USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Middlefield > History of the town of Middlefield, Massachusetts > Part 12
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Looked at directly from in front the gambrel-roofed house suggested heaviness but from any angle which showed the side it was and is charmingly picturesque. In most of the Middlefield examples the gambrel feature appeared on both front and rear but in one early house the long sloping rear roof, carried down to the first story, made its appearance.17 The dormer windows in the above house are recent additions, they seem not to have been known among the hill-builders of the eighteenth century. The two types just discussed were confined to the smaller houses, and the earlier ones. Only one aberrant example is found of a gambrel house built as late as 1810.
The farmer who felt more ambitious or had greater means early replaced his log hut with a farmhouse of a more spacious
" The summer residence of Mrs. W. A. Pearson. (1924) page 99. 15 Dwelling of Willis B. Graves. (1924)
= See page 534.
17 House of Jesse Pelkey. (1924) See page 46.
HOUSE BUILT BY AMBROSE CHURCH HOUSE OF ELI CROWELL
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HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
type, the two-story, gabled house which stands in tradition as the typical New England farmhouse. Architecturally these houses are perhaps less attractive to modern eyes than the single- story, gabled houses or the gambrel-roofed, but to their builders they represented a higher stage of comfort and, presumably of elegance. As a rule the pitch of their roof was not so acute as that of the single-story house, and, as all the architectural world is aware, they generally limited any external ornament to the decorated front door. There is something rather bare and barn-like in their lines, at times, but they are capable, under the shadow of fine trees and attractive surroundings of pre- senting a simple dignity, and to the real New Englander their whole aspect breaths solidity and rural comfort. There is one of the earliest houses of this type still surviving almost unchanged in its external features. This was the first important house at the Center,18 built by Joseph Blush about 1783, and used as a tavern by Oliver Blush, 1792-1827 and by Oliver Smith, 2nd, 1831-1833. The wing must be nearly as old as the main body of the house. The door cut in the corner is commonly associated in tradition with the fact that the House was an Inn and the door in question was to give direct access to the taproom from the street, leaving the other doors for visitors of a different sort.
Another house19 of this kind, superior in some respects to the Blush Tavern is standing on the North Road, about two miles from the Center, also known to have served as a tavern. It was built by Green Church for Captain Alexander Dickson about 1802 and furnished rooms and food for travelers on the Albany Road for a generation. The picture shows the usual corner door, cut into the taproom, and gives some idea of the handsome fan- light front door. Unfortunately this well built and still solid house has been virtually abandoned and seems destined to early ruin when once the elements get the opportunity to penetrate its roof or windows.
Green Church, the builder of this house, continued his activity into the next period and at a time when new forms of house decoration and planning were entering Middlefield he repeated the primitive farmhouse lines with fidelity to his earlier ideals.
18 See page 40.
10 Where Mr. Wanzer lived. See page 49.
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In 1834, for instance, he built for his brother, William Church, Jr., a house20 on the West Hill which still stands, an excellent example of the original type of farmhouse. There is another house21 also, on the North Road, built in 1827 for another Dick- son, James Dickson, Jr., which, like the Church house on the West Hill is a perfect example of the early spirit and one is tempted to find here also, the hand of Green Church, who had built the Alexander Dickson house on the same road.
The David Mack house,22 one of the earliest in the community, built in 1781 and believed to be the oldest frame house in town, and still standing firmly on the southwestern brow of the high- est part of the ridge, is of this type, but it has been considerably modified by later rebuilding as the picture on page 73 shows. The nature of the cornice is such as to reveal a later addition, and the pitch of the roof is rather higher than was customary in the first farmhouses. The front door, too, has the moldings and proportions of the '30's and '40's. The two chimneys are, of course, a later modification. Since the photograph in the text was taken the Mack house has been still farther altered so as to meet the taste of its present owner, by having additional win- dows cut, receiving a piazza and undergoing a considerable shifting of the interior partitions. Nevertheless, the original frame and dimensions stand the same as when the deacon erected it, a monument to the sound construction of those days.
