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Color photographic print showing detail of the southwest perspective view of the Keim ancillary building during restoration of the southeastern gable wall window. Details include: brick segmental relieving arches; random rubble masonry.
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Color photographic print showing detail of the south elevation view of the Keim ancillary building. Note that the eastern range of the Keim Federal era addition to the 1753 house and 1930s porch can be seen in the left of this photo. Details include: brick segmental relieving arch; 19th-century paneled shutters above porch
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Northwest perspective view of the c. 1753 Jacob Keim house from Historic American Buildings Survey Photograph. Description: This view from photo, HABS PA #1039, shows: the pent roof on its original cantilevered “outlooker” supports on the northern eaves wall, with projecting “flashing course” protecting joint between shingles and house-wall [left]; the gable end segment of the 1930s roofed porch [right]; box cornice replacement of early plastered cove cornice; and brick relieving arches above windows. Laurence Ward, February, 2021
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Color photographic print showing details of the south elevation view of the Keim House and southwest gable wall of ancillary structure. Details include: brick relieving arch, chevron door, portion of 1930s porch.
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Color photographic print showing detail of the south elevation view of the Keim House. Note that portions of the Keim Cabin, Keim Barn, and Keim Outhouse (right) can be seen in this photo. Details include: chevron door, brick relieving arch, 1930s porch.
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Color photographic print showing detail of a southwest perspective view of the Keim House. Note that the re-tiled roof of the Keim ancillary building can be seen along the right margin of the photo. Details include: 1930s porch on south eaves wall and west gable wall, both grossly distorting the original proportions, massing, fenestration, and concealing period Germanic details of the 1753 house in rare combination. See record KR11PH3 for the rationale and preservation principles considered in removing the 1930s porch in 2011. Updated, Laurence Ward, February, 2021
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Digital image of an east perspective view of the covered bridge and Michael Fulp (Bridge Keeper's) House. This photo is from "The Passing Scene," vol. 3, page 202, by George Meiser, IX and Gloria Meiser published in Reading, 1984, and is included here with the generous permission of George Meiser IX. Image #2 is another early 20th century view, taken before installation of the utility poles to the right of the bridge ramp. The horizontal racks on top of the bridge portal would have carried the electric and phone cables. It is obvious that the proximity of the bridge seemed to warrant the label “Bridge Keeper’s” in referring to Michael Fulp’s 1783 stone house. However, since the house was constructed 50 years prior to the bridge, and Michael Fulp died 25 years before the bridge existed, the house has been re-dedicated to Michael Fulp and named after him. This is consistent with the nomenclature applied to other dwellings in the Trust’s holdings, and a more rational cultural basis for naming the building than invoking the nebulous responsibilities of an anonymous and un-documented “bridge keeper.” According to local tradition, Alice Garber lived in the "Bridge Keeper's" house in the 1940s and performed duties including shoveling snow out from the portals for motor vehicles. Earlier "keepers" were believed to have shoveled snow onto the bridge deck to facilitate sleigh traffic and to have lit gas lights for night travel across the river. Photo 28 is a perspective view of the bridge from the road on the opposite side of the river from Morlatton. The roadbed shown is now PA Route 724. This view shows the arched side walls serving as weather-boards protecting the long Burr-arched timbers set longitudinally inside the plank walls as the primary “tension-members” supporting the bridge [see arches in interior photo MVCovBr]. Both photos also show the openings above the board side-walls, which afford three functions: Lighting into the bridge; ventilation in warmer weather; and as pressure-relieving valves during high winds through the bridge, preventing it from becoming a covered wind-tunnel. The Eric Sloane drawing also shows the timber Burr-arches [named after the patent-holding inventor of this arched-truss bridge support system], and the openings, screened in this drawing, above the side-walls. Larry Ward, May 2022
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Series of 89 photographs depicting the restoration of the fireplace lintel and masonry in the DeTurk house. Detailed captions appear below. DETAILED CAPTIONS #890, 8/9/09: Fireplace lintel (the large beam, also called a ”chimney-tree,” ”manteltree,” and ”balk” [early English: “baulk”] supporting the stone masonry chimney ”breast”) across center of photo, below joist with protruding rusty nails] seen through opening created by temporary removal of ends of first floor boards; also showing west end of lintel sheared off from bearing position in west [left] pointed masonry wall. The lintel has been borne on “temporary” posts [”shores”] [center of photo, just above second joist with protruding floor-board nails] since the 1970s, when termite damage and the resulting loss of resistance to tensile and shearing forces on the beam caused this failure. The complex forces acting on this structure included stresses caused by the degradation of the east eaves wall foundation from water incursion which dissolved the lime-binder component of the joint mortar. The sequence of failures in the east and north walls of the building is not determinable. However, the severe crack in the north gable masonry [see DTR09PH100--1001.01.192, and Atlas sheet 52] was caused by the same type and magnitude of a near-catastrophic event as that which caused the lintel’s sudden drop of several inches when the exposed ”mantel” timber sheared off from the end-block resting in the masonry pocket. These destabilizing events might have occurred in a short sequence of time during a “tectonic” serial failure, causing the jagged vertical fracture in the north wall, the transverse crack in the kitchen cellar door sill, the fragmentation of the sub-floor corner stone in the fireplace pier [”jamb” or ”leg”], and the shear-failure of the fireplace lintel at its recessed junction with the west masonry wall. #893: Closer west corner detail of #890. #958, same view as #890, after removal of the lintel through the opening in the west wall, and after insertion of the I-beam shore seen along the right edge of the photo. 918 & 919, 8/17/09: Timber “raking-shore” buttress against the northern section of the west eaves wall during removal, reconstruction, and replacement of fireplace lintel [”manteltree,” chimney-tree”]. This temporary support structure, with a diagonal ”raking” brace against the shimmed vertical post compressed against the wall, provides resistance to the thrust from the roof and gable wall, relieving some of the load component usually borne by the masonry mass and timbers of the fireplace, chimney, and eaves wall during restoration of these elements. #935, 8/18/09: Pair of steel I-beams "needled" through south wall of chimney stack to carry the masonry mass of the chimney during restoration of the fireplace lintel and the compromised east pier ["jamb" or "leg"] of the fireplace. The steel beams are supported on wooden posts set on a wooden sill ["bottom plate"] across the kitchen floor south of the fireplace [#920, 8/17/09] and on the 20th century stone-paved fireplace hearth [see photos #964 and 976 [8/19/09], and 1020, 8/25/09 (from below)]. #1224, shows the I-beams ”needled” through and temporarily supporting the plastered south wall of the chimney stack [”pile”]. The plaster-coated masonry in the upper right corner is the west jamb [”cheek wall”] of the arched first floor fireplace. New wood in lower-left is the “Dutchman” repair to the charred joist below the front hearth of the fireplace. #1449, 11/5/09 shows the two I-beams supported on the first floor and its northernmost joist. The disintegrating first floor fireplace is in the upper-right corner of this photo. #931, 8/17/09: Detail of east end of lintel, with beaded lower edge [“arris”], bearing on two white oak leveling plates. The eastern [right] plate also serves as the impost for the corbel [”half-arch”] supporting the east half of the first floor fireplace hearth; the western member [also at the impost level supporting the “springer” (lowest) course of the cantilevered corbel] of this pair of timbers bears the west half of the upper fireplace and a portion of the east wall of the chimney stack [“pile”]. These two timbers do not appear to be pocketed into the north gable wall, and therefore do not serve a third function as “ties.” Although