Digital image of photographic print (reproduced in printed material) showing gable detail of south facade.
Details shown in this image include: slate roof, blind oculus, gabled hood, wooden shingles (hood), inscribed lintel, outlookers supporting hood roof structure, horizontal nailer for vertical gable boards.
Original caption to photo reads: "DETAIL OF HOOD AND LINTEL INSCRIPTION over the second floor door, John De Turk House, Oley Valley"
Larry Ward, 2009
This embanked structure was evidently a multi-purpose “ancillary” building, used in relation to the growing family farmstead and the nearby principal residence constructed c. 1741. Built in 1767, this uncommon ancillary form was used as:
A “Grossmutter’s” retirement home in the single living space on the first floor above cellar; Johann [John] and Deborah (Hoch) DeTurk resided in this single chamber to make room in the original farmhouse for later generations of their family.
A cellar space, accessible only by the doorway from the lower grade and partitioned into a root cellar and kitchen with a large fireplace; this space has also been referred to in a 19th century DeTurk Will as a “wash-house”;
An attic granary for storage of grains, feedstocks, produce and food sources not requiring the cool and moist environment of the “root cellar”
The brick-ringed and filled-in circular opening above the hood has been called an “oculus”, ostensibly because of its faint resemblance to some animal’s eye [hoot-owl?]. It’s primary purpose was to provide ventilation from the attic, so it would not have been filled in, as it is here, except temporarily in winter.
Larry Ward
Perspective drawing of the Jacob Keim “Manor House” from the southwest, published in the copyrighted April, 1975 issue of “American Folklife, A Monthly Newspaper Devoted to the American Culture”. This image and the text excerpts are published here with the generous permission of Richard Shaner, Publisher, Managing Editor, and principal contributor to the essays and captions of "American Folklife."
In the text accompanying this rendering, Mr. Shaner observed that “A colonial balcony on the south side of the Keim Manor was altered when the home was given a huge porch which currently covers two sides of the manor. Upon investigation the staff discovered that the old porch ceiling still contained the original out riders to the colonial balcony…. Also incorporated in the porch roof line on the south side was an original out rider for the colonial pent which joined the balcony. This out rider gave…the exact measurement for the depth of the original colonial pents and an idea of their pitch.”
The perspective of this rendering suggests a symmetry in the façade that did not exist in the main elevation of the original 1753 house. The added bays to the east [right] of the door and balcony date to about 1800. The originally asymmetrical placement of the door in the east end-bay resulted in a “side-passage” alignment of the kitchen entry and second story balcony. Most of the antecedent and contemporary houses with a balcony were central-passage “Pennsylvania-Georgian” types such as “Grumblethorpe” in Germantown [Lithographic perspective view in "Quaint Old Germantown," Plate VIII], the Peter Wentz house in Worcester Township and Muhlenberg Houses in Trappe (both in Montgomery County), and “Bellaire” in Philadelphia [see "Worldly Goods," p. 84, and Kornwolf, Vol. two, p. 1223]. All houses cited except Wentz currently display a balcony surround of neo-classical turned balusters and molded handrail; Wentz’ rendering is scroll-sawn “splat” form, apparently based on the choir-railing at Trappe Lutheran Church.
The Keims were wood turners by trade, producing lathe-turned spindles and possibly balusters in the nearby and contemporaneous workshop structure southeeast of the house. Nonetheless, the vernacular Georgian houses cited above, with centrally-aligned balconies with turned balusters, would not seem to provide compelling templates for re-producing a balcony for the decidedly Germanic, asymmetric, and uncoursed masonry façade of the Keim house. Currently under consideration is a plain or edge-beaded board form, as suggested by a board railing on the second floor of the house.
The porch on the west gable wall and south eaves wall mentioned in this article was almost certainly added in the 1930s, based on photographs and analysis in record KR11PH3 [see photos and accompanying text in archive records KHPH8--1002.01.027, KHPH9--1002.01.044 & KHPH13--1002.01.057], and is without historical precedent as to form or appropriate scale with respect to the earliest bays of the house. The intermediate porch [see KHPH9--1002.01.044]--probably constructed circa mid-nineteenth century after disintegration or removal of the original pent roof--did not wrap around the corner or extend across the gable wall. Neither porch roof tucks closely under the projecting stone flashing course, which therefore does not effectively protect the joint between the porch roof and the masonry wall from moisture infiltration, as it did for the original pent roof [see pent on road-front (north) eaves wall, which provides a virtual template for the proposed pent roof on the south eaves wall].