Another example of this most characteristic form of house is the house23 built by Calvin Smith, about 1788 on the Ridgepole Road, noteworthy, like the Dickson Tavern, for its front door. It also has a side door, and this may indicate that it was a tavern. At the foot of Ridgepole Road, on the meadows of the Den stream stands still another fine example of this type, the house2+ built by Jesse Wright in 1810, still preserving the good propor- tions of roof and door, although a trifle too regular in the spac- ing of windows to satisfy the highest demands. Still another, little changed on the exterior, although deprived of its original
20 Dwelling of Mr. Drozd. (1924)
21 Summer house of Judge Birnie. (1924)
"2 Summer home of Rev. John Brittan Clark of Washington, D. C. (1924)
- Dwelling of Frank A. Cottrell. (1924) See page 93.
24 Dwelling of W. E. Prew. (1924) See page 126.
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HOUSE OF MATTHEW SMITH, JR.
HOUSE OF ALPHEUS RUSSELL
HOUSE OF JESSE WRIGHT HOUSE OF ISRAEL PEASE
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chimney, is the house25 built by Matthew Smith, about 1820 on Windsor Street. And another is the house26 built by Alpheus Russell in 1802 or Solomon Root later and now joined to a dwelling built some years before by Daniel Chapman. This junction may have been made at a later time and, in connection with it, the present position of the main body of the house, with its gable to the road, is an exceedingly uncommon location for the first decade of the century. The house bears evidence also of rehandling in other respects but seems to be genuinely one of the early period.
A house27 of this type bearing marks of primitive construction somewhat obscured by commonplace and mechanical later "im- provements" is one on the "Ridgepole Road" built by Israel Pease at some time during his long residence on this farm about 1789. The two side doors on the south side are interesting fea- tures suggesting use of the house as a tavern, although there is no record of any such status. Behind the house may be caught a glimpse of the remarkable collection of unrelated and discon- nected barns and farm buildings which, placed at all sorts of angles, made this farm a byword for a "cluttered" appearance in the later years of the nineteenth century.
There is another type of farmhouse which, more than any of the preceding forms suggests to the present day observer elegance and refinement of line, namely the hip-roofed houses. Probably no form of "colonial" house has been more admired or studied and none is more generally imitated by modern architects, owing to the opportunities for subtle balance of proportion. Especially does this type flourish in Connecticut and in the Connecticut Valley, to which it undoubtedly came from England where the prototypes exist in many English country and city houses. Middlefield has not many of these.
A good example is that of Uriah Church, Jr., in the Factory Village. Built by Ambrose Church in 1814, it is sparingly decorated by a narrow frieze of triglyph-like moldings, and the front doorway has side pilasters and overhead moldings of a similar character. As the picture shows it is now disfigured by
25 Where Richard Sweeney lives. (1924) See page 126.
26 Dwelling of G. E. Cook. (1924) See page 126.
27 Owned by Frank Chipman. (1924) See page 126.
HOUSE OF CAPT. TIMOTHY MCELWAIN HOUSE OF ITHAMAR PELTON HOUSE OF URIAII CHURCHI, JR.
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a piazza whose posts bear "ginger-bread work" of the most of- fensive kind, and by a front door of the '60's or later, but the proportions of the house are excellent and the spacing of the windows harmonious, bearing testimony to the good taste of the "Yankee genius" who built it. Another example, standing in excellent condition is that of Walter Smith but this was built late in the period (about 1823) and shows signs of rough con- struction about the front door and too mechanical regularity in the spacing of the windows. It is, however, exceedingly well preserved and has suffered less than the Church house from modifications at the hands of builders of the black-walnut era.
The most interesting house28 of this sort has but recently fallen into ruin, the house built by Ithamar Pelton, which was noteworthy for the richness of its exterior woodwork, on the cornice, and in its pilaster-like moldings at the angles and in its elaborate doorway, a photograph of which is here given. It dates from somewhere between 1788 and 1800 in all probability.