deformed to the contours of the stones bearing [and bearing on] them, they have served in relatively stable compression under a load of several tons per square foot of bearing surface for over 240 years. These embedded oak plates bear on the eastern masonry pier [”jamb,” or, anglicized, ”leg”] of the fireplace [see #938, 8/13/09, and #957, 8/14/09, a detail of the eastern end-grain of the lintel and eastern corbel (”bracket”), which also shows the reconstructed eastern segment of the north gable wall from inside the kitchen, which repaired a long vertical crack in the 1970s]. #942, 8/18/09: Eastern end of lintel showing summer beam lap-joined to the lintel. The end-grain of the lintel is noticeably “checked” [split along the grain from shrinkage during the drying process; “checks” were called ”shakes” in pre-20th century British practice], and served as the entry point for the termite colony which infested and degraded the structural integrity of this beam. The insects probably entered the summer beam through its northern end-grain, boring in from the lintel and causing the same hollowing of the structural cores of both beams [see series of photos depicting and describing the restoration and consolidation of the damaged summer beam in record DTR09PH136--1001.01.235]. #948, 8/18/09: Northern segment of east face of the chamfered summer beam on temporary shoring post [upper left quadrant of photo], showing the end-grain of fireplace lintel behind the pine post in right half of photo. The lintel has been pried upward, as shown in photo #943, 8/18/09, to insert shims and rollers on a plank platform supported on scaffolding supports to facilitate removal of lintel through the temporary opening in west eaves wall [slot of daylight in center of photo, and a closer view in #1021, 8/26/09]. A detail of this view is in #949, 8/18/09. #932, 933, & 934, 8/18/09: Removal of lintel through temporary opening in northern segment of west eaves wall, near walled-up bake oven site. This opening, buttressed by the raking-shore brace [photos 918 & 919] and temporary steel beams "needled" through the chimney breast [photo 935], remains stable during removal and restoration as a roughly formed rubble masonry "arch", transferring most of the incumbent loads bearing on it to the masonry wall segments abutting the opening. #954, 8/18/09: Lintel prior to cutting away degraded interior segments from the exposed timber portion, and end-grain block; these fragments of the original "chimney-tree" will be preserved and consolidated with re-claimed components to form a re-constructed lintel. This assembly conforms to the preservation principle which prefers conservation and re-use of as much of the original "fabric" as practicable, minimizing replication of components in the process. #938, 939, 940, 941 & 1056: Fragments of the disintegrated lintel, lacerated with termite tunnels. These pieces dramatically illustrate the cause of the loss of structural integrity of the beam and its dislodgment and deflection from the masonry pocket in the west eaves wall. #963 & 964: Stone, broken into three pieces [see opposing transverse views in photos 963 & 964, 8/14/09], removed from a sub-grade corner position in the eastern pier [”jamb”, ”leg”] of the kitchen fireplace. This displaced{1}and fractured stone was discovered when the fill south of the fireplace was excavated to determine the original kitchen floor level. The pier was immediately shored with posts and braces, and a replacement stone inserted into the pier in the position originally occupied by the single stone seen here in pieces. See the restored pier in #968 & 969, 8/19/09, included in this record. The three broken pieces were displaced laterally [”out-of-plumb”] to a position several inches outside the eastern plane of the pier, possibly during the same ”tectonic” event or series of events causing several other small-scale failures in the northeastern segment of the kitchen masonry and framing elements. This fragmentation left only a few inches of bearing surface of the fractured stone [sometimes called a ”unit” in modern engineering parlance, despite the non-uniformity of ”random” rubble masonry stones, probably because of the ”unit” sizes and shapes of concrete block and similar modern building components] supporting a significant portion of the mass of the chimney stack [”pile”], loads previously carried by the fireplace lintel [and now by the steel I-beam shown in photos##1224 & 1449]. #955: Exterior view of opening in north end of west eaves wall through which the lintel was removed on rollers along a plank platform. #991: Exposed face segment of lintel treated with a borate solution to retard fungus and insect infestation. #1002, 8/24/09: Face segment, salvaged from original lintel, after consolidation with sawdust saturated with borate and a binder. #992, 8/24/09: Replacement beveled smoke baffle, sawn from re-claimed ["re-cycled"] white oak timber. #1003, 8/25/09: Beveled segment of re-constructed lintel with mount-frames attached. #1004, 8/25/09: Exposed face-plank after application of wood filler, prior to assembly with replacement half-beam sawn in a 45 degree bevel to serve as a smoke baffle. #1005, 8/25/09: Mock-up I-beam [white pine and masonite] used to determine the precise dimensions and optimum location of the permanent steel beam which will be installed above the lintel to relieve it of the loads imposed by the chimney stack and related wall mass.. #1002, 8/26/09: Re-sawn oak smoke-baffle joined to two end-grain blocks salvaged from the original lintel to form a composite replacement lintel. The end-grain in the foreground, extensively checked, is the end-block of the lintel, which will be set in the west eaves wall masonry pocket. #1003, 8/26/09: East end grain block from original lintel, joined to replacement smoke-baffle to complete assembly of re-constructed composite lintel. This portion is the exposed timber on the two bearing plates shown in photo #931. #1040, 8/27/09: Reconstructed lintel, glued and bolted together; slot in left foreground is the opening inside the east end-grain block for the steel double-post which will support the I-beam above the lintel and behind the re-laid masonry chimney breast. [See #1044 for a full view of the restored lintel from the west end and #1042 for a detail view of the west end of the re-fabricated lintel]. This steel beam will be the primary bearing element of the restored chimney structure, relieving the timber lintel of much of this burden. The lintel will be borne on the west by the masonry wall pocket and on the east by the two oak leveling plates carried by the masonry pier [“jamb”, “leg”] of the fireplace. #1008, 8/26/09: The white oak timber in the center of the photo [end-grain in foreground] is the eastern bearing and leveling plate for the lintel. The masonry at the top of the photo is the springer course of the corbelled "half-arch" which is carried by this plate and which supports the eastern half of the fireplace hearth on the first floor above. The blue metal posts in the upper left corner will bear the steel I-beam referred to in #1040 above. #1010, 8/26/09: Steel tandem-post set between original oak bearing plates to receive chimney stack and masonry wall loads previously borne by the timber lintel [”chimney-tree”]. The left [west] masonry corbel supports the west half of the first floor fireplace hearth and the east “pile” of the chimney stack; the eastern corbel carries the east half of the first floor fireplace hearth and a portion of the chimney mass. See discussion to #931 above. The masonry in the left third of the photo is the back wall of the fireplace, facing south. #1017, 8/26/09 shows the double-post from the west before re-installation of the lintel. The white parging in the upper segment of the photo coats the cantilevered underside of the west corbel springing from the western oak impost-plate. The large stones in the left third of the photo compose part of the east wall of the fireplace. #11036, 8/26/09: Perspective view of the lower ground level kitchen fireplace [right-center] and interior of west wall [left and center] before re-installation of lintel. The four 8” square posts [center and right], set on sills of the same dimension, support the two steel I-beams bearing the chimney mass [”pile”] and related loads during restoration of the lintel and summer beam partially borne by the lintel. The wall opening to the right is a temporary portal for removal and re-insertion of the lintel. The opening to the left is the window in the west wall of the kitchen, with a replacement frame fabricated from reclaimed and re-sawn white oak in 2009. In the upper-right quarter of the photo is the steel double-post which will bear the permanent I-beams and the steel leveling plate, which will help carry the corbelled pier at the east end of the lintel . #1210, 10/1/09 shows this double post [upside-down] with ”fins” which will partially support the steel plate under the flanges of the pair of I-beams, and also partially bear the cantilevered stones in the corbelled “bracket” carrying the east half of the first floor fireplace. This set of redundant load-bearing elements will