-vector analysis to design for massive (for many vernacular craftsmen, incalculable) loads, thrusts, and strains which burdened and imperiled the structural integrity of masonry buildings of the period. Instead, they marshalled their shared experience and honed their practical problem-solving insights and methods to rectify the inevitable failures as buildings in the region became larger and structurally more complex. Under the guidance and discipline of the most skilled among them, they managed to work-out and fabricate arches and vaults of sufficient mass and mechanically effectual form to support immense loads [measured in tons]. The transplanted “art & mystery” of the mason’s craft produced an impressive array of arched passage, bearing, and buttressing elements in a wide range of masonry applications.
{g} French mathematicians were working out the formulas and calculations governing arch performance, form, and size from the late 16th through succeeding centuries. It is doubtful that early European-American craftsman had access to or comprehension of the complexities and implications of these theories and the empirical refinements initiated and shaped by them. The architectonic results were formulaic guidelines determining voussoir shapes, weights and cant-angles, abutment pier dimensions, joint friction, impost design and placement, the orders of magnitude of compressive loads and lateral thrusts, and similar details and consequences produced by the finished structure.
Alternative bearing systems for fireplaces included coursed corbeled stonework, with each cantilevered layer of stones projecting out incrementally from the lower ranges embedded in the abutting walls, counteracting the compressive loads, lateral and oblique thrusts, and stresses from the fireplace hearth, jambs, and chimney stack borne by the inversely stepped support [Hunter-Shelley photo #4428, 4/13/15]. These support variants were less expensive and obtrusive, but could not bear the immense loads carried by well-constructed arch-form vaults.The ancient technique of laying arch-ring [“voussoir”] stones on temporary timber supports [called “centering” or “false work”] until the compressive and radial bonds between stone and mortar is sufficiently cured [“set up”] continues to the present day as the preferred method for constructing Roman-form arches and “barrel” vaults. This wooden form-work method was essentially the same in the mid-20th century as in arch structures produced in ancient and classical-revival periods, a span of more than two thousand years [see Shelley barn-arch photo, #1, 3/7/15].
The George Douglass House Cellar Vaults
The proposed replacement of the 1765 Douglass house kitchen door and frame in the gable recess next to the large cooking fireplace required the Trust to investigate and determine a plausible function for the narrow barrel vaulted structure [photo #5775, 11/18/13] in the southeast corner of the cellar under the doorway passage east of the fireplace jamb. Located adjacent to the fireplace support vault [photo #2613, 12/31/14] and directly below the gable-wall doorway passage adjacent to the kitchen fireplace, the corner vault might intuitively be expected to have been constructed as a bearing structure for a compressive load, possibly a bake oven. Inspection of the residual material and framing configuration under the floorboards should reveal whether any bed mortar or leveling course remains on the vault extrados as a bearing plane for a masonry structure which George Douglass hypothetically intended to install in the corner recess.
No significant masonry mass or other gravitational load is borne by the narrower vault, except for a minimal component of the eastern jamb of the fireplace above [ see GDH vaults Drawing dated 2/18/15 and revised 3/12/15], and there is no evidence that it ever did so. The space above the corner vault has been a joisted-floor passage to the gable doorway from an early period, and is probably an original plan detail. The framing, though since altered, is similar to the centered principal doorway framing in the western facade. Whether George Douglass realized the importance and benefit from this convenient passage belatedly, and consequently discarded the bake-oven element is an un-documented subject of conjecture.
It seems implausible that the gable-corner doorway was an afterthought brought to mind only after the masons had spent considerable time and material constructing two classic arch-form vaults and carefully designing the common pier supporting the shared triangular impost{h} and “springers” of both arches. Rather than speculating as to what purpose was intended for the corner vault, it seems more useful to recognize the structural function that is demonstrably served by it. As currently configured, the small vault is an ideal buttress for the large vault supporting the kitchen fireplace. The two vaults share the narrow pier as a common “jamb” and provide perfect lateral support for each other. The convergence of opposing force vectors from each vault, reciprocally neutralizing each set of stresses, creates stable equilibrium in both.
{h} The triangular stone centered on the pier between the vaults and bearing the springers of both vaults. As a consequence of the symmetrical and opposing force vectors focused on the angled faces of the impost through the springers of the two vaults, the mechanical effect is to stabilize the two-vault system at their joinder on the impost. There is no compelling evidence or constructive analysis that the smaller vault served, or was required to serve, any other structural purpose.
The following discussion will address only that function which the vault actually performs, not what its speculative purpose or other hypothetical intention, later presumably abandoned, might have been.
The gravitational loads and lateral thrusts imposed on arches are resolved and stabilized by the compressive strength of the arches and the redundant buttressing effects of the flanking structures (walls, piers, and adjacent integrated structures, such as the pier-wall from which the western end of the Douglass fireplace support vault springs, and corner vault formerly the support base for a corner fireplace, now removed) which abuts it. The combined mechanical effects achieve a coordinated condition of static equilibrium in the masonry masses borne and laterally stabilized by the well-crafted and buttressed vault system. The arch-ring and the pier-and-abutment elements that “clamp” it in place are equally indispensable in the creation of an enduring arched or vaulted work-product. The integrated pair of arched vaults bearing and stabilizing the Douglass kitchen fireplace has successfully manifested all essential functional criteria for two and a half centuries. It is not necessary to speculate about what Douglass might have had in mind about a bearing function for the small vault. It has served as the perfect buttress for the fireplace vault for nearly ten generations. In the absence of documentation or other compelling evidence in the architectural fabric, it cannot be asserted with certainty what the original purpose of the small vault might have been. We can, however, recognize the structural function it does unequivocally perform, namely to counter and neutralize the lateral and oblique thrusts imposed by the fireplace vault and the “superincumbent” loads it supports. Under this premise, the small vault is a mechanical buttress rather than a gravitational support in simple “compression” and bearing an intuitively imagined kitchen fixture.
The wider vault, nearly 12 feet in total length, shares an abutment pier with the smaller-vault, which also serves as a shared “jamb” [see photo Image #5773, 11/18/13 and the stone marked “P” in drawing dated 4/14/15]. The larger vault is a prime and enduring example of a masonry structure in stable equilibrium under the massive compressive load of the fireplace and three-story chimney stack borne by it. The smaller vault is (apart from any conjectural bearing role) an ingenious alternative to a massively redundant abutment pier which would have otherwise been necessary to provide the equivalent counter force against lateral thrust from the fireplace foundation vault [see drawing #GDHA3]. Together, the two-vault system produces a mechanically integrated and stable support system for the set of forces imposed upon and borne and neutralized by them. The drawing indicates that the shared vault pier performs its compressive function by supporting the fireplace jamb and chimney wall directly above it. It also supports the triangular impost stone which is the bed for the arch springers [“S” on GDH vaults Drawing dated 2/18/15 and revised 3/12/15] ranging through the full depth of each vault. Mechanically, this convergence of forces produces the equilibrium necessary for the long term durability of the incumbent loads bearing on the two vaults.