Another hip-roof house very early in its construction was that of Timothy McElwain which was square or nearly so in plan and approximates the familiar "colonial mansion" type of the Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts seaport towns. Here we find one of the best preserved "Georgian" buildings anywhere in Middlefield. This house, built in 1797, has the characteristic proportions of the period, decorations on the shal- low cornice and about the front door, and also has one of the side doors commonly associated with the taverns of the early nineteenth century. Occupied constantly by members of the McElwain family for a century and a quarter it has been pre- served with a loving care and reverence that has kept it in a perfection scarcely matched in any other Middlefield house.
The fact that Pelton and McElwain both came from East Had- dam, the location of the two houses on the same road about a mile apart, and certain resemblances in the treatment of the two exteriors leads to the conjecture that Pelton may have been in charge of the construction. If so, that would account for the superiority of this house as an example of early construction.
And finally there should be mentioned a house29 of the tra-
28 Last occupied by the Chamberlain family.
29 Dwelling of Arthur D. Pease. See page 40.
DOOR OF ITHAMAR PELTON'S HOUSE
DOOR OF JAMES DICKSON, JR.'S, HOUSE
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ditional tavern type which, throughout New England, appears at cross roads facing two ways and so constructed as to have an "L" plan. Enos Blossom, innkeeper, appears as living on this site in 1780 and he sold or exchanged this farm with Ebenezer Selden in 1792. The house must have been built between these dates and from its appearance and details it is evidently one of the oldest houses in town. In its roof we find a mingled hip and gable construction and in each face we see the treatment usually given to the single front of an ordinary farmhouse.
Throughout the buildings of these primitive types one form of interior arrangement prevailed with such uniformity as to suggest its proved adaptation to New England hill-town condi- tions. The front door opened on a narrow rectangular hall, from which a tiny winding stairway mounted to the second floor. On the right and the left were two square rooms each with a fireplace opening into the central chimney. The rear half of the house contained an oblong room behind the chimney entered through either of the front square rooms, and possessing an enormous fireplace furnished in the original state with brick or soapstone ovens. This was the kitchen, dining-room and living- room. At each end of it were one or two smaller rooms, pantries and downstairs bedrooms. A stairway led to the rear of the second story. Thus the large kitchen-living-room was protected on every side but one from the outside cold and was the one, thoroughly defensible place in the house in the severest winter weather.
In many of these houses the enormous chimney which was the sole method of heating the whole, still stands and gives openings to one great fireplace in the combined kitchen and living-room and four or even more smaller fireplaces in the larger bedrooms. When stoves, the so-called air-tight, sheet-iron stoves, were intro- duced these fireplaces were usually boarded up but they still remain hidden away in the older houses. Around the chimneys were opportunities for queer narrow or shallow closets. In such a house as the McElwain house, (page 128) we find this arrange- ment existing untouched and the enormous chimney and fire- places scarcely disturbed, but in many, otherwise perfectly pre- served, this chimney has been taken down and replaced by a smaller one into which the stoves of the mid-nineteenth century
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ran their pipes, more efficient doubtless than were the old fire- places, but painfully lacking in the elements of beauty.
It is obvious that this arrangement was inapplicable to a house that faced southward, for in that case the protected living-room would face the north and would be wholly cut off from any sun- light. It was somewhat trying to a house facing eastward for no sunlight could penetrate the living-room until afternoon and the chilling west winds would beat directly upon the exterior. In one house,30 that of John Smith, the arrangement was pre- served by making the house rather deep from front to rear and having the living-room flanked by its smaller rooms on the north and west sides of the structure, while two large rooms occupied the southern half.
At the present time practically every one of the old houses shows an ell projecting toward the rear, in which the modern kitchen is placed. In most cases it can be seen that this is an addition, constructed when the advent of kitchen stoves rendered the primitive built-in ovens obsolete, but in several cases the wing shows signs of being as old as the rest of the house. These are the three hip-roofed houses, on opposite sides of the town- ship, those of Uriah Church, 1814, in Factory Village; of Asa Smith, 1823, in the Smith Hollow; of Pelton on the Summit of the Ridge and the gambrel house built by Amasa Graves after 1782. Here we find a different internal plan, for instead of the great central chimney there are two chimneys whose sole func- tions are to warm the front rooms on the two floors. The hall- way, instead of being a mere entry confronted by a small stair- way, runs through the house from front to back while the rooms on either side at the rear seem far too small to serve for kitchen and dining-room. The wing seems to have been necessary from the beginning to provide adequate space for kitchen, dining-room and living-room.