relieve the kitchen fireplace lintel of much of the loads it carried prior to this restoration campaign. Although this retrofit utilizes modern materials and techniques, a considerable portion of the original elements [”fabric”] was preserved and re-integrated into the structure. The components of an I-beam and the ability to neutralize compressive forces [on the top flange] and tensile stresses [along bottom flange] are critical to its mechanical capacity. #1011, 8/25/09: Two new steel I-beams, powder-coated for corrosion-resistance, will be bolted together and set on the dual post [#1210] and the masonry shelf in the west wall to carry the chimney and related loads previously borne by the compromised oak lintel. See details of the completed assembly, now functioning as a mechanically-assisted composite lintel, in the discussion to the series of photos from #1348 to 1369 below. #1295, 10/20/09 shows the southern member of the pair of I-beams, which is bolted through its web to the concealed second beam, and is now borne by the steel post [#1210] and the masonry pocket in the west wall, not by the lintel. The blue-coated I-beam will be concealed behind the restored masonry chimney breast. The mechanically connected pair of beams replaces the lintel as the primary bearing member for the chimney stack and contributing loads. #1288: Detail of #1295. The thin steel plate extending to the east [right] beyond the end of the steel beam supports and levels the beams, carries them to the post, and partially bears the east [right] corbelled masonry "bracket" under the eastern half of the first floor fireplace. #1058 & 1059, 9/1/09: Epoxy consolidant/adhesive applied to each end of lintel prior to bedding in the west masonry wall “pocket” and setting on the steel I-beam. #1061 shows the other half of the end-block being set in adhesive in the position seen in #1059. #1191 shows the lintel on rollers ready to be set in its original position on the two bearing plates near the lower right corner of the photo. These original oak plates are also the imposts carrying the ”springer” course of the two corbelled ”half-arches” [”brackets”] which support the first floor fireplace above. #1208, a detail of #1191, provides a clear view of the beaded lower edge [”arris”] of the lintel. This long bead in its prominent position over the fireplace, and the long runs of chamfering on beams, plates, outlookers, and joists in this building, exemplify the decorative details and meticulous joinery practices composing the ”art and mystery” of medieval carpentry and joinery. These inherited techniques articulate, in attenuated and individualized forms, the skills and folk-artistry of 18th century rural Pennsylvania craftsmen. The western bearing plate for the lintel is in the lower-right corner of the photo. #1225, 10/05/09: Re-assembled lintel, with original face-board consolidated with the replacement smoke baffle, chamfered at a 45 degree angle, set on rollers to transport it through the temporary wall opening to original position on bearing plates and masonry bearing pocket in the west wall. #1333, 10/26/09: Restored lintel and steel I-beam on steel leveling plate being rolled into original position through temporary opening in west eaves wall. #1337: view of lintel entering on rollers, from interior. #1346: Detail of lintel resting on one of the pair of bearing and leveling plates. The steel plate projecting [”cantilevered”] beyond the lintel and I-beam will help support the corbelled stone ”bracket” which carries half of the first floor fireplace. The final position of the east end-grain face of the lintel will be flush with the eastern [right in photo] oak bearing pad, as seen in #1354 showing the steel plate inserted under the corbelled stone. #1347: Detail of #1345. The underside of the large stone in the upper-right corner has been ground to a flat plane to receive the projecting steel plate which will act as a redundant support element for the corbelled masonry and the first floor fireplace above. #1348 & 1349 10/27/09 & 1372, 1373 & 1374, 10/28/09: Detail views of lintel, steel plate, and I-beam assembly from first floor. #1355 & 1356: Detail views of bolted pair of I-beams positioned on top of the lintel, but borne on the two oak plates on the east and in the masonry wall ”pocket” on the west. #1369, 10/28/09: I-beams and steel plate seen through opening in west wall. The steel beams project into the wall beyond the end of the steel plate and will be supported on the re-laid masonry set in the temporary opening. The I-beams will the carry most of the chimney loads formerly carried across the fireplace by the failed oak lintel. #1212, 10/01/09: Re-installed lintel from the first floor, prior to restoring masonry chimney breast, showing partially disintegrated first floor fireplace [upper-right], long half-dovetail [”dutchman”] repair to burn-damaged original joist, and two transport-rollers on temporary scaffolding planks. Temporary eastern I-beam is at left edge. #1223 is a detail view of the east end of the lintel in final position on the bearing plates; the black tape protects the plates from the borate solution [gray residue] applied to the lintel to combat termites and other infestation. #1232 is a view from the east showing the lintel in final orientation; the recessed glossy-coated timber segment, to the right of the large masonry corbelled pier [”bracket”] in the top half of the photo, is the end-block portion of the lintel east of the chamfered smoke baffle. The steel support post will stand in the recess between the two oak bearing plates on the east pier of the fireplace. #1435, 11/02/09: Detail of the western end of the southern steel I beam above the re-set oak lintel, which has been mortared [”mudded-in”] to the bearing pocket in the west wall, after bolting the two I-beams together through their vertical webs, before removal of the planks supporting the lintel on scaffolding racks. #1436: Detail view of the western end of #1435. The joist in the upper center is borne on the stacked pair of leveling, bearing, and relieving timbers, embedded in the west wall, which have been shortened to accommodate the temporary portal through the masonry opened up to allow removal and re-placement of the lintel and I-beams. See #1442 which shows the southern ends of these plates, the upper member entering the east-west cross wall between the kitchen and root cellars. #1384, 10/30/09 and #1450, 1451, 1452, 1454, & 1455: Details of chimney breast above re-installed lintel, re-laid and freshly ”mudded-in” prior to re-pointing. The eastern ”needled” temporary steel I-beam appears along the right edge of #1450; the western beam is in the upper-left corner of #1452. Additional detail views of the process appear in #1493, 1494, 1495, & 1496, 11/11/09. #1387: Detail of #1384 prior to removing shimmed shoring post from under corbelled ”half-arch” in upper-right quadrant of photo. The timber along the top of the photo is the northernmost first floor joist. #1394, 10/31/09: Detail of underside of post supporting I-beams showing the two ”fins” welded to the post to partially support the thin steel plate inserted under the ”shaved” underside of the cantilevered stone supporting the eastern half of the first floor fireplace above. #1473 & 1474, 11/8/09 are views of the split [”shaken”] eastern end of the lintel. The blue steel plate on top of the lintel supports a large cantilevered stone [with its lower face ground-down to receive the steel plate] in the half-arch corbelled bracket carrying the eastern half of the first floor fireplace. #304, 9/30/10 and 1497, 11/11/09 are SE perspective views of the restored and re-installed lintel borne by the two original 1767 white oak leveling plates; re-fabricated and re-set summer beam; “dutchman” repair to joist burned by embers from the first floor fireplace; and re-pointed masonry chimney breast re-laid on flange of steel I-beam. The stonework to the right of the wide crack in the wall segment along the right edge of the photo is the 1970s repair of the fracture indicated in the plan on Sheet #52 of the Atlas of Architectural Drawings (2008), accompanied by the notation ”Wall Cracked, moved 6” +/-”, indicating the lateral shift of the eastern segment of the north gable wall across the crack toward the west, slightly overriding the central bay of the wall L. Ward, 2009, updated, October, 2021 .
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Frame # 16 of 16 (2-17) from 35mm color negatives, Keim ancillary building, north gable end, from a set of various views of the buildings on the Jacob Keim Farmstead. Gable-end elevation view of Keim ancillary building. Details include: random-rubble masonry, brick relieving arches, casement windows, wall-plate ties at eaves level of gable-end.
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Frame #5 of 16 (2-17) from 35mm color negatives, Keim ancillary building, ground-floor gable-end "Dutch" door, from a set of various views of the buildings on the Jacob Keim Farmstead. Keim ancillary building gable-end doorway. Details include: random-rubble masonry, brick relieving arch, brick infill, two-leaf (Dutch) door, oak jambs and lintel.