The Douglass house masons and the master housewright in charge of coordinating construction knew from their training, experience, and tradition that embanked foundations provide ideal buttressing for vaulted enclosures [Douglass, Keim, and DeTurk root cellars, e.g., see records KHPH…., GDHPH….,and DTHPH….]. Rather than filling the entire space between the jamb of the larger vault and the eastern foundation walling with “rubble” masonry infill, or thickening the vault pier to an excessively massive scale, the builders chose to mechanically join the vault bearing the fireplace and chimney loads to the easterly foundation, using the small arched vault as a structural brace. This thrust-transfer device, visually and functionally a “flying-arch”, effectively and economically utilizes the foundation masonry mass and exterior earthen “bank” as the lateral constraint resolving and offsetting all force vectors capable of straining the stonework to the point of failure. This vernacular solution operates on the same fundamental principles as those governing a “flying buttress” counteracting the thrusts generated by the high vaults in a mediaeval cathedral. The Douglass dual-arch system has reliably borne the massive fireplace and chimney stack loads and counteracted the lateral thrusts they produce for two and a half centuries.
Summary: There seems to be no evidence or trace of an access-aperture for a bake oven or other cooking structure in the eastern jamb of the Douglass kitchen fireplace. The location of the trammel “squinch” is also an indication that no bake oven abutted the kitchen fireplace. In the absence of such evidence, the small vault terminating at its eastern springing in the foundation wall , might be viewed as a cost-effective means of providing a mechanically sound buttress against the lateral thrust of the larger arch supporting the kitchen fireplace. The arched abutment, constructed with traditional “centering”, has performed this function for 250 years, providing a margin of structural redundancy significantly more efficient and less costly than a massively thick pier installed for this purpose {i}. The vault requires little or no additional materials than a massive pier. In modern terms, this diminutive arch is the “elegant” vernacular solution to the classic problem of arch stability against oblique and lateral thrusts imposed by the massive loads imposed by and through the fireplace vault.
{i} The support vault under the entry to the Shelley barn from the wagon ramp has a nearly four-foot wide abutment pier [photo 1498, 10/21/14].
Mrs. Kenneth (Shirley) Kane, former resident on the DeTurk farmstead, replies to a Feb. 16, 1967, inquiry by Mrs. E. Robert Hottenstein of HPTBC on property details she may recall.
In addition to this one-page letter of March 15, 1967, Mrs. Kane's second sheet is a copy of the original question list submitted by Mrs. Hottenstein.
The third page contains Mrs. Kane's replies to the questions.
"Letter No. 4" is printed in pencil in the upper right corner. This apparently refers to a series (numbered 1 to 6) of inquiries to various sources about the De Turk property made by Mrs. Hottenstein.
Mrs. Hottenstein's original covering letter of February 16, 1967, has not been found.
See RELATED for photos from Mrs. Kane
Letter in reply to HPTBC's Mrs. E. Robert Hottenstein from Laurence A. De Turk of Kutztown. No copy of the letter from Mrs. Hottenstein has been found.
"Letter No. 1" is printed in pencil in the upper right corner. This apparently refers to a series (numbered 1 to 6) of inquiries to various sources about the De Turk property made by Mrs. Hottenstein.
The letter covers many aspects of DeTurk genealogy and local history in the area, topgether with details on the properties and buildings involved.
Limestone vein ["shelf" or "bench"] in bed of Little Manatawny Creek east [downstream] from the DeTurk House. This bedrock layer ["shelf"] forms the natural bedrock "footings"{1} bearing the foundation walls of the house, which has been more accurately described as an "ancillary," multi-purpose structure, acknowledging its affiliation with the original (expanded) DeTurk farm houses and with other subsidiary buildings ("dependencies") of the early farmstead. This limestone bed is part of the wide stratum extending from Yellow House northward to Lobachsville, and is related to the east-west belt from Boyertown through Greshville to Yellow House.{2}
FOOTNOTE:
{1} SEE DTR09PH69--1001.01.153 [first two paragraphs in Description, and footnote {1} to the first paragraph].
{2} A quarry in Maxatawny Township, Berks County, located north of Rte 222 and west of Long Lane produces similar white-veined blue dolomitic limestone.
Laurence Ward, 2009
Half millstone stoop removed from intermediate elevation outside DeTurk kitchen doorway [see DTR09PH43--001.01.127, bottom edge of photo, and DTR09PH44--1001.01.128, taken from inside the doorway and showing the position of the millstone approximately 8 inches above the original stone sill at the bottom of the photo]. This furrowed millstone was probably cut from a locally quarried conglomerate slab and originally used to process feed grains for farm animals. It will be installed at the modern grade as the upper landing of the stone stairs to the doorway, and will be ramped to divert surface runoff away from the stairwell.
Laurence Ward, 2009
Mouns Jones Root Cellar
A 1962 photograph [photo #19, 11/21/17] by Harry Stauffer, the Farmersville, PA "printer, tinker, and furniture maker", and, most significantly for the PA preservation and rural history community, a prolific and perceptive avocational photographer, was the first-noticed piece of evidence that a root cellar existed to the northwest and within the curtilage of Mouns Jones 1716 stone house. The blue-toned "cyanotype" print of the photo is in the collection of the Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley, and is used here with its generous permission. The stone-arch visible in Stauffer's photograph delineates the entry-wall of the cellar, which lacks its barrel-vaulted ceiling which was demolished between 1962 and 1972. However, the angled "springer" stones forming the transitional bearing elements between the "impost" stones and the arched vault remain in place on the northern foundation [photo #1, 9/26/17].
The approximate interior dimensions of Mouns Jones Root Cellar are ft. wide at floor level inside the entry gable-end, ft. long, and 80 inches in height at the apex of the assumed intrados of the vault. The "herringbone" pattern brick floor is approx.. …ft. below the early exterior grade, from which the cellar was accessed by two stone steps [photo #7, 9/26/17] descending to the brick floor. The arched entry in the Stauffer photo suggests that the rubble-stone exterior ["extrados"] of the barrel vault projected about 3-4 ft. above modern grade (but probably 5 to 6 feet above the early grade at the entrance). The interior ceiling ["intrados"] would have followed the arch profile established by the temporary "centering" supports left in place until the arch stones ["voussoirs"] "set up" sufficiently to be structurally self-supporting. Amos Long, op. cited below, pp. 160-162, surmised from oral tradition and personal observations that average dimensions for root cellars in SE Pennsylvania were 9-12 feet wide, 12-18 feet in length, 6-7 feet high from floor to apex of ceiling ["intrados"],
The Mouns Jones structure appears to exhibit stone foundation walls separated from and parallel to the longitudinal walls abutting the root cellar and serving structurally as its foundation. These perimeter walls on the long axis of the structure provided both compressive (gravitational) bearing support for the vault and adequate countervailing force to neutralize lateral and radial shear from the oblique thrust transmitted through the arched voussoir stones and angled springers. Apart from serving as lateral (and probably redundant) abutments for the vault, these long walls quite probably served as the foundation for a small gabled building similar to the presumed bake-house [photoKH4, Oct, 2010, c. 1897] a few feet east of the Federal-era addition to the 1753 Keim house.
In this Keim and Mouns Jones root cellar type the springers terminating the arched barrel vault are integrated directly into the long foundation wall supporting the vault, with insulating in-fill of earthen materials packed into the tapering space between the vault extrados and the interior face of the foundation walls of the superstructure.
Another example of the Jones-Keim type is the root cellar beneath the outbuilding north of the early mansion house at Pine Forge [photo #212], a few miles north of the Mouns Jones house and constructed with similar "New Red" sandstone as that used for the 1716 jones house.