As might be expected these men built according to the custo- mary forms and habits. But one or two builders among them appear to have had sufficient individuality to construct a pair of unusual and rather peculiar houses. There stand on the North Road, about a mile from the Center, two houses not far apart whose front elevation presents the anomaly of a lower story pro-
20 Where Jesse Pelkey now lives. (1924) See page 46.
HOUSE OF URIAH CHURCH
HOUSE OF DEA. JOHN NEWTON
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HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
jecting about two feet farther than the upper story. In the rear one house has a plain vertical wall of the usual kind, but the other has a gambrel roof.
There is no certainty as to which is the older. It is known that the house31 with a gable roof was built by Uriah Church, some- where about 1794, and the interior of the house remains to the present day very much as it originally was, with great chim- ney, enormous kitchen fireplace and all the interior arrangements according to the prevailing plan. On the exterior, moldings of the classic type of 1840 have been applied, but whatever rebuild- ing the house may have undergone, there is nothing to show that, the projecting lower story was not original. The other house32 may be later in date but no definite time has been found. It was .built by John Newton before 1800, in all probability, and if the external appearance of the house is a trustworthy indication, its peculiar roof was built from the start in its existing mongrel form. Although there is nothing to show that the builders of the two houses were connected, nor that the owners had anything in common, the fact that these two stand near together and that, unlike in all other respects, they have this one similarity of a projecting lower story strongly suggests copying. One is in- clined to surmise that Newton concocted his mixed half-gambrel arrangement after having seen how well the Church construc- tion looked. One can only hope that the extra lighting he gained in his second story compensated him for the ugliness of the roof he built.
Among the houses at the Center is one33 which is clearly primi- tive in its construction but has oddities in the location of its windows, and of its chimney, not in the center, and in the ap- pearance of vertical beams in the middle of each end. This house is, in fact, a small primitive house, only one room deep, which was enlarged by building on a rear half and constructing a roof of the usual type over old and new parts. The two parts of the house are very imperfectly fused inside and the junction line is marked by the appearance of a vertical joint on the outside, but the total appearance is that of one of the early farmhouses. The
31 Where Arthur Gardner now lives. (1924)
32 Where Mrs. Sternagle lives. (1924)
33 Where Miss Sarah Chamberlain lives. (1924) See page 508.
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EARLY FARMHOUSES AND THEIR BUILDERS
original part was built by Ambrose Church between 1810-20, the enlargement made by Deacon Alexander Ingham in 1828. The house then had a wing on the west side, occupied by the deacon's tailor shop, which for many years was also the town post office.
In the interiors of these houses there was of course much va- riety. Most were of the plainest; simple plastered walls and bare fireplaces; but many of them had panelling and interior woodwork that showed the skill of the old New England car- penter to the full. Quite frequently one or both of the lower front rooms were decorated with wainscoting and a broad stretch of panelling about the fireplace. Such is found, for instance in the Blush Tavern of 1783 and in the Dickson Tavern on the North Road, which also had plaster ornamentation on the ceil- ings of the two downstairs rooms. Sliding inside shutters are also found in many houses, now wholly unused.
What is impressed upon the observer is the fact that these farmhouses were built wholly for indoor living and were planned mainly with a view for defense against winter cold. The com- pact ground plans, the great chimneys, the fireplaces, the ar- rangement of the living-room with only one side exposed to the wind all show that the concentration of warmth and exclusion of cold air was the principal concern of the builders. The piazza, the portico, features familiar in the South, were wholly unknown in these first houses, although in the nineteenth century the piazza not infrequently was added along the rear ell, and in the most recent times was placed along the front as several of the pictures already shown make clear. The "summer kitchen," a room less hermetically sealed than the original kitchen, also made an addition to its appearance, indicating a greater con- sideration of the housewife's comfort in June to August than was apparently possible in the earliest days.