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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].
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Digital image of Keim ancillary building (formerly called a “Cabin”) from original photographic print from a HABS survey. Details include: random-rubble masonry, brick relieving arch, casement window, central chimney, two-leaf (Dutch) door, 19th century dovecote and slate roof. Original HABS caption for the image is as follows: "Historic American Buildings Survey, Cervin Robinson, Photographer August, 1958 SOUTH ELEVATION." Data sheets for HABS images (KCPH5 thru KCPH9--1002.01.031, .032, .033, .034 & .035) associated with the Keim ancillary workshop building (“Cabin”, a misnomer) appear in MULTIMEDIA LINKS or see Archive record KCTX1--1002.01.037.
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Keim ancillary workshop structure, halftone image from photo, with descriptive caption, published in the "Dutchman," Winter, 1954, page 18. Brick arches shown are "relieving" elements when properly constructed to transfer structural loads to the masonry abutments flanking the door and windows. Stonework is laid in random-rubble masonry method. Details include short timber corner ties joined to wall plates on top of eaves walls. These ties also serve as the eaves-level "quoins" which, with the alternating longer masoned stones stacked at each corner, bind the vertical mortar joints of the corner piers. Similar (though twice as long) embedded timber "plates" appear in both gable walls of the Johan DeTurk house [see DTR09PH100--1001.01.192, and DTR09PH93--1001.01.185]. Later research indicates a construction date of 1753, contemporary with the Keim farmhouse a few yards away and not an early "settler's cabin" as peviously thought (Pendleton, Philip, Oley Valley Heritage, The Colonial Years: 1700-1775, p. 91, caption and accompanying text, pp. 90-92). Laurence Ward, updated February, 2021
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Digital image of Keim ancillary workshop building from original photographic print showing south gable elevation and eastern eaves wall. Details include: random-rubble masonry, brick relieving arches, casement window, central chimney, two-leaf ("Dutch") door, 19th century Dovecote [or Bell tower?] and slate roof Original HABS caption for the image is as follows: "Historic American Buildings Survey, Cervin Robinson, Photographer August, 1958 SOUTH ELEVATION." Data sheets for HABS images (KCPH5 thru KCPH9--1002.01.031, .032, .033, .034 & .035) associated with the Keim ancillary building appear in MULTIMEDIA LINKS or see Archive record KCTX1--1002.01.037.
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Frame # 6 of 16 (2-17) from 35mm color negatives, all various views of the buildings on the Jacob Keim Farmstead. Southeast perspective view of Keim house and ancillary building (cabin). 20th-century Victorian-style porch on house. Record Updated February, 2021, Laurence Ward
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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
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Frame # 9 of 16 (2-17) from 35mm color negatives, all various views of the buildings on the Jacob Keim Farmstead. Southwest perspective view of Keim house and ancillary building; 1930s Pagoda-style roofed porch on house. The porch, from the 1930s until removed in 2011, concealed a rare set of architectural details: a cellar-vent and welled-window in the gable-end foundation; a stone-arched cellar entry capped with sloped wooden cellar doors, restored in 2012; an iron-grilled vent in the Federal-era addition cellar; and the entry into the addition cellar, restored in 2013 by construction of stone steps and retaining [“cheek”] walls. It is also apparent in this photo that the “wrap-around” porch, with its excessively linear emphasis, also grossly distorted the architectural massing and proportions of the 1753 farmstead house. Laurence Ward, Updated February, 2021
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Photo and sketch of the Keim multi-purpose ancillary structure [formerly considered a “Cabin”] from an article written by James A. Lewars, entitled "Pennsylvania German Kicked Roofs," published on page 12 in the Winter, 1981 issue of the ‘Historical Review of Berks County." Image and text from the original article focus on the techniques used in the construction of the building's roof rafters and their support framing. Notable text passages included from the article: "The Keim House, a one-and-a-half story stone house in Pike Township, is one of the earliest houses in the Oley region. It is a straight roof center-chimney house and exhibits almost the identical framing method found in the Bertolet outbuilding." "The Keim House makes use of the attic floor joists as supports for the [rafter] plate…." "The stone walls of the Keim House are topped with a wooden slab. The attic floor joists then rest on this piece of wood{1}.... The spaces between the joists are filled with stone, the stone being laid directly on the wooden slab. The plate, in the form of a wooden beam, is placed across the joists. The rafters are then mortised over the plate{2} and form the support for the overhang." ARCHIVE EDITOR'S FOOTNOTES {1} Because of this function of providing a level bearing plane for the joists, sometimes called a “joist plate”, "leveling plate", or "leveling board." {2} Based on this support role, sometimes called a "rafter plate," or, more generically in modern terminology, a "wall plate." Record edited and updated by Laurence Ward, February, 2021
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Series of 33 digital images depicting the masonry restoration work at the George Douglass House. The Trust’s Board of Directors resolved at its May, 2011 meeting to restore the three components of the George Douglass mansion and store structures to their historical and architectural ”period of significance” [”period”]. The consensus of historians and consultants seems to converge on the time-span from 1765, the date of construction of the original house{n}, to the mid-19th century (probably prior to the Civil War) as the appropriate time-frame. It was during this period that George Douglass, his son George II, and their successors built the three structures and developed the diversified mercantile activities within this complex, which included butchering, trading in iron and other commodities, and a retail ”country store” operation. This diversified enterprise evolved and flourished from prior to the Revolutionary War into the first half of the 20th century. Based on this history and extensive research into public documents and Douglass store records, the period of significance was tentatively determined to be 1765 to c.1840. The earliest building, George Douglass’s impressive ”double-pile” five-bay Georgian house, was built in 1765 according to the date-niche in the north gable. The three-bay store addition, literally an extension of the early house in a more vernacular interpretation of the Georgian vocabulary, is not perfectly aligned structurally or conformed in detail to the 1765 house. Although a federal-period structure probably built between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, the extension is not ”federal” in architectural composition, structural technique, or iconic classical-revival design details. The second addition is a one and a half story structure of random rubble masonry, apparently used for the butchering operation, probably for storage and sale of goods, and for curing meats in the "smoke-chamber" above the barrel-vaulted vegetable [root] storage cellar. It was probably constructed prior to the Civil War, and perhaps as early as 1830, and has been serially altered in fenestration and roof framing during the past century. A "smoke house" (probably not the extant smoke chamber) functioned within the Douglass-Jenkins store enterprise as of 1803 or earlier, according to an entry[n] on the pastedown sheet inside of the front board of the store day-book covering that period. [n] Tallying chronologically the varying quantities of pork in the smoke house. Sometime in the 20th century the owners enclosed the “store-yard”{x} area between the three period buildings with a frame wall sheathed with an inexpensive composition material, roofed the entire rectangular space defined by gable walls of the 1765 house and the second addition--and the eaves wall of the “federal” addition--and floored the resulting “porch” with a thick slab of modern concrete. All of these “improvements” facilitated human passage and movement of merchandise in and out of the five doorways protected by the enclosure. However, they also intruded modern materials into and abutting the historic structures and their “curtilage”, and obscured the architectural and functional demarcations between the three interdependent buildings. {x} See record GDR11FN1--1006.01.022 for photos and discussion of the restoration of this yard area, undoubtedly a busy zone