In another structural variation, the springers terminate and bear directly on imposts embedded in foundation walls or internal piers or partitions in the building forming the superstructure. Examples of this class of root cellars are:
(1) The southern half of the cellar under the extant 1767 DeTurk "Grossmutter's House" in Oley Township, which also incorporates an attic granary and a large farmstead fireplace in the space adjacent to the embanked root cellar [photo 906, 1/1/80]. One run of springers in this embanked cellar bonds into the southern (road-side) gable-end foundation of the host building; the parallel set of springers beds in the stone partition wall that divides the root cellar from the farmstead kitchen and, formerly, the farmstead "wash house" (as it was called in an early 19th century DeTurk Will) in the northerly portion of the cellar spaces. The sole access to the cellar kitchen is the hooded doorway from the lower grade south of Little Manatawny Creek;
(2) In the plastered root cellar under the smoke chamber between the Federal-era Amity Store attached to 1765 George Douglass House in Morlatton and the one-story ancillary building into which the smoke-chamber/root cellar structure inserts at its northwestern corner [photos #2221, 4/22/13 and 2126, 4/18/13]. One set of springers in this vault beds in the southern foundation wall of the Amity Store addition to the George Douglass House and the other in the northern basement walling of the adjoining one-story ancillary building. Photo 16 shows the typical warm-air vent under the intrados high in the end-wall. Also visible in this photo to the right in the end wall is the arched passage through which air convects into the cellar after being cooled by the endothermic process of evaporation of the condensation formed on the exterior brick wall of the well seen through the passage{n1}.
{n1} Long notes at p. 60 of his Family Farm book that wells were sometimes constructed "in common" with a root cellar or with an opening built into the cellar wall "so that the cool air from the well could flow freely into the cellar area", which consequently "provided a cool storage space during the summer."
The root cellar under the Hans Herr house in Lancaster County [photo #1306, 1/1/80 ], also displaying a vent window ( called by Amos Long a "ventilation duct" when the walling below the opening is tapered to funnel-out the rising warmer air), The Pennsylvania German Family Farm, caption to photo on p. 101, which also shows a "cooling closet", ceiling meat hooks, and plastered and whitewashed walls.
Chapter 21 of The Pennsylvania Society for Archaeology has been methodically excavating the remaining walls and "herringbone" pattern brick floor of the masonry food storage space, called by various names including "cave" and "ground" cellars; see Long, Amos, Pennsylvania Cave and Ground Cellars, in Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 11, No. 2, (1960), p. 36 et seq., and his farm-structures "bible", The Pennsylvania German Family Farm..[p. 156, et seq.]. Long also called this type of storage structure an "arch cellar" [ibid. p. 101], in which was stored cider, vinegar, many vegetables and fruits [p. 100].
The primary, but not exclusive, uses of early root cellars{n2} was as an embanked stone vault "where we [in Pennsylvania] keep our apples [photo #, a c. 1940 photo, above 6/18/14, showing the traditional function of sorting apples in a Pennsylvania root cellar in c. 1940 Adams county]…turnips, cabbages, potatoes, and pumpkins" and "cider, milk, butter, meat, and various necessities…" in cellars under houses. Both types of cellars were designed for "preservation of…roots and vegetables in the winter, turnips, pumpkins, cabbages, potatoes, [quoted in Gage, James, E., Root Cellars in America, 2010, 2d ed., p. 6 et seq., citing de Crevecoeur's 1782 "Letters".
{n2} ('commonly called a Dutch cellar' according to de Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John, in his "Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of 18th century America", 1981 Penguin trade paperback edition, at p. 315),
Long also notes the storage of meats, milk, butter, beer, wine, root vegetable (parsnips, salsify, horse radish, beets, turnips, and presumable others).
Similar subterranean ["banked"] wooden storage cellars existed in America in the 17th and early 18th centuries [Long].
Laurence Ward Feburary, 2018
Series of 50 digital photographs depicting the removal of the c. 1930s porch from the Keim House {q}.
1. {q} Image #47 is a panoramic view of the Keim farmstead, a c. 1930, photo taken by Amandus D. Moyer, and is used with the generous permission of the photographer's granddaughter Susan Harvin. Note the absence of a porch on the west gable wall.
The two earliest Keim buildings, the 1753 farmhouse and its "ancillary" structure, and the Federal-era addition to the 1753 house formed an organic and architecturally distinguished farmstead which prospered during Keim family occupancy and administration for nearly sixteen decades. The surviving structures remain in remarkably well-preserved and substantially undisturbed condition, never having been substantially "improved" with interior plumbing, electrification, or other modern utilities, or structural or cosmetic "remodeling". The only significant exceptions include modification of the roof system and materials on the 1753 house and the early addition, and the construction and recent removal of the disintegrating 20th century porches on the south and west walls.
2. Fortunately, this unmolested status continued through the 65 years of Boyer family ownership which commenced c.1913 and ended with the Boyers' conveyance of the site and its structures to the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County. The undisturbed condition continues under the stewardship of the Trust. Despite the passive preservation of the period buildings in their early condition throughout two and a half centuries, much of their distinctive architectural form, character, scale, and defining details were concealed and distorted for more than a century and a half by two successive porches joined to the south eaves walls. The 1930s porch extended the porch northward, appended to the west gable wall.
During the first 258 years of its existence, the 1753 house displayed three projecting roofed structures, a pent roof and 2 floored porches, appended in the following sequence to the south eaves wall. The porches described in "B" and "C" also extended across most of the contiguous eaves wall of the Federal-era addition; "C" also abutted the west gable wall, forming a prodigious L-shaped "piazza, in modern terms."
A.The first of these structures was a "pent"{a} roof, without above-grade flooring, probably un-ceiled{b}, integral with the original 1753 masonry wall construction, and carried on cantilevered "outlookers" which were cut off when the 19th-century floored porch described in "B" below was constructed. This early pent was structurally, dimensionally, and functionally equivalent to its counterpart, now reconstructed on its original outlookers on the north eaves wall of the 1753 house [Image #1, photo from record KHPH2--1002.01.009 and Image #11, photo 4300, 7/1/11].
{a} a contraction of "appentice," meaning an attached ["appended"] sheltering structure joined to a principal building [Lounsbury, Carl, An Illustrated Glosssary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape, Univ. Press of VA, (1999), p. 267].
{b} This inference is based on the following considerations:
1) There is no framing evidence for a ceiling ["soffit"];
2) There is no soffit sealing the underside of the northern pent roof; and no evidence of nailing to the bottom surface of the outlookers carrying it.
3) The walling between the outlookers and the rafter tops is laid flush with the plumb-lines of the exposed masonry and pointed identically to the wall ranges of all exposed elevations of the 1753 house. When an 18th-century pent roof was ceiled [earlier, "sealed"], such as at the George Douglass House, the wall segment concealed by the pent roof and its ceiling is typically laid in the "random rubble" method without regard for uniform coursing or wall-plane consistency [Image #2, photo #3842, 6/5/11].
Pent roofs and hoods [usually referring to a projecting structure, pedimented or in shed-form, above a single door or window] were distinguishing elements of 18th-century vernacular architecture in the region. They served the same function in Anglo-Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Germanic structures: protecting the woodwork and joints forming, framing, and securing wall openings, thereby reducing deterioration from saturation of mortar joints and foundation masonry .