But with all their concern for physical comfort and warmth in their houses, the early builders of Middlefield bringing Con- necticut habits with them, failed to take precautions against win- ter hardship when building their barns. The settlers in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in many, perhaps most cases, constructed their barns in such wise that they were connected with the house by a wood shed or other outhouse but the Massa- chusetts and Connecticut farmers preferred to build their chief
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HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
barn at some distance from the house, very commonly across the road. Only the woodhouse was joined on, usually at the end of the ell. Hence it was necessary in the freezing winds or blinding snow of the dead of the winter, to flounder through drifts, or totter across icy roads and slopes to the barn, bearing milk pails home exposed to the full force of the storm. In the rare cases where a barn is found connected with a farmhouse it is usually only a "horse-barn" or stable, not the main "cow-barn" and the junction is the result of late construction. The Blush Tavern, for instance, (page 40) 1783 has a barn connected with the house through the woodshed, but this was not done until 1867 when Ambrose Newton, then the owner, bought a discarded school- house and moved it into position to provide a carriage house and stable.
Later observers, visiting the hills to enjoy the beauty of field and roadside, forest and sky, have generally criticized the way in which the early builders placed the farm and barnyard "right in the view." It may be doubted, however, whether the settlers of Middlefield spent much time considering the landscape, for the love of New England scenery was a cult rather far in the future in 1780-1812. Only a few pioneers34 were beginning to expound to their readers, the real charm and grandeur in what most farmers thought of chiefly as rough ground. Of the houses men- tioned in this chapter probably two thirds originally had their barn across the road and not far away, although sufficiently dis- tant to make the memory of winter excursions to milk the cows in the early morning when a blizzard was raging, no pleasant dream.
A word might be added about the barns, which so far as the main ones were concerned, were of a practically uniform type. Similar in proportions to the larger farmhouses they were en- tered by a large door in the side, practically never through the end, and had cow stalls on one side of the main floor, while the rest of the barn was devoted to storing hay for the long months of indoor feeding of the cattle. Only in rare cases were the barns painted. As a rule they were left to weather to a granite- like gray. Some of the houses, it would appear, were also left to weather the same tint, but most of them were painted white,
34 Such as Timothy Dwight.
LOOKING NORTHEAST FROM THE MCELWAIN FARM BARN ACROSS THE ROAD. MATTHEW SMITH FARM
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HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
occasionally red, and not infrequently both, the white covering the front and the two ends, the red being confined to the rear, away from the main road. This custom persisted in some cases far down into the nineteenth century.
But the most important house of all has not yet been men- tioned-the meetinghouse-which for the New England town represented the culmination of architectural ambition. How the early settlers of Middlefield solved the problems of location and erection of their house of worship has already been shown, but the history of the structure itself, which underwent a number of changes while remaining for over a century on the ledge at the Center, is of considerable interest.
As completed in 1791, the meetinghouse was a plain, barn-like building, standing north and south, with its long side toward the county highway. There was a large door in the middle of the east side and small ones on the north and south ends. The build- ing was lighted by two rows of windows, the upper ones opening into the gallery which ran around the south, east and north sides of the auditorium. For nearly thirty years it remained thus, - little being expended upon decoration and ornament.
In 1819, when a bell was needed, a tower was erected at the north end of the meetinghouse, surmounted by a belfry and a spire. Upon the latter a gilded, wooden weather vane was placed. The tower was entered by an outside door on the east and also by a door from the auditorium. Although there are no pictures of the meetinghouse at this period, it has been possible to obtain from the memories of those who recalled it enough de- tails to warrant the accompanying pictorial reconstruction. Some contradictory evidence has been gathered as to whether the belfry was open or closed, and whether the spire was tall or short, or existed at all, but since the consensus of opinion favors an open belfry surmounted by a spire, these features have been incorporated in the restoration.35
Since this description shows that the church was one of a type not at all uncommon in the eighteenth century in the Connecticut Valley, the restoration has been drawn with the fact in mind. In the work on Some Old Time Meetinghouses of the Connecticut Valley by C. A. Wright, 1911, numerous drawings and photo-
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