Other period or recreated early details rendered in this drawing include: central chimney on original bays; gable-end chimney on early addition [right bays]; pent eaves on west gable; pent roof on south eaves wall; second storey “colonial balcony”; brick oculus vent in west gable apex; brick relieving arches; western corner of original pent roof on north eaves wall; stone-arched cellar entry; northwest corner of 18th-century ancillary building [right edge of drawing].
See KHTX2--1002.01.021 for the full text printed below this drawing reproduced on page 12 of the issue cited.
Archive record KHTX8--1002.01.048 is the text accompanying a conceptual northwest perspective drawing of the original manor house by Gerald O’Brian, rendered without the early eastern addition, and published on page 12 of the April, 1974 issue of Richard Shaner’s “American Folklife.”
Laurence Ward, Updated 2020
Digital image from a photographic print showing southwest perspective view.
Details include: gable-end chimney, roof restored with early clay tiles, oculus vent, gable hood, replicated attic door, replicated shed-form pent roof and outlookers, replicated Dutch door, eight-over-eight window and replicated shutters, coursed masonry gable-end wall, random rubble masonry west eaves wall.
See MULTIMEDIA LINKS or additional image for view of reverse of photo.
Larry Ward, 2016
Digital image of DeTurk House from original photographic print showing south elevation.
Brick oculus, currently blind, was probably originally a vent for the granary/storage attic. Gabled hood above the 2d floor loading door is presumed to be the original form. Other details include: horizontal plate-ties at eaves line, outlooker remnants and masonry pockets indicate supports for pent roofs and possibly a loading-door platform. White paneled entry door replaced original Dutch door, now returned to the Trust and preserved as an exhibit.
Original HABS caption for the image is as follows:
"Historic American Buildings Survey, Cervin Robinson, Photographer August 1958 SOUTHWEST (FRONT) ELEVATION."
L. Ward, 2009; updated September 2021,
Digital image of original photograph taken by Steve Kindig. Image shows front view of house without pent hoods.
Details include: pedimented hood above attic door, pent roof outlooker remnants, roughly coursed {n} stone gable wall, original brick oculus attic vent.
{n} to be distinguished from “ashlar”, a more formal English wall pattern laid up with blocks of uniform dimensions and more carefully dressed to provide a common vertical wall-plane [see Pottsgrove mansion and George Douglass House for nearby examples]. The DeTurk masonry employed vernacular methods to achieve horizontal “coursing”: pointing of varying thicknesses, stone units of varying dimensions, and rough leveling to simulate authentic regular coursing. The stone units here are also minimally dressed to a common plane.
Please also add ST: Dressed coursing
Larry Ward, updated September, 2022
Black & white photographic print of DeTurk House showing a a south elevation view. Note on reverse of photo says "copyright [symbol] Steve Myers Studios 1990."
Details shown in this image include: gabled pent hood, hyphenated pent roof, oculus, replicated two-board attic door with moldings applied to simulate a paneled door, the centered door at ground level is a replicated two-leaf ["Dutch"] raised-paneled door.
Digital image of photographic print showing southeast perspective view of DeTurk House.
Details include: brick oculus above gable hood, recently shingled pent roofs (SW corner shingles of west pent damaged), pedimented hood above attic door. The oculus [now bricked shut] was probably originally a vent for the attic storage area ("granary"). First floor and attic doors have been altered; glazed sash is not original.
See footnote in DTHPH14 for a discussion of the roughly coursed masonry employed in laying up the gable wall.
Original HABS caption for this image is as follows:
"DETAIL VIEW, SHOWING PENT ROOFS, STONE WORK, ETC."
Larry Ward, 2016; updated Sept, 2022
Digital image of photographic print deaccessioned by the Historical Society of Berks County. Image shows perspective view of east & south elevations of house and includes text in white ink overlay:
"Johan De Tirck
Debora De Tircken
1767 Oley, PA."
Details include: pedimented hood over attic granary door, hyphenated pent roofs, shed-form pent hood over lower-grade kitchen doorway; 8-over-8 window sash, random rubble masonry, roughly coursed and dressed vernacular masonry on gable facade, gable-end chimney
See additional image for info contained on reverse of photo.
Larry Ward, 2016; updated September, 2022
Digital image of perspective from the southeast of DeTurk House from original photographic print.
Brick Oculus, currently "blind", was possibly originally a vent for the "granary" [ dry storage attic ]. Gabled hood framing is presumed to be original. Other details include: horizontal timber plate-ties at eaves line, outlooker remnants and masonry pockets indicate supports for pent roofs and possibly a loading-door platform. White paneld entry door replaced original Dutch door {a}.