The original pent roof framing on the north [road-side] eaves wall furnishes an ideal template and dimensional basis for framing and detailing a restored pent structure on the south elevation. Accordingly, the authentic reconstruction of the southern Keim pent roof will create a structure which is not cieled or sided, but returns to the masonry wall with a half-hip based on the existing pent on the north eaves wall. This framing system will consist essentially of a series of half-trusses composed of rafters footed on a front plate, and joists mechanically fastened to the original outlookers, which had been cut-off at the wall plane to accommodate the 19th century porch. Lath strips will support the authentic roofing material, clay tiles, the same material used on the original roof of the house, based on photographic evidence [see Image #11].
The original pent roof was joined with the eaves wall tightly under the flashing course, which consisted of horizontally aligned stones ["flags"], which are flatter than those in the ambient un-coursed wall ranges of the early house block. This projecting band of stonework [Image #3, photo 5522, 8/20/11] was designed to shelter the joint between the pent roof and the wall masonry from moisture infiltration. The thin stones forming this flashing ["drip course"] had been masoned into the original structure by embedding them as cantilevers with fulcrums at the wall plane. This structural integration demonstrates unambiguously that the pent roof and flashing course were part of the original 1753 construction campaign and survived as a sheltering "overhang" for a more than a century.
3.
Demolition of the pent roof in the 19th century, removing its cantilevered outlookers, and construction of a porch roof meeting the wall a foot below the projecting stonework rendered the flashing course conspicuously redundant. This anomaly was the least intrusive effect of the porches, as discussed below.
B. The first floored porch, with its roof carried on turned support posts, was erected during the second half of the 19th century in replacement of the original pent roof. [Image #4, Photo 2 from KHPH9--1002.01.044]. This 19th-century porch{c}, a structural and functional expansion of the first-period pent roof, survived all Keim family members who had occupied the farmstead through 1913.
{c} This date attribution is based on the scale and profiles of the turned support posts (see photographic images in Archive record KHPH9--1002.01.044). This structure is probably the "back porch" which Betsy Keim, the last surviving Keim to reside at her ancestral farmstead, was sitting on when her photo [Image #5] was taken "in the "early 1900's" for the Reading Eagle newspaper [see the halftone reproduction of this photo on page 27 of "American Folklife," in the issue entitled "Oley Valley, American Cultural Island," Vol. 1, No. 7, published by the American Folklife Society in 1973, and the essay "The Keim Family of Lobachsville" by John E. Eshelman, published in The Historical Review of Berks County, October, 1955]. The photo was also published in the Reading Eagle on Sunday, November 5, 1911, within a few weeks after Betsy's death. An uncropped print of this photograph (showing Betsy bare-footed) was reproduced on page 15 of "The Oley Valley, A Photographic Journey," published in 2010 by The Oley Valley Heritage Association. The caption cites a probable date of "c.1910."
The pent roof and its "outlooker" supports were removed and replaced by the 19th century porch roof which was set at a lower level than the sloped plane of the early pent, and displayed the first floor deck raised above the exterior grade on stone piers, creating a sheltered outdoor extension of the interior living space. This was the first significant exterior modification of the original house after the Federal extension of the dwelling space more than a half-century earlier.
This 19th-century porch was laid out along the south eaves wall of the 1753 masonry block and a portion of the Federal-era addition, terminating at both ends and appended solely to the southern eaves wall. It sheltered wall openings and their woodwork, as had the early pent on the 1753 house block. It also provided cover for the exterior doorways into the kitchen of the original house and the Federal addition, and formed a canopy for outdoor communication between them.
As shown in Image #4, a J. Winslow Fegley photo taken c.1915-1925; see Farming Always Farming, p. 85], the first porch roof joined the masonry wall approximately one foot below the flashing course delineating the meeting of the original pent roof tiles and the eaves wall masonry. This vertical separation between the top of the 19th century porch and the flashing course confirms that the replacement structure was not the original roofed projection on the south eaves wall. The original "pent" structure would have fit snugly under the projecting "flag-stones" forming the sheltering "flashing" course, which would have provided negligible precipitation-shelter to a roof/wall joint a foot below it.
The 19th-century porch structure was undoubtedly removed preparatory to construction of the 1930s L-form porch discussed in "C" below.
C. The c.1930-1940 porch extended along the full extent on the south eaves wall of the 1753 house and the Federal addition, turning 90 degrees northward at the southwest corner of the early house and extending along the west gable wall [see Images ##6, 12, 13, and 31]. Its roof was of a different pitch and less vertical separation from the flashing course than the 19th-century porch roof [Image #4].
This later and dramatically larger porch roof was supported on posts of a bolder profile than the earlier porch [see "B" above]. The floor on the south eaves wall consisted of joisted tongued-and-grooved boards carried on massive stone piers butted against the foundation wall and "flashed" with a crude band of concrete at porch-deck level [Image #6, photo 3680, 5/23/11 and #7, 4284, 7/1/11 ].
The floor on the western gable-end wall was a thick poured concrete "slab," mixed, typically for the period between the two 20th-century world wars, with a dense "aggregate" [Image #22, photo 4394]. It buried and concealed two cellar openings in the west gable-end foundation, a ducted and grilled vent and a partially closed-up window [Image #8, photo 4266 and Image #9 photo 5854], both of which have now been partially unearthed and shielded from ground runoff by dry-laid stone "wells" seen in the photos cited.
In Image #10, photo #4339, 7/5/11, the broken red horizontal streaks on the wall [paint from the 20th-century metal porch roof] about 4-6 inches below the flashing course delineate the top of the porch removed in the 2011 project.
The 20th-century porch had not been built before 1912 [Image #11, the 1912 photo published in archive record KHPH13--1002.01.057. Also absent from the c. 1930 Amandus Moyer photo (Image #47), the removed porch was quite obviously constructed after 1929 and prior to 1941, when a HABS photo (Image #12, also in archive record KHPH8--1002.01.027) was taken, showing the L-form range porch surviving until its removal in 2011. Thus the 20th century porch was never a "Keim Family" addition to the living space, and there could not have been any association between the Boyer-era porch removed in 2011 and any Keim family member residing on the farm during the porch's life-span. The last Keim to reside on the farmstead was Elizabeth ("Betsy") Keim [Image #5], who died in 1911.
Since the latest porch does not appear in its two-wall configuration in the Moyer photo, (no porch appears on the west gable end of the 1753 house), it clearly was built after c. 1929 [and prior to 1941, when a HABS photo, Image #12, also in record KHPH8--1002.01.027], was taken, showing the two-range porch removed in 2011. Thus the 1930s-era porch was never a "Keim Family" extension of the living space and there could not have been any association between the Boyer-era porch removed in 2011 and any Keim family member living while the porch was appended to the house.
The construction date-range [c.1930-1940] for the modern porch falls a century or more after the conclusion of the "Period of Significance" for the Jacob Keim Farmstead. A structure as late and architecturally intrusive as the massive 20th-century Boyer "piazza" warrants removal from such an important vernacular architectural landmark, regardless of how pleasant an ambience it might have manifested during the interval of private ownership between the Keim family's tenure and the present and ongoing stewardship undertaken by the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County.