at the height of activity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the contiguous domestic and mercantile structures and architectural elements preserved or re-created in their form in the period of significance. The preliminary phase of the restoration campaign required removal of the "porch" roofing, the frame-wall connecting the northeast corner of the second addition and the southeast corner of the 1763 house, and the concrete slabs{1} along the foundation walls, including the south gable wall of the small addition to the south. Once these barriers and impediments were removed, the first phases of the stabilization and restoration work on the rear [east] elevations included: A. Excavation and stabilization of sub-grade foundation masonry. Much of the foundation mortar had been transformed into a plastic and disintegrated residue of clay, sand, and lime chunks. The majority of foundation ranges along all east elevations required re-setting displaced stone "units"; deep-pointing the beds and joints; filling voids with stone "pins" and mortar; and underpinning overhanging ["cantilevered"] stones with base-blocks masoned to the optimum shape. The joint and bed mortar was recessed ["held-back"] pending the pointing campaign for the entire building; B. Re-structuring the disintegrated stone steps and stoop at the raised entry to the smoke-chamber between the store addition and the one-story second addition to its south; this stair-block had become detached from the masonry supporting the entry sill of the smoke-chamber, and was noticeably out-of-plumb, leaning toward the east. It was restored to a plumb and stable condition, including the core and base of the raised stoop; see photos #4013 [dismantled core] and # 4022 [reconstructed stair-block].; C. Consolidating and deep-pointing the east bay of the south gable wall of the 1765 house up to the cove cornice [also "cove soffit"], and including: 1) filling in the open joint at the interior corner between the 1763 house and the federal-period extension with small stone "flags", "pins", and mortar; 2) stabilizing the rotated and laterally displaced stones of the "quoin" corner pier and inserting stone flags in larger voids; 3) filling in the gaps and voids above the gable doorway near the southeast corner and on either side of the frame. D. Raising the top step of the stairs to the vegetable cellar to meet the required brick paving elevations; re-grading the store-yard for positive drainage across the restored brick paving, and pitching it away from all building walls and doorways toward a central swale and to the unpaved area east of the paving; E. Resetting the stone sill under the center doorway in the 1763 Georgian mansion, and stabilizing the foundation supporting the doorway masonry and framing; F. Resetting a large dislodged sub-grade stone in the southeast corner of the later ancillary addition, and consolidating the corner pier it supports; this "quoin" corner pier was reconstructed and re-aligned vertically in conjunction with dismantling and re-erecting a majority of the south gable wall [see archive record GDR11PH1--1006.01.021, Image #3493]. DETAILED CAPTIONS 3268, 4/21/11: Two large stones on the lintel of the door frame in the east eaves wall of the 1763 George Douglass house. Rural builders of the period experimented with numerous devices to relieve timber framing at window and doorway openings of some of the wall and roof loads imposed upon them. The stones shown here are not embedded into the abutting masonry far enough to serve as true cantilevers, and might therefore be called "pseudo-cantilevers," which will serve only marginally as load-relieving elements. Nor do they function as a "flat" or "jack" arch, since there is no central "keystone" wedge, properly angled at the joint with the horizontal components of the "arch," to discharge a significant portion of the incumbent load laterally to the masonry piers or wall ranges flanking the wooden jambs of the frame. A single stone lintel, embedded the critical distance into the abutments and adequately sized, would have been a simpler and mechanically more effective load-reliever than this pair of stones. The deployment of the pair of stones shown here basically transmitted the wall load above the doorway directly onto the wood lintel, not the desired structural outcome. Fortunately, such redundant techniques were not essential because of the bearing capacity of the robust wooden frame and the timber lintel supporting the interior half of the wall. 3267, 4/21/11: Fractured (and rotated inward) stone sill [frequently “cill’ in documents and literature of the 18th and early 19th centuries] at east doorway of 1765 house 3432, 5/9/11: Broken sill and deteriorated foundation; raking out the clay-gravel ”mortar” from the joints and beds revealed the lack of any sound [deletion] bearing mortar 3493, 5/11/11: Laterally displaced and rotated corner block [”quoin” stone, from the French term for “corner’; also “coin” in early Anglo-American vernacular terminology] below grade at the southeast corner pier of the ancillary (c.1830-40) addition. Although “quoins” have occasionally been referred to as “decorative”[a], or as a means of squaring corners of random or coursed rubble structures, it seems clear that another important function is to “tie’ the intersecting walls together with the compressive force of the heavier and longer “quoin” blocks bearing on the mortar joints between the smaller stones bearing the quoins in the perpendicular wall ranges abutting the corners. Surviving American buildings employing quoins typically lay them horizontally in alternating header and stretcher alignment. Primitive corners laid with stones larger than the those in the random walling appear in very early European masonry practice since the early mediaeval period, sometimes stacked vertically, sometimes alternating horizontally and vertically, and occasionally in hybrid and random forms of more massive blocks which were not “decorative” but have stabilized the corners of buildings which have survived for a millennium or more. [a] more appropriate in “dressed”[b] ashlar walls, which in early expressions featured quoins which projected beyond the common plane [“naked”] of the wall, creating a shadow effect in appropriate light. The relief between the tooled planes of the quoins and the ranges of random rubble walling does present an elegant refinement at their meetings. [b] also, in early masonry craft usage, “planed smooth”, “tooled”, “chiseled”, or “boasted”. 3486, 5/11/11: Rolling 1763 door sill-stone onto restructured and leveled foundation 3495, 5/11/11: Larger sill-stone in place; smaller piece of fractured sill to be inserted 3496, 5/11/11: Chiseling ["pitching-off"] excess stone from smaller stone segment of door-sill. The same technique was used to taper the stone step inserted under the top step of the stairs to the root cellar when the top riser was raised three inches 3513, 5/11/11: Both sill pieces in place, anchored in the abutting "pockets" in the masonry jambs; the foundation below the sill has been stabilized and packed with mortar 3514, 5/11/11: Perspective view of wider range of foundation below doorway and abutting walling 3510, 5/11/11: Iron-bar grille [uncovered when foundation was excavated for inspection] in cellar vent to south of centered doorway in east wall of 1765 house. This type of grille set in the opening for cellar lighting and ventilating was typical in the period in this region; see records DTR09FN12--1001.01.248 and BKR10FN4--1005.01.067 3539, 5/12/11: Using a high bearing-capacity jack as a shoring device during re-setting of sub-grade stone in southeast corner of the ancillary addition; this "lift" enabled the mason to remove small stones from above the displaced "quoin," supporting the load it bore, allowing it to be re-aligned while keeping the corner pier "in compression" during the repair 3590, 5/16/11: Pulling paving stone from foundation, revealing dislodged foundation stones at grade 3591 & 3592: Detail views of unstable foundation segments 3598, 5/18/11: Collapsed foundation segment after removal of soils [mostly clay] providing lateral support 3690, 5/24/11: Deeply and fully mortared joints in repaired sub-grade foundation ranges. In below-grade applications, and thus absent any aesthetic considerations, the joints are filled-out "flush" to the plane of the wall 3617, 5/23/11: Open foundation joints, lacking mortar where persistent saturation from moisture retained in clay-laden bearing soils has dissolved much of the lime, leaving a low-viscosity muddy residue providing minimal bonding quality in the wall 3631, 5/23/11: Doorways to second addition [left, through vertical-board wall] and to smoke chamber [right, up stone steps] before removal of 20th-century frame wall [left] and board ceiling 3633, 5/23/11: Stone stoop on masonry stair-block at entry to smoke chamber; the entire structure has become detached from the foundation below the doorway 3639, 5/23/11: Doorways to store addition [left] and into east