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

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The Patterson House is a double-pile, center passage antebellum house built by a family that owned vast acreage as well as the now demolished Patterson Grist Mill, but Colonial Revival renovations, probably in the 1920s or later, have obscured the original design of the house. The tripartite Federal style mantels may be original, but it is likely that the Adamesque trim and arched niches flank- ing the fireplace in the parlor are Colonial Revival. The Log House Approximately fifty, almost one-third, of the 160 recorded properties in the township are log houses. This high percentage is surprising, but even more sur- prising is the fact that, with the exception of several Craftsman style log houses of the 1920s-1930s, all of these are the same house form: one-room with a loft. This house type has a side gable roof, a gable end chimney of fieldstone with a brick stack, and a front and rear door. The logs are square-hewn, notched at the corners, most often with V-notching, but sometimes with half- dovetail or diamond notching. The interior generally has an enclosed corner stair to the loft. In several of the smaller log houses, there is a ladder stair to the loft. The exterior log walls are sometimes weatherboarded, but surprisingly often have remained uncovered. There is always a front and rear door, and al- most always several windows, usually with 6/6 sash or 4/4 double-hung sash. The smallest log house that was measured is 13 1/2 by 17 1/2 feet [OR 389: Reeves House] and the largest measured is 20'8" by 24 ' 7" [OR 434 Sam & Laura Nunn House]. The earliest construction date that can be documented is the 1827 date carved into the chimney of the Craig-Strayhorn-Blackwood House [OR 457], although the Craig-Blackwood House [OR 452] is said to have been built in 1811 . The latest documented log house is the Sam and Laura Nunn House, built about 1905, although OR 404 is a sawn log house that appears to have been built in the 1920s or 1930s. A group of houses have oral history that associates their construction with the time of the Civil War. For exammple, William Shambley built his log house [OR 466] about 1860 just before leaving for the war; Bryant Nevilles built his log house [OR 386] during the war. It is difficult to date these log houses by physical examination, for there are seldom any stylistic features that would indicate a construction date, and the types of saw marks in the sawn lumber and the technology of the nails that would indicate construction date are often difficult to find beneath layers of recent materials. One construction feature that seems to be a general indicator of age is chimney size. In general, the earlier the construction date, the larger the chimney. The Neville House [OR 425] is a particularly significant log house