PRESERVATION GUIDELINES
Transfer of the site and its surviving buildings to the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County, Pennsylvania by Mr. and Mrs. Richard Boyer in 1978 imposed a set of custodial responsibilities that are fundamentally different from the essential attributes and relatively unconstrained rights of private ownership.
One of the primary obligations inherent in any preservation mission is to maintain and interpret architecturally and historically significant buildings in their documented historical context (the "Period of Significance") for the benefit and education of the organization's membership, its regional constituency, and the broader historic preservation community.
Performance of this core mission is guided by a complex and evolving (and sometimes controversial) code of principles and standards correlated to the importance, condition, extent, and architectural distinction of the surviving elements of the historic structures in the organization's custody. A fundamental axiom implicit in these guidelines requires the stabilization, preservation, and interpretation of as much of the original architectural "fabric" as survives reasonably intact, particularly those characteristic elements surviving from the historically appropriate early "periods."
Conversely, though equally compelling, non-period accretions must be removed if they are not compatible with [or, as in this case, aggressively interfere with] the essential attributes and architectonic composition and interpretation of the important early structures. A further corollary of this preservation mandate provides that intrusive or obstructive alterations must be removed, regardless of how beneficial, attractive, or appropriate they might seem in a non-historic or less architecturally significant context. When such non-period appended structures are in a deteriorated, unsafe, and architecturally intrusive condition, neither restoration nor reconstruction is an authentic or acceptable preservation option.
The National Register of Historic Places specifies 1750-1799{e} as the "Period of Significance" for the Jacob Keim Farmstead. A more recent [2007-8] Pennsylvania Historic Resource Survey Form prepared by Philip Pendleton suggests a period of significance spanning the years 1753-1830, the period during which 1753 house, the contemporary wood-turner's workshop building, the c.1800 addition to the 1753 farmhouse, and the root [also "cave" or "ground"] cellar{f} had all been constructed and functioning for over three generation of Keims as a prosperous family farm and industrial craft-enterprise.
{e} more precisely, 1753-1799, since 1752 or 1753 was the year in which the land was conveyed to Jacob Keim by his father-in-law Hoch, and 1753 is the documented year of construction of the early farmhouse.
{f} the surviving root cellar was originally the cellar of the small gabled and embanked stone structure described as a "bake oven" in the essay cited in KTX10--1002.01.050 ["Keim Bakehouse Discovered" by the late (2021) Richard Shaner, who, with the Boyer family, must be credited as the good stewards of the Keim buildings in their undisturbed forms. Research has confirmed that subsidiary trades, crafts, and commerce were common in the local agrarian culture; see Pendleton, Philip E., Oley Valley Heritage-The Colonial Years…, Chapter 2, "The Economy," pp. 29 et seq. Three generations of Keims working as wood turners would exemplify this tradition.
REMOVAL OF THE 20th-CENTURY PORCH
The modern-era porch, c.1930-40, had undoubtedly provided the Boyer family [purchasers from the Keim estate], their farm hands and loggers, and numerous visitors to the site with many hours of enjoyment and relaxation in a beautiful and historic rural setting. As a social convenience the porch was a pleasant addition to the old farmhouse and a haven for the private owners and their guests. The roofed deck also served as a comfortable meeting place and sheltered social venue during the first 33 years of the tenure of the Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County.
Nevertheless, in the context of the mission of the Trust the porch was substantially detrimental to the architectural and structural integrity of the 1753 dwelling and its Federal-period addition. Its horizontal and vertical projections and descending roof plane also destroyed the original function-based spatial relationship between the extended house and the early wood-turner's workshop nearby [with porch: Image #13, photo 3661, 5/23/11; after porch removed: Image #14, photo 5678, 8/26/11 and Image #49, photo 5529, 8/20/11].
After removal of the 1930s porch [accomplished in 2011] and reconstruction of the pent roof and balcony on the south eaves wall in 2012, the Keim House and its Federal addition now present the same iconic architectural expression as they displayed in the first period of the 1753 house and the second period included in the Period of Significance for the farmstead. This historically authentic appearance has been concealed or obscured for over half of the life of the structures by the 19th- and 20th-century porches. Their removal reestablishes the original articulation of form, function, detail, and spatial relationships of and between the period structures.
Removal of the porch was also urgent as a safety measure, considering the deteriorated condition of much of its structural woodwork [see Images #15, 16, 17, & 18, photos #4174, #4175, #4178, and #4179, 6/24/11]. Dismantling the porch also became the appropriate and necessary [and only] means of rectifying the following unacceptable conditions:
1. The massive porch, its deck and structurally compromised stone piers [Images #19, 20, & 21, photos #4189, #4190, and #4192, 6/24/11], the concrete slab under the western segment along the gable-end [Image #8, photo #4266, 7/1/11 & Image #22, 4394, 7/6/11], and the applied ["rendered"] concrete band [Image #23, photo #4162, June, 2011] serving as a "baseboard" at porch-deck level were destabilizing the stone walls by trapping moisture in the masonry. This persistent upwardly migrating moisture ["rising damp"] aggressively dissolved the lime in the early mortar and caused expansion fractures and disintegration during freeze-thaw cycles, leaving substantial quantities of degraded [sometimes, in scientific and engineering usage, "incoherent" or "friable"] and minimally functioning mortar residue [see Image #23, photo #4162, Image #24, #4185, and Image #25, #4188, 6/24/11].
Once a historic structure enters the stewardship of an organization dedicated to meeting prevailing preservation standards, the introduction of such "foreign" and destabilizing materials (such as 20th-century concrete) is "verboten"{f}. A rational corollary of this principle requires that, if present at the inception of the preservation stewardship, such infringing and destabilizing materials must be removed and the structure restored to its historic period-of-significance composition.
{f} The concrete forming the deck of the porch on the west gable end, the cellar steps, approaches, and retaining walls, amounted to approximately ten tons of extremely hard and dense aggregate, all 20th-century "improvements", which were broken up, with great difficulty, and removed from the site.
Image # 26, Photo #4180, 6/24/11 shows rotted "bulkhead" cellar doors; the cellar entry stone walls and steps have been reconstructed [see Image #27, photo # 5382, 8/19/11]. Image #28, Photos #4184, 6/24/11 and Image #29, Photo #4421, 7/9/11 show the decayed concrete retaining walls, which had replaced the original "raking" stone-masonry flank walls in the early 20th century.{n}
{n} By contrast with the massive concrete formations butted against the Keim buildings when the 1930s porch was installed, the stone "spillway" and retaining walls installed to protect and drain the west eaves wall of the DeTurk House a few miles south of the Keim site were not bonded to the early masonry, but were deliberately separated from the early walls by a pervious granular material. The stone units forming these structures function and are removable without damage or threat to the fabric of the 1767 DeTurk multi-use building.
2. The piers, roof, L-form floor deck, and superstructure of the porch, and the concrete bulkhead cellar-way concealed or visually distorted more than a dozen of the salient early elements of the 1753 house and the federal-era addition. The porch also obstructed the view of important early architectural details in the cellar foundation walls and the first floor ranges of the south elevation [Image #30, photo #3681, 5/23/11], and physically precluded reconstruction of the pent roof on the south eaves wall [Image #31, photo #3682, 5/23/11].
Any of these intrusions and obstructions warranted removal of the porch structure; all of them in combination produced an affirmative, mission-based duty to remove it.