{a} Image #2 is a 1953 halftone from a photograph accompanying a one-page essay by Olive G. Zehner entitled "Down Oley Way", as published in The Pennsylvania Dutchman" periodical, Vol. V, No. 5, p. 16. The essay laments the structural jeopardy facing the DeTurk Houe and the loss of the original "Dutch Door' which had been "sold to some one outside the state" {b}. The author predicts the eventual disintegration of the house into a "few stones", and indeed the 1958 HABS photo [Image #1] does show losses of the gable pents and their outlookers, and visible deterioration of the roof slates. Fortunately, within 15 years a few visionary Berks County "amateur" preservationists would rescue the structure and stabilize and restore it in several critical and urgent campaigns over the subsequent half century.
{b} See DTHPH1 for photo of original door from the first floor
entry into the south gable end, returned to the Trust in 2009 in excellent condition, and for photos of the
original door hardware, also returned to the Trust by a generous gift from the 20th-century owner's family. The door and its hardware will be preserved, interpreted, and exhibited by the Trust as historic artifacts. Original HABS caption for this image is as follows:
"Historic American Buildings Survey, Cervin Robinson, Photographer August 1958 SOUTHWEST (FRONT) AND PART OF SOUTHEAST ELEVATIONS."
L.Ward, 2009, updated October, 2021
Digital image from photograph print of DeTurk House showing perspective view of south & west elevations and 19th-century addition to left, and related detail photos showing the original door, its original hardware, and the original door with remaining red paint on stiles and rails, and white paint on panel fields; the panel moldings were blue [microscopic analysis by Matthew Mosca determined original first-period colors].
Earliest known photo of DeTurk House, c. 1900-1910. Details include: brick “oculus” [a vent opening], gable hood, pent roofs with side-lap shingles, paneled shutters, original first-floor exterior dutch door{1}, gable-end chimney, attic door (altered, with glazed sash added), 19th-century masonry addition [to left in photo], and ladder against SE corner.
{1} The first painted finish on the original paneled door was red, white, and blue. Images #2 and 3 are c. 1950 photos showing the door still in place. A few years later the door was sold and installed in a house in Virginia. About 55 years later, the door [photo 67, 1/1/80] and its original hardware [photo 84, 1/1/80] were generously returned by the family of the 1950s purchaser and is currently preserved and exhibited by the Trust as an authentic and original mid-18th century architectural artifact.
Laurence Ward, June 2016; updated Feb 2022
Digital image of real photographic postcard showing southwest perspective view.
Details inlcude: slate roof, oculus vent, pedimented attic door hood with wooden shingles, original paint-decorated shutters, pent roof with wooden shingles, attic door with later glazed sash, first floor door with later glazed sash, eight-over-eight- window, 19th-century doorway to (removed) addition, coursed masonry gable wall, random-rubble masonry eaves wall.
See MULTIMEDIA LINKS or additional image for view of reverse side of postcard.
Digital image of photographic print showing southwest perspective view.
Details include: 19th century slate on main roof; original oculus vent; pedimented attic door hood with wooden shingles; pent roof with wooden side-lap shingles; attic door with later glazed sash; first floor door with later glazed sash; eight-over-eight ground floor window; 19th-century doorway in west eaves wall to (removed) addition; roughly coursed masonry gable wall; random-rubble masonry eaves wall; gable-end chimney.
Larry Ward, updated September, 2022
The caption to image #1 as it appeared on page 2 of "American Folklife," (Vol. II, No. 5, February, 1974) the quarterly of the American Folklife Society, published by Richard Shaner, states in part: "This early photograph of the Lobachsville Keim Manor{1} house was taken in 1912 by the Reading Eagle. The couple on the extreme right are Mr. and Mrs. Shade, reporters for the Eagle, the other people are from left to right Samuel Bigony, Mrs. Robert Bigony, Glenn Bigony, and Mrs. Emma Campbell. Note the clay-tile roof on the original Manor [1753 farmhouse], with its excellent masoned brick central-chimney.…" The chimney, with Germanic Renaissance corbeling, quite pronounced in the upper courses, is set on a stone chimney stack rising through the attic to the cord across the span between the outside of the masonry jambs [Image #4, photo 003, 4/22/16]. The exterior brick chimney projecting through the roof ridge is aligned vertically by the flues it encloses and is inset on the stone base in the attic, choked down to the desired horizontal dimensions above the roof-planes.
{1} not literally a “manor” house, which from Medieval times was typically owned and occupied by a Lord of the Manor, who had legal authority to preside over a Court dispensing various aspects of legal recourse and remedies [see A Dictionary of Architecture by James S. Curl, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 407, column 1]. A closer (conceptually and geographically) colonial analogue to the English “manor” would be George Douglass’s lands and stone house 10 miles to the south, where both George Douglasses, father and son, engaged in several commercial ventures, including iron trading, ownership of a wayside Tavern (the White Horse) and a “country store”, and both served as Justices of the Peace for the region in the 2d half of the 18th century.