bay, near the southeast corner of the south gable wall of the 1765 house; concrete slab is a 20th-century paving over earlier [probably 19th-century] brick paving 3647, 5/23/11: The three period Douglass buildings, with [red] frame wall concealing most of east eaves wall of federal-period addition and all five doorways opening on the store-yard framed by the three buildings composing the house-store complex during their first century of development 3645, 5/23/11: Detail view of the 20th-century frame ["stud"] wall 3743, 5/27/11: Board ceiling over "porch" enclosure has been removed, except the portion under the roof extension which will remain as hood over three of the doorways opening on the enclosed yard 4009, 6/17/11: Brick paving found near eaves wall of federal-period central section, under 20th-century concrete slab 3871, 6/7/11: The exterior space common to all three buildings forming the Douglass house and store buildings; the roof over the "porch" has been removed, leaving a roof-extension "hood" over the three doorways relating to the small addition, used for food storage, preparation, and cooking [in a large fireplace, since removed] to the south of the federal-period store extension of the 1765 house 3976, 6/14,11: Deep-pointing the east bay of the south gable wall of the original house up to the cove cornice ["soffit"]; mortar in the joints was "held back" for future re-pointing 4006, 6/15/11: Displaced stones at corner of early house; rotated stone above fractured sill 4008, 6/15/11: Stonework above doorway will be consolidated with deeply packed bed mortar 4013, 6/17/11: Cavity under stoop at entry to smoke chamber, after removal of disintegrated stonework 4018, 6/18/11: Top step of stair to vegetable cellar, before insertion of new step underneath the top landing and prior to re-grading of yard with 19th century bricks found within Morlatton Village 4022, 6/18/11: Stoop-support restored FOOTNOTE {n} The mortar-pargeted date-niche in the northeast gable, although quite eroded, appears to read “1765” [photos #3112 and 3113]. The numerals “1” and “7” are just above the base of the niche; the “6” and the “5” flank the “D” below the vernacular sunburst motif under the apex. An essay entitled Down The Schuylkill Valley, published in The Pennsylvania German Vol. III, No. 1, issued January, 1902, recites that “There is another old building nearby [to the Mouns Jones House], erected in 1765, which was for many years the mansion of George Douglass….” Although the date-niche is not mentioned, it might reasonably be assumed that the author and other “pilgrims” accompanying him noticed the “datestone” (when, 111 years ago, it was certainly less eroded) as their reference for the 1765 construction date quoted. {1} Six tons of concrete were removed, uncovering early brick paving in the yard area defined by the three walls of the period structures. The sound brickwork will be restored and preserved, and unpaved areas and areas where the modern concrete destroyed or severely damaged the bricks will be paved with similar bricks found at the Douglass buildings or at other sites within Morlatton Village [more correctly, according to research by Philip Pendleton, "Molatton" or "Molatten"]. These pavers range between 8 and 9 inches long and average 3.5 to 4 inches wide, and 2 to 2.5 inches thick. Larry Ward, 2016
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Frame # 13 of 16 (2-17) from 35mm color negatives, all various views of the buildings on the Jacob Keim Farmstead. Northeast perspective view of Keim house with unceiled pent roof [with original framing] on north eaves wall [right third of photo]. Other details include: non-period chevron-pattern Dutch door in original (western) bays [right third of photo], capped and parged chimney, later standing seam roof [see KHPH13--1002.01.057 for possible evidence of clay-tile roof on main roof in late 19th and/or early 20th century], alternating “quoin” stone corner pier. Left two bays [door and three windows] define early addition. Laurence Ward, updated March 2021
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Digital image of Keim ancillary building (formerly called a “Cabin”) from original photographic print showing northwest perspective view. Details include: random-rubble masonry, brick relieving arch, brick infill, casement window, central chimney, two-leaf (Dutch) door, 19th century cupola or ”dovecote”, 19th century slate roof, stone steps descending bank to root cellar entry. Original HABS caption for the image is as follows: "Historic American Buildings Survey, Cervin Robinson, Photographer August, 1958 NORTH AND WEST ELEVATIONS." Data sheets for HABS images (KCPH5 thru KCPH9--1002.01.031, .032, .033, .034 & .035) associated with the Keim ancillary building appear in MULTIMEDIA LINKS or see Archive record KCTX1--1002.01.037. Laurence Ward, January, 2021
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Series of 19 images showing perspective views of the Keim House and other dwellings, detail views depicting evidence of an early plastered cove cornice on the Keim house, and other related photos, including images of houses built during the same quarter-century period as the Keim house and earlier English antecedents displaying plastered cove cornices. Image #1, an early 20th century view, appears to show deteriorated remnants of a coved plaster{a} cornice under the second story eaves of the 1753 house [left of roof extension above the second story balcony], and on the c. 1805 addition [right of roof extension]. Images #2, 3, and 4 are colored digital images provided by restoration craftsmen and consultants Tom and Chris Lainhoff, showing coved oak joist-ends{b} with nail holes for lath, confirming that an early plastered cove cornice existed, most probably from the first period of the 1753 house. This conclusion is reinforced by the un-coursed "rubble" masonry walling behind the cornice [Images #3, #4, & #5]. Such coarse stonework would not be seen behind the plaster and lath of the cornice and is therefore not masoned as methodically as the visible wall ranges of the house. As a comparison and contrast of masonry methods on the same building, the wall ranges behind each Keim house "pent" were as carefully laid-up as all other exposed ranges of the structure because the pent roofs were not ceiled {c}. {a} In modern usage, "plaster" ("plaister" in early British terminology), is sometimes confined to interior finishes, and "stucco" is limited to lime-based rendering applied directly to exterior wall surfaces. Early plaster was extruded ["keyed"] between wooden lath, originally riven [sometimes "hewn"], and later sawn, for anchorage. Some scholars consider the interior-"plaster"/exterior-"stucco" distinction to be arbitrary and historically unwarranted [see Curl, A Dictionary of Architecture, Oxford U. Press (1999), page 645]. Other respected authorities seem to prefer "plaster" in describing interior renderings, invoking the earlier term "roughcast" for coarsely aggregated exterior coatings [e.g., Lounsbury, Carl, Editor, An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape, page 279]. In the context of Mid-Atlantic vernacular building forms and practices, the highly regarded authors noted that "Stucco…[was] sometimes applied to interior walls…(though more commonly to describe an exterior finish)" [Lanier & Herman, Everyday Architecture of the Mid-Atlantic…Buildings and Landscapes, Johns Hopkins University Press (1997), p. 113]. The legendary Renaissance stone mason and architect Andrea Palladio invoked the term "stucco" to describe the decorative plaster coating applied to interior niches in his villas. Other scholarly textual sources uniformly describe cornices as "plastered" when specifying the material applied to exterior coved eaves transitions (e.g., Richie, Kornwolf, Murtagh, Schiffer, Tinkcom & Simon). It is clear that there is no consensus among the academic community endorsing the use of the terms "plaster" and "stucco" based merely on interior or exterior applications. {b} Compare the lath-nailing system of the George Douglass house, where concave brackets are suspended from the sides of the cantilevered attic-floor joists [see Image #6] projecting beyond the top of the rubble segment of the wall, and are footed on the projecting upper surface of the squared and dressed sandstone blocks forming the top course of the "ashlar" façade. [Image #6, photo "GD cove brackets 2", 8/23/13]. Images #7 & #8, Photos 2950 and 2951, 7/12/13 show surviving plaster fragments of the early cove cornice on the Douglass house [Images #9 & #17]. The convex view in Image #7 clearly shows the thin plaster "keys" which extruded through the narrow gaps between lath, securing the finished cornice in the coved profile established by the brackets. {c} earlier: "sealed", typically with board sheathing. The nail holes in the coved joist-ends of the c. 1805 addition to the 1753 Keim house are spaced differently from those on the early house, indicating that the two cornices, though approximately conformed in