The architectonic and spatial contrast with and without the porch is stunning: (With porch: Image #13, photo #3661, 5/23/11; after removal of porch: Image #32, photo #5867, 9/3/11).
The details concealed or optically distorted by the porch elements included: window frames and sash detail; brick relieving arches spanning window and cellar-vent openings [Image #33, photo #4533, 7/13/11]; original cellar doorways [or "openways" if lacking a door through the foundation wall but protected by a "cellar cap"], including the early stone-arched opening in the 1753 foundation wall [Image #34, photo #4571, 7/15/11] and a timber-linteled doorway in the federal-period addition [Image #35, photo #4378, 7/6/11]; early wrought iron grilled vent [Image #36, photo #4629, 7/16/11]; and masonry walls with early pointing [Image #25, photo #4188, 6/24/11].
3. Removal of the out-of-period and deteriorated porch was necessary to restore the organic integrity of the original house, revealing all of its elements, its architectonic scale and detail, its expressive and rationally asymmetric{g} Germanic composition, and the function-oriented relationship between the domestic and craft-industry structures.
{g} An example of this conscious departure from exterior symmetry in the disposition of fenestration elements is the northward shift of the windows off the central vertical axis of the west gable-end wall. The geometrically normal view is curious in this respect, unless one considers that the windows are centered on the early interior walls rather than on the central vertical axis of the exterior elevation. This anomaly inferentially derives either from interior partitioning and relative dimension of the "stube" compared to the smaller "kammer" in the three-space Germanic first floor plan of the 1753 house, or from the choice of window placement to achieve optimum interior lighting for domestic activities.
4. The construction of the 19th- and 20th-century porches forced the removal of the kitchen-doorway steps from the house wall, resulting in a horizontal separation of approximately eight feet. This re-alignment and the opaque elements of the porch superstructure transformed the original adjacent relationship between entry porch and house, displacing the steps outward to the southern edge of the porch and producing radically altered perspective views of the protracted elevation and its wall-plane openings [compare Image #6, photo # 3680, 5/23/11 to Image #37, a drawing from record KHDWG1--1002.01.070, a conceptually restored view showing a possible approach to reconstructing the steps and entry landing in their original location rising from grade to the threshold at the kitchen floor level].
5. The deteriorated support piers impeded access to foundation stonework that was in urgent need of stabilization. This phase of the restoration program consisted of resetting dislodged stones in a plumb and stable alignment, replacement of degraded mortar, and repointing.
6. The porch roof made it impossible to re-create the 1753 pent roof in its original position immediately under the stone flashing course designed to protect it. As the photographs demonstrate, the upper roof-line of both the 20th-century porch and the smaller porch it replaced met the eaves wall 6 to 12 inches below the projecting flashing course, rendering the protection it was meant to provide nearly useless.
In clear and compelling contrast, the original pent roof was positioned tightly under the overhanging stone cantilevers to ensure optimum shelter for the clay tiles and wooden framing and support elements forming the pent structure.
Several original oak outlookers that supported the original pent roof survive in eroded (though structurally sound) condition on both eaves walls. Interior framing evidence confirms that they were anchored through the wall as part of the original 1753 construction. They will be preserved and re-used in their original bearing functions for the "pent."
7. The porch roof and rafters interfered with preservation and reconstruction of the balcony that was carried on outlookers projecting at second floor joist level [Images #38 & 50, photos #3679, 5/23/11 and #4845, 7/26/11] outside the second story "chevron" door. The surviving elements will be carefully inspected, documented, and engineered to provide a mechanically sound and reasonably authentic basis for reconstruction. Image #37, a drawing from record KDWG1--1002.01.070 shows a conjectural but plausible form and scale, though not necessarily accurate in its rendition of the details of the board enclosure, as there is no surviving evidence or template for the balcony structure elsewhere in the building.
8. As emphatically demonstrated in the photos in this record, the modern porch superstructure and its stone and concrete supports were grossly out of scale with the original house, the Federal addition, and the c.1753 workshop building. Removal of the L-form "piazza" and its metal roof reveals the full two-and-a half story above-grade ranges of masonry walling, and re-expresses the proportions, massing, scale, and functional siting of the three structures.
9. The removed porch was misleadingly linear and modular, and consequently discordant with the eccentric but rational fenestration arrangement of the Germanic south and west elevations as originally composed in 1753. With the porch as a visual barrier presenting an exaggerated and "jetted" horizontal emphasis, there was no oblique vantage point for "reading" the fenestration{o} pattern of the three-story, five-bay wall or any opportunity to perceive the detail, scale, and pragmatically asymmetric disposition of the wall ranges and their penetrations{p}.
{o} In its traditional European origins and in architectural usage through the 19th century, "fenestration" denoted the spacing, sizes, and proportions of windows in a building façade; now, by modern extension, the term is often applied to the arrangement of window and door openings.
{p} For example, the windows in the west gable wall are not symmetrical from a normal exterior perspective, nor is the array geometrically centered in the polygonal elevation. However, they are centered or otherwise disposed in the interior walls to provide the optimum light and axial symmetry in their respective wall locations.
10.Approximately twenty-eight deep punctures had been cut into the masonry walls to bed the 20th-century porch roof rafters [Images #39, 40, 41, & 42, photos #4314, 7/5/11, #4802, 7/22/11, #4786 & #4787, 7/22/11], which were secured in the pockets with steel "S"-hooks embedded in the mortared ["mudded-in"] sockets. Unlike the structurally integrated joist-extension "outlookers" supporting the early pent roof, these intrusive "pockets" had severely degraded the wall masonry and diminished its monolithic structural integrity. The original wall-bonding had become perforated and potential entry portals for moisture.
11. The construction of the porch had been preceded by a radical change of grade along both walls appended by the porch, burying two cellar vents in the west gable wall [Image #8, photo #4266 from KH070111]. The western cellar window in the south eaves wall, originally exposed above the built-out plinth that extended down to the base-blocks ["groundwork"] of the foundation, was re-exposed by removal of the porch [Image #33, photo 4533]. This tapered foundation system, wider at its base than the above-grade walling for mechanically efficient distribution of loads on the clay sub-base, has traditionally been called a "spread" foundation. In modern terminology, the base blocks would be "footings".
Careful excavation has reliably determined, by reference to soil striation, the early grade levels and below-grade depths ("inverts") of cellar openings. The exposed sub-grade also revealed the irregular plane, rough contour, and thicker section ["plinth"] of the supporting masonry. This coarse exterior facing indicates that the plinth was intended to be covered either by ground-fill [obviously not feasible without retaining walls] or, at the margins of the cellar doorway, a retaining wall joined to the projecting stones of the door jambs [see Image #29, photo #4421, 7/9/11]. See archive record KR11PH1--1002.01.087 for discussion and photos of the evidence for early retaining walls at the cellar entry and a concept plan for their reconstruction [concluded in the Fall of 2011]. The uneven and random exterior wythe of the foundation suggests that it was built from inside the cellar excavation ["cellar-hole"], much like the Michael Fulp House foundation enclosing the half-cellar of that modest 1783 house in Morlatton Village on the Schuylkill River.
