Agenda - 01-19-1993 - VIII-H - Laserfiche WebLink

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Five retain some degree of antebellum integrity, but the Lloyd-Rogers House and the Patterson House have undergone a great deal of alteration. Three of the group, the Smith-Cole House, the Lloyd-Rogers House, and the Patterson House, are two-story center passage houses that symbolize the grand plantation house in scale and design. The Sam Couch House is a more compact two-story hall-and-parlor house, and the Williams House is a 1 1/2 story hall-and-parlor house. Rather than assuming that the township had a number of plantation houses that have been demolished, it is more likely that there were very few antebellum farmers that had sufficient cash to construct a fine frame house. Production of a frame house would have been far more labor-intensive than the erection of a log house, which was a community undertaking utilizing tree trunks. The two best-preserved antebellum frame houses in the township are the Smith- Cole House and the Sam Couch House. The Smith-Cole House on Smith Level Road was the seat of a huge plantation owned by three Smith siblings who were raised in Hillsborough. One brother was a doctor, one a lawyer, and the sister kept house. The house, built in 1845, stands virtually unaltered. It is a double pile Federal style house, a conservative design for the 1840s when the Greek Revival style was in vogue. The exterior has high quality and stylish though dated features. It is one of the few early houses in the township with chimneys constructed completely of brick, instead primarily of fieldstone. It has molded cornice boards, raking cornices with pattern boards, and original porch classical style porch posts. The interior is surprisingly bare and simple, with plaster walls, a simple wainscot in the hall, extremely simple Greek Revival style mantels and a boxy stair. It appears that the interior was finished off some years after the house was built, and perhaps not as finely as had originally been intended. The Sam Couch House was built about 1848 and is a single-pile hall-and-parlor house, therefore considerably smaller and less architecturally pretentious than the Smith-Cole House. It also has a one-story shed porch across the front, and its exterior end chimneys are constructed completely of brick. The front and rear windows have Greek Revival style cornerblock surrounds, found on only one other house in the township, the Smyth House. The interior has wood sheathed walls, simple Greek Revival mantels and doors, and an enclosed corner stair rising from the hall to the second floor bedrooms. The Lloyd-Rogers House is a substantial single-pile, center passage house that has lost its integrity due to twentieth century alterations. It retains one unique feature for the township in that it is built on a raised brick basement. Root cel- lars are a common feature beneath log and frame houses in the township, but this is the only house with a raised basement.