dimension and cove radius, were applied in different periods, probably separated chronologically by the approximately half century between the 1753 house and the Federal-era addition project. Therefore, the two cornice segments, though jointed in some manner when the addition's cornice was plastered, never formed a monolithic concave band across the contiguous eaves of the two house-blocks. Unless the cornices were re-plastered contemporaneously in a later period [of which there is no evidence], they were never unified in a single plastering campaign. The current [2013] restoration program relates only to the 1753 house, including its cornice. The coved plaster cornice on the c. 1805-10 addition will be considered for a future restoration campaign. One of the earliest cove cornices in the Philadelphia region appeared on the three bay pre-Georgian Anglo-Pennsylvania Chalkley [Letitia Street] house (c. 1703-1715; see Tatum, Penn's Great Town, plate 6, and Fig. 2 in Smith, Two centuries of Philadelphia Architecture, 1700-1900, offprint, pp. 291-303, from Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, vol. 43, Part 1, March, 1953, which describes the cornice as constructed of wood), built in central Philadelphia and since 1883 situated on its re-located site in Fairmount Park. Smith's "Two Centuries" paper notes in footnote 6, p. 290, "three houses with pent roof and cove cornice"…[on] Cuthbert Street in Philadelphia. Another early Philadelphia house with a cove cornice, "that would become so typical of the Delaware Valley" [Kornwolf, Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial North America, Vol. Two, p. 1223], is the surviving two story, five-bay "Bellaire", c. 1714-1729, an early Georgian plan-form with English Baroque decorative elements, and built for the prominent Quaker Mayor of Philadelphia and Provincial Treasurer, Samuel Preston [see Worldly Goods, p. 84, Phila. Museum of Art, 1999]. The "High Street" [2d and Market] "Greater" Meeting House, built c. 1695 and re-built in 1755, and the old Court House/Town Hall across the street from it, also featured full-perimeter ["encircling"] coved and plastered eaves cornices in their early periods [see Tatum, op cit., plate 8]. A five-bay brick house, the 1730 William Miller house in Avondale, Chester County, PA, prominently boasts another "encircling" plastered cove cornice, added at the attic floor level when the third story was erected in 1771 [Schiffer, Survey of Chester County, Pennsylvania, Architecture, 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries, page 61, Image # 19, photo miller cove cornice]. It is not clear whether a cove cornice appeared on the first-period house at the original 2d story eaves level. Another four-range cove cornice, restored in 1950, appears on Wright's Ferry Mansion, Columbia, Lancaster County, PA, built in 1738 with roughly coursed limestone "rubble" and hybridized by some Germanic details for the Quaker "Renaissance woman" Susannah Wright. Yet another Quaker structure with a most imposing surrounding cornice, described as a "concave, plastered support," above roughly coursed rubble walls and segmental brick "relieving" arches, is the 1768-1769 Buckingham Friends Meeting House in Bucks County, PA [see photo and caption at pp. 64-65 of Stone Houses… Bucks County and Brandywine Valley by Richie, Milner, and Huber (2005)]. It seems reasonable to infer from the early Philadelphia-area examples cited, (and some in West Jersey) that immigrant plasterers from England, who probably received training and experience in the post-fire English Baroque tradition{d}, would have been familiar with and probably influenced by 16th and 17th century specimens of prominent plastered coved cornices in their homeland. Such traditions would have been preserved and transmitted within the British building trades within the prevailing and ancient master-journeyman-apprentice system under the auspices of craft Guilds devoted to the "art and mystery" [craft methods and trade secrets] of each artisan group. Plastered cove cornices, some on half-timbered town-houses with curvilinear plastered eaves-panels, appear on substantial houses in 16th and 17th century England. Examples would include half-timbered 16th century structures Congleton, and Moreton Old Hall, both in Chesire, and a dormered three and a half story Town House in Bisley Street, Painswick, and the symmetrical three-bay pre-Georgian house in Lechlade, also in Gloucestershire. These antecedents, graciously brought to the Trust's attention through the scholarship of Joe Kindig III of York County, would have provided an abundance of prototypes for emigrant plasterers re-settling in Penn's distant colony, and their protégés. Examples from the late half-timber period appear in photographs published in British Bouquet, An Epicurean Tour of Britain (1963) by noted architectural photographer and etcher Samuel Chamberlain [images #10, 11, and 12]. {d} This tradition included numerous variants and applications, in architecture and decorative arts, of the "C-scroll" motif and the Renaissance (originally Roman) versions of the "cavetto" moulding profile. The National Register application on behalf of the c. 1698-1700 Reynolds house in Bristol, RI describes "an original plaster cove cornice" as "a rare survivor following late seventeenth century English precedents". Several plastered cove cornices in New England and the southern tier of the mid-Atlantic states are recorded in HABS and National Register records. An impressive concentration of houses with coved lath-and-plaster cornices, some with shed-form roofs ["pent eaves"] across the gable walls and most constructed in the 1740s, appeared in German Township, later the Germantown wards of northern Philadelphia but then an independent community established by a Penn grant 10 miles north of Philadelphia in the late 17th century. Notable among these are the earlier (of two) Gorgas ("Monastery") house, 1746-47 [see image #13, photo #gorgas], and the earlier (of two) Daniel Pastorius house [1748, image #14, photo #3402], later known as the Green Tree Inn. Other mid-18th-century stone houses in Germantown with plastered cove cornices include the early 18th-century De La Plaine house [demolished 1885], which was gambrel-roofed and dormered (wounded Civil War veteran John Richard's lithographic Plate X); and the (Van Lauchet) Weygandt house (Richard's Plate XXX , also gambrel-roofed, with an asymmetric street façade. Plate XLVI also suggests a coved cornice on the dormered section of the house on Thorp's Lane, near the site of Weber's and Thorp's Mill. Richard's detailed drawings were published as lithographic reproductions by the Pennsylvania German Society in Vol. XXIII of its "Proceedings", Lancaster (1915), in the essay and plate collection called "Quaint Old Germantown." The design currents and craft proficiencies producing the coved plaster cornices in the Philadelphia region in the earliest decades of the 18th century reached Germantown by 1740, and appeared in more remote northerly settlements by the middle of the 18th century, as exemplified by the cornices at Pottsgrove [1752], Keim [1753], Eshelman [Lancaster County, 1759], Abraham Landis [Lancaster County, 1763], and George Douglass [Amity Township, Berks County, 1765]. The most prominent "backcountry" house with plastered cove-profile cornices (and an English Baroque-influence re-constructed door-hood) is John Potts' "Pottsgrove" mansion [image #15, photo #265, 9/11/12], built a year or two before the Jacob Keim house, and about 12 years prior to the 1765 George Douglass house, which displays a cornice quite probably influenced by Pottsgrove, though in a more attenuated and vernacular interpretation of this and other design details. The Pottsgrove cornice is plastered on lath nailed to coved brackets scribed and "sistered" to the coved ends of the attic floor joists projected through the top courses of the walls. This system and its lath nailing pattern for the early plaster cornice, differing from the coved joists at the Keim house and the suspended brackets at the George Douglass house, can be viewed at Pottsgrove via a strategically placed mirror through a window in a second floor chamber, as the brackets and a coved plaster segment are now sheltered by the "ell" addition constructed c. 1820 and butted against the original 1752 house. This group of houses--Pottsgrove, Douglass, and the earlier Germantown structures--all feature coved cornices framed by crown and bed mouldings above a coursed and dressed "Georgian" façade. The Keim house departs from this essentially Pennsylvania-Georgian design approach, lacking the evenly coursed ashlar block-work and central passage façade-symmetry of most of the other houses cited. The 1753 Keim house also apparently omitted a traditionally moulded "crown" piece forming the outer (and upper) termination of the plaster cove. The restored top trim board will be beaded and finished with a chamfered "drip-edge." A slightly later (c.1768) pre-Revolution structure with several design details