REMEDIATION
The necessary intervention designed to achieve well-defined preservation objectives required that the deteriorated "L"-shaped 20th-century porch be carefully removed, and the gaping and invasive wall-voids which served as "pockets" for the porch rafters be skillfully re-woven structurally into the masonry fabric. [see: before re-masoning: Images 10, 39, 40, 41 & 42; after walling-in: Image #43, photo 5858, and (addition) Image #46, #4833, 7/26/11]. Both of these objectives were accomplished in this phase of the restoration campaign.
Eliminating the porch and the mixed soil materials piled underneath it re-established the early grade, which was properly contoured to the historic levels below the cellar window and vent sills, and filling to the original elevation aligned to the top courses of the foundation plinth [Image #44, photo 4733, 7/19/11].
Sub-grade openings which were protected by stone or brick encased "wells" were temporarily restored with conjectural re-creations of these enclosures [Image #9, photo 5854, 9/3/11]. The wall ranges above the plinth, which were never intended to be concealed by a porch or other structure, were more carefully laid and aligned into an approximately plumb vertical plane.
Submitted, 2012; updated November 27, 2016 and January, 2021.
Laurence Ward
Report of the Historical Research Committee of the Deturk House Council: the Chairperson was Mrs. E. Robert Hottenstein.
The report is a comprehensive 20-page summary of the committee's investigations between Oct 1966 and Feb 13, 1970. The report itself is not dated, obviously post -2/13/1970.
Subject matter includes details of property history, building construction, chronological list of owners, photos from various time periods, and the question of the building in which the 1742 Moravian Synod was held.
Prior to the period of this committee's work, guidelines were established. They are represented in archives record DTTX7--1001.01.014.
The entire report is available as additional images or as a PDF multimedia link.
A series of three photographic views (image #1 is a digital image and #2 and 3 are color
photographic prints) showing pre-restoration northwestern perspective views of the Mouns
Jones House after the collapse of the roofing and flooring in the 1950s.
Image #1 is a digital copy of a photographic print [Stauffer #1000], published here with the
generous permission of the Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley, Ephrata, Pennsylvania,
taken on November 4, 1962 at 4:30 PM by Harry Franklin Stauffer (1896-1979), self-identified "Printer and Tinker" of Farmersville, Lancaster County, PA. Stauffer, an accomplished architectural and landscape photographer, captioned this image in part as showing "Monce (Moses)[sic“: “Mouns” was earlier “Mans”, a contraction of “Magnus”, after several Swedish Kings, further changed to Mounce for Mouns’s grandson] Jones House…left bank of the Schuylkill River…Arch Cellar on left [north of house]. Date stone removed within past year…" This is the first known view of the "arch"{1} cellar on this site, which has been the subject of a comprehensive archaeological excavation since 2013.
The caption to the Stauffer photo is quoted from the Journal of the Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley, Volume XXXVIII, 2013, caption on p. 108.
The long vertical fracture visible in the north gable wall has been repaired in Image #2
[see record MJHPH52--1000.01.056 for a 1967 view of the stone mason "weaving-in" the
stonework flanking the fracture].
{1} sometimes "arched" [A. Long, p. 101], also "root", "cave" or "ground", and the modern term "cold", cellar, Long, pp. 156-167, all referring to below grade stone barrel-vaulted food storage chambers found on many farms in the region, often under a house or ancillary building. Examples documented in this archive include: the 1767 DeTurk "ancillary" building (the embanked vaulted chamber under the southern half of the first floor living space); the Keim farmstead, where the cellar, originally under a small stone building of unknown purpose, now has an exposed arch-form exterior ["extrados"] after removal of the gabled building late in the 19th century; and under a smoke chamber added to the George Douglass House and integrated functionally with its Amity store Federal-era addition.
Images #2 and 3 are color photographs of Mouns Jones's house during restoration of its north gable wall, a perspective view from northwest, showing scaffolding against the north gable wall and remnants of the "stucco" pargeting covering all wall ranges visible in the c.1886 wood engraving [see record MJHDWG2--1000.01.089. The window in the second story, north [left] bay has been altered from its early horizontal or roughly square casement form to a vertical hung-sash type to match the other two windows in this elevation. Later in this 1965-70 restoration campaign, the three larger windows in this wall were restored to the casement alignment seen in the 1886 woodcut drawing [MJHDWG2--1000.01.089] and the photo in record MJHPH46. The window south [right] of the existing doorway, and within the original centered doorway opening, was replaced by a small square casement. Typed note attached to Image #2 reads: "Mouns Jones House or Old Swedes House built 1716 on 1701 cabin site{2}. Old Morlatton Village, first permanent settlement within the bounds of Berks County. Indians of the Five Nations met here on their way to meet with the Penns and the Provincial Councillars[sic]. Mouns Jones rode with them to Whitemarsh, a half way stop where the meeting was held. On the National Register of Historic Sites." This reference might rely on the letter from Mouns Jones dated May 4, 1712, to Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Gookin stating that four "Indian Kings" were at Manatawny and desired to meet the Royal Governor [name?] on May 8 at Mouns Jones' house; see Colonial Records Volume 2, page 569; letter cited in Brunner, "The Indians of Berks County" at page 10. The meeting did not take place because Mouns Jones' letter did not reach the Governor until May 9, one day too late because the Native American leaders were scheduled to meet in mid -May with their counterparts in the Five Nations tribes residing in New York.
{2} The 10,000 acre Penn grant to the Swedish Pastor Andreas Rudman, representing prospective Swedish settlers in the Molatton/Manatawny region, originated in 1701. Mouns Jones received title ["patent"] to his land, close to 500 acres, in 1705. It is therefore doubtful that he erected a "cabin" as early as 1701; however, it is quite likely that Mouns Jones built a dwelling, probably a log cabin [or possibly a plank or board-sheathed structure], on the tract by 1704, when a letter from a Swedish Lutheran minister [Reverend Andreas Sandel] stated that Jones had "taken up residence" [also translated as "has begun to reside"] in Manatawny {n}. The first "residence" occupied by Mouns Jones, and probably in time by his wife and unmarried children, might be memorialized by the foundation walling and hearthstones found by Chapter 21 in the 2013-2018 archaeological campaign.
{n} According to a paper written by Reverend John Heckwelder in 1822 entitled "Names given by The Lenni Lenape Or Delaware Indians To Rivers, Streams, Places…in the Now States of Pennsylvania…", the names for the creeks flowing into the Schuylkill River to the north (now "Monocacy") and south (now "Manatawny") of the Swedes' tract were as follows, confirming the numerous variations in spelling from phonetic transliteration:
"Menatawny", from "Menetonink", reputedly meaning "where we drank (were drunk)."
"Manakasy", from "Menagassi", meaning "creeks with some large bends".
Heckwelder's glossary of these phonetic derivations was published in 1833 by the American Philosophical Society and more recently in Volume V of the publications of the Pennsylvania German Folklore Society (1940), on page 19. See additional discussion of the probable earlier Mouns Jones house on this site in MJHPH57--1000.01.061. The 1693 census of Swedes on the Delaware river includes as #23 Mans Jonasson…(Mounce Jones) who was born in 1663 and married c.1690 Ingeborg…They had one child Margaret [as of the 1693 census date]. The Sandel letter indicates that Mans journeyed up the Schuylkill River by 1704 to his plantation site (part of the "Swedes'' tract") in Manatawny [also called "Mahanatawny" in early official records (including the James Logan Ledgers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania), Amity Township, Berks [then Philaldelphia] County. His wife Ingeborg and their unmarried children, 13 years of age and younger in 1704 joined Mouns in residence there within the next several years [see summary on page 38 of the article "The 1693 census of The Swedes on the Delaware" by Peter Stebbins Craig, J.D., published in Studies in Swedish American Genealogy 3 by SAG Publications, Winter Park, Florida in 1993].