Image #2 was taken in 1897, according to the caption accompanying a halftone print of this photo originally published in "The Keim and Allied Families in America and Europe" (1898-99) by de Benneville Randolph Keim, and reprinted on page 11 of "American Folklife," Winter, 1976, which in the accompanying text material identifies the individuals in the photo and mentions details of the "German colonial interior" of the 1753 house.
The text also notes that the "older portion" [two long bays to the right, with off-center chimney] "was erected in the summer of 1753 by “Irish” {2} masons brought in from Philadelphia" [reputed source: Moravian records]. A halftone of this photograph was also published in the essay "Keim Bakehouse Discovered" by Richard Shaner cited in archive record KHTX10--1002.01.050.
{2} During the re-stabilization of the south foundation wall of the 1753 farmhouse in 2011, the masons found a 1723 “Hibernian” coin in a mortar bed, probably having fallen into the mortar during the mixing process, and possibly depriving some poor lad of his beverage funding for the evening.
Image#3: Keim House, Southwest Perspective, after removal of 1930s porch and restoration of pent roof, wooden cellar cap over stone steps, and balcony above kitchen entry.
Note the absence of a porch or evidence of a porch structure or flashing course on the west gable wall in either photograph. This documents the hypothesis that the recently removed (in 2011) porch was not in existence during the lifetime of Betsy Keim, the last surviving Keim family occupant of the farmstead who died in late 1911; see archive record KR11PH3 regarding the history of the south pent roof and the two successive porches on the south eaves walls. As confirmed by a c. 1930 photograph taken by Amandus D. Moyer [see record #KR11FN1], there was no porch along the west gable wall as of the date of that photograph. Based on the c. 1930 Moyer photo and the 1941 HABS photo showing the porch along the south eaves wall and extending across the west gable-end, the "L" shaped porch [removed in 2011] was constructed between those dates.
Close scrutiny of form and alignment of roof covering material suggests the probability of a clay tile roof, as is seems quite clearly discernible in Images #1 & #2. This inference is also supported by oral tradition: William Parker, a farm hand and resident at the Keim farm in the late 19th century, and a frequent visitor there until the death of Betsy Keim in 1911, told an old friend and Oley Hills neighbor John E. Eshelman during a 1940s visit to the property "Why the old red tile roof ain't on the house no more"{a}, indicating that the tiles had been removed between 1911 and c.1940. Parker also indicated that the "new owner" [Mahlon Boyer and his son Charles Boyer owned the farmstead from 1913 to 1978, when the buildings and about 10 acres were conveyed to The Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County] had "builded" a "fancy barn."
{a} "The Keim Family of Lobachsville" by John E. Eshelman, published in The Historical Review of Berks County, October, 1955.
The small stone pedimented-gable building to the left of the "manor house" in Image #2 (c.1897) is deemed in the essay by Richard Shaner cited above to have been a bakehouse, which no longer exists. The banked and vaulted root cellar under the bakehouse (until at least the end of the 19th century) remains and was stabilized in 2011. The arch-form exterior vault stonework [the "extrados"] will be permanently exhibited under a roofed shelter.
Other details include: circular brick ["oculus"] vent in upper gable {b}, with headers glazed to inhibit absorption of moisture into the bricks; flashing course immediately above pent roof on eaves wall, brick relieving arches over brick infill in gable wall; hung-sash windows; remnants of plastered cove cornice, with half-round "bull-nose" bed moulding and a simply profiled moulding at the upper terminus of the radial cornice transition. The combination of brick relieving arches{c}, a corbeled fireplace chimney constructed of brick set on a stone chimney-stack up to the roof-planes in the attic, and a plastered concave ["coved"] cornice appeared a few years earlier in the 1749 Horsefield house in Bethlehem, PA [see Murtagh, Moravian Architecture and Town Planning…, 1967, photograph at p. 71.
{b} a similar "ocular" opening appears in the attic level eastern gable wall of the 1753 house, now enclosed in the attic of the late federal addition [see Image #6, photo # 48, 4/25/16] in this record.
{c} Image #5, photo #31, 4/25/16 shows a segment of the brick "relieving" arch, with moisture-resisting glazing on the brick faces exposed to weather, over the attic window open in in the eastern gable wall, now also enclosed in the attic of the addition.
Laurence Ward, May, 2016 and Update, February and March, 2021
Digital image from a photographic print showing view of south gable wall elevation.
Details include: original oculus vent above attic-door hood, pedimented gable hood, original attic door with later glazed sash, hyphenated pent roof, later glazed first floor door, eight-over-eight window, coursed masonry.
Larry Ward, updated September, 2022