in common with the Keim house is the Bethlehem Widow's house depicted as plate 45 in Murtagh, Moravian Architecture and Town Planning, p. 87, and Brumbaugh, Colonial Architecture of the Pennsylvania Germans, plates 76 and 79 [captioned "Moravian Seminary"]. Although the Widow's House is laid-up in courses, is symmetrical on its principal elevation, and is dormered, both it and the Keim house (as well as the Buckingham Meeting House cited above) "relieve" the rectilinear geometry of their fenestration openings with segmental brick arches, and refine their eaves transitions with coved plaster cornices arcing between bed- and crown-mouldings. The 1753 Keim house is undoubtedly one of the few random rubble structures in the region (perhaps a unique example) with a three-room Germanic floor plan, asymmetric eaves-wall fenestration, a coved plaster eaves cornice, a stone-arched cellar doorway, and a cantilevered balcony [to be reconstructed] above the end-bay ["side-passage"] doorway. Two Lancaster County Germanic-Georgian houses with mixed characteristics and "encircling" coved plaster eaves cornices are: A. the 1759 house in Conestoga Township, Lancaster County, PA constructed for Mennonites Benedict and Anna (Stehman) Eshelman [cfr. photo and floor plan in Falk, Architecture and Artifacts of the Pennsylvania Germans (2008), pp. 144-145]. Unlike the Keim House's emblematic three-chamber stove room ["stube"] plan, the Eshelman house includes a slightly off-center walled passage and rear stair-hall, and four rooms on the first floor, the larger pair (kitchen and stove-room) to the left of the hallway. The Eshelman façade is laid up in coursed and roughly dressed block-work and a full perimeter rubble course between first and second story windows, indicating that an early ceiled pent roof had been removed, an inference further affirmed by a projecting flashing course and outlooker remnants, apparently truncated when the pent was removed; and B. The Abraham Landis house in East Lampeter Township, c. 1763 [Lestz, Lancaster County Architecture, 1700-1850, p. 54, photo]. Other Keim House Details include: 19th-century roofed porch [Image #1], replaced by the "L" form two range porch in the 1930s; second floor balcony [to be re-constructed in 2013-14], framed onto cantilevered "outlookers"; flashing ("drip") course for earlier pent roof (removed, presumably to make way for the porch roof shown in this record). Note the absence of porch or evidence for porch on west gable wall; the L-form 20th-century porch succeeding this one is depicted in record KPH4--1002.01.009. A history of this 19th century porch and its 1930s successor, removed in 2011, and related photographs and other images appears in archive record KR11PH3--1002.01.092. The vertical separation between the "flashing" course (which sheltered the joint between the original pent roof and the eaves wall) and the top of the porch roof shingles in these "vintage" photos appears to have been approximately 12-14 inches. With this separation, the flashing course did little to prevent precipitation from penetrating the joint between the pent roof and eaves wall, gradually and inevitably eroding or rotting the rafters and lathing of the porch roof. Signs of such decay were evident on removal of the early 20th century porch rafters and other framing members. Laurence Ward, 2011; updated February, 2021
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18 chronological photos of the December, 2009 restoration of a distended, de-laminated, and destabilized segment of DeTurk east eaves wall above the kitchen cellar doorway. Details shown in this series include exposed end-grain of first floor joists; tiered pair of oak relieving plates, one a joist-bearing ["leveling"] plank, the other a member relieving plates "carrying" wall and roof loads across door and window openings and embedded in wall above doorway lintel; masonry openings for hood outlookers; several generations of bonding and pointing mortar; dismantled core of random-rubble masonry wall segment; and the technique and sequence applied in replicating the positions and bonding patterns of the restored stonework. This series of photos shows the masons dismantling and resetting the roughly arched 15-cubic-foot segment of stonework above the ground-level cellar-kitchen doorway in December, 2009. This wall section, between the lintel and the first floor window sill above, had become destabilized, bowed outward from the plumb wall-plane, and slightly delaminated. It had undoubtedly been re-worked, probably more than once, when the doorway was raised incrementally as the brick-paved cellar floor was filled-in by several generations of occupants [see Field Notes drawing DTR09FN3--1001.01.176]. Photo DTR09PH106--1001.01.202 shows the later [and poorly color-matched] pointing in the unstable, pre-restoration wall range. The five "pockets" [or “sockets”] in horizontal alignment in masonry joints under the window in photo DTR09PH106--1001.01.202 were cut-in for lath supports ["rafters"] for the non-original shed-form hood appearing over the kitchen doorway for most of the last century, as seen in numerous 20th-century photos in this archive, including several HABS photos. These photos show experienced restoration masons carefully resetting the exterior layer of stones in the same relative positions as they occupied prior to restoration by laying the stones on the ground [photos with captions beginning 1622, 1624, & 1629] in their wall-position configuration, except that they are "face-down" while on the ground. The stones are then "backed" into position and laid-up in a plumb vertical alignment with respect to the stable plane of the contiguous ranges of the wall. This helps assure that the wall will remain well integrated, stable and "in compression. " {1} Structural efficiency of the wall under the normal stresses from compressive, oblique, and eccentric loads and thrusts acting through it is optimized by carefully packing ["mudding-in"] bed mortar into all voids and gaps between stones, which were selected and masoned [cut or "hewn"] to fit into the spaces available and mitigate movement within the wall as it is laid-up. This process, when conceived and executed by masons experienced in the traditional techniques, creates a virtually monolithic wall mass which supports and neutralizes "dead" and "live" compressive and tensile loads, stresses, and thrusts imposed on the structure. The redundancy{2} of this system includes keying ["toothing"] stones from one vertical segment [“wythes”] of a wall to adjacent wall layers, reciprocally buttressing and binding at masonry quoin corners, and the corbelling of stone layers and courses in a wall range. The cantilevered "corbel-arch" formed by the stones remaining in place [photos #1632 & 1635] is an example of structural redundancy sufficient to temporarily support the wall mass above the cavity during the restoration process. This "over-built" quality is essential to the survival and durability of "random"{3} rubble masonry structures. Record DTR09PH112--1001.01.208 shows and describes the de-constructed wall segment and its exposed details. Photo #1954 shows a restored view of this wall segment prior to repointing, which was completed in 2010. FOOTNOTES: {1} In general terms, stable "compression" is maintained when the net force vectors ("lines of force") from gravitational, oblique, and variable loads, are confined to the central core ("middle third") of a wall. {2} In modern structural engineering terminology, "redundancy" denotes the supplemental configurations and components introduced into a structure to reinforce or compensate for primary stabilizing elements which might become stressed to the point of failure ["strained"]. The term is used in the vernacular context of the DeTurk house to collectively define the integrated components, which compensate for potential inadequacies in the materials, design, and/or construction methods intended to provide primary structural equilibrium in timber-frame randon rubble stone buildings. In timber-framed random rubble masonry, examples of such redundancy include thick wall sections, natural and fabricated "footings" wider than the foundation’s thickness, corbels, reciprocating corner "quoins", "summer" beams, embedded wall beams ["spreader" plates], relieving arches, tie-beams and oversized or excessive timber bracing, among others. {3} "Random" only in laying up the wall with stones of varying sizes and shapes without regard to establishing horizontal courses; decidedly not "random" in the sense of indiscriminate selection and placement and mortaring of stones in the wall. Random rubble masonry thus conforms to the traditional definition of stone "masonry" as the skilled and efficient selection, shaping and joining of stones into walls, arches, and other structures. Laurence Ward, 2009, updated April 2021 and September, 2022.
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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
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