Image #1: Mouns Jones House, NW perspective view before restoration, (1962).
Laurence Ward, April, 2019
The following is a summary of preservation and restoration work planned, completed, and in-progress, including requested Board action on pending projects and collections management:
George Douglass House:
Carpentry and joinery by Tom and Chris Lainhoff continue toward restoring the center passage ["hallway"] and elaborately paneled and balustraded staircase [Image #1, photo 8470]. Most of the original woodwork has been re-installed or re-aligned in original locations, including the robust cornice and its miter-joined wall-ceiling cornice intersections [Image #2, photo 8922].
In June, the Board approved painting the dado ["wainscot"-named for its similarity to the board linings of English farm wagons ("wains")] paneling and moldings with the authentic yellow and red ochre colors determined by Matt Mosca's analysis to be the earliest finish. Specimen areas of early re-painting of vernacular design elements such as door graining and "faux" inlay will be preserved and interpreted as part of the evolution of early interior paint treatments in the 1765 house.
The "jack-arch" and displaced masonry above the front doorway have been re-constructed and leveled ["Before": Image #3, photo 8084; and Image #10, Photo 4, 1/31/17: after: masonry restored and re-fabricated paneled door, lined with beaded boards, installed.
A comparative study is underway to ascertain whether architectural design details and construction techniques evident in John Potts' academic and refined manor house ("Pottsgrove", c. 1752), a few miles east on the Highway [the "Main Road to Philadelphia" on a 1719 surveyor's Draught], might have been contributing influences on George Douglass and his builders' vernacular design selections and techniques evident in the 1765 Douglass house. The elements to be considered in this analysis include doorways, staircase form and panel detail, plastered cove cornice, coursed and dressed sandstone principal façade, pent roof, floor plan, paneling and molding profiles, window construction and dimensions, door and doorway relationships, fireplace and chimney materials and forms, and other components of the original structures.
A new door with a six-panel exterior will be fabricated for the entry facing the "Main Road". Based on the panel alignment of the interior doorway "surround" and comparable door "linings" of the period, the inner layer of the door is tentatively specified as beaded vertical boards. The result will be similar to the doorway interior at Isaac Potts's 1750s Valley Forge House [Image #11, photo IPotts].
Keim Farmstead Root Cellar Shelter:
Archive record KPH5 shows a 1990 view from the road [north], when the vault extrados was sodded, the gabled stone structure having been removed early in the 19th century. Elevations were surveyed on August 13 for the purpose of leveling the proposed framing armature on the irregular wall surfaces [invert data attached-Image #4, invert sketch plan].
Image #5 shows the radial stonework of the vault exterior ["extrados"].
One proposal currently under consideration is to install a steel- or wood-framed{a} metal-clad roof with a pair of cellar ["bulkhead"] doors which can be opened to reveal segments of the exterior vault masonry. The roof, if approved by the Board, would hug the "gable-end" elevations so it doesn't obscure the view of the ancillary/shop building from the roadside [Image #6, photo 9586, 8/9/12], or exaggerate the protrusion of the roof-shelter. The roof will be anchored into the remnants of the eaves walls and gable-ends, which have been partially coped with concrete. Board action on the proposal is requested [Approved].
{a} set on wooden timbers ["wall plates"] secured to the stone on the long walls, and coped to the gable-end pitched walls (above the vent in Image #5).
Archaeology:
The "dig" into the cellar floor of the Johan DeTurk house/ancillary structure in Oley is being conducted by Chapter 21 of the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. Several artifacts have been unearthed and will be catalogued and photographed for the Trust's archives. A major objective of the project is to determine the original elevations and paving material of the kitchen floor and fireplace hearths. Early hearthstones and other stonework have been unearthed and will be mapped and measured [Image #7, photo 9573].
Chapter 21 archaeologists will be on-site for the September Trust events, including the September 29 all-structures tour, to explain their methods and to interpret their objectives and findings.
Mouns Jones Herb Garden:
Work on restoration of the garden on the river side of the 1716 house is proceeding to a conclusion. Re-installation of the raised beds and their containment system, and brick paving between planting beds has been accomplished by intern Alessandro Russo and archivist Jon Hartman.
Morlatton Village Parking Areas:
Work is nearing completion on Phases 3 and 4 along Swede Lane in the "lower village". The stone base was set in July on a woven geotextile stabilizing fabric rolled onto the clay sub-base [Image #8, photo 9362, 7/30/12]. The 2A modified gravel "top-dressing", spread on a non-woven fabric laid on the base stone ["fours"] layer, serving as a drainage membrane and separation layer, will be fully installed and fine-graded by Friday, August 17 and compacted the following week. These 50-vehicle areas should be in service before Labor Day.
The locust log perimeter is weighted down by "ballast" consisting of the foot-thick base-stones and gravel surface layers of the driveways and parking areas; Image #9, photo 9359 shows coupled logs bolted to a bearing-grate, which will be loaded with tons of base stones and top dressing as ballast; Image #12, Photo 8261, 4/19/12, bearing plate and nut under grate; Image #13, Photo 8101, 4/12/12, rigging perimeter log into position.
The aggregate stone mass loaded onto the fiberglass grates, coupled to the logs adds more than 50,000 pounds to the weight of the 67 logs, which weigh approximating 75,000 to 100,000 pounds. Based on an average specific gravity of black locust ranging from .66 to .75, this system provides a 35-50% redundancy advantage from the stone-mass counteracting the natural buoyancy of the logs in water. The steel rods and back-filled embankments outside the logs should resist a component of the thrust from the flood-stage river current, which can increase ten-fold depending on flood-water depths.
Surplus Material Sale:
The Trust is continuing the sale of surplus window sash, doors, shutters, floor boards, and other early architectural artifacts not related to its structures or mission. Two pairs of window sash have been sold to date and some of the items approved for sale at the June meeting have been consigned to a local auction.
Submitted for Sites & Structures Committee, Laurence Ward, Chair; Updated November 2016, November 2020, and January 2021.
Digital image of perspective view from southeast, scanned from a halftone reproduction of a photograph appearing in ”The Passing Scene,” vol. 3, page 194 by George M. Meiser, IX.
Details include: altered Dutch door (glazed sash added); gabled hood over granary [attic] door; gable-end chimney; east pent hood outlookers [lacks frame and roofing]; paneled shutters; butt-shingled pent roofs on south gable wall.
See notes for additional information supplied by Oley Woman's Club Papers, concerning image origin and identification of men pictured in image.
Johann DeTurk [also DeTurck] was born in Oley in 1713 and became part of the local Moravian congregation in 1741, the year before the famous ecumenical conference which was held at his farm, and was baptized in 1743 [see “Genealogical Data From the Registers of the Moravian Congregation in the Oley Valley, Berks County, Pennsylvania” by Rink & Weiser, published in “Der Regebogge/The Rainbow, Quarterly of the Pennsylvania German Society,” Volume 14, Number 1, January, 1980, page 8.]
Larry Ward, 2016
