HVVA
NEWSLETTER, March 2000 From the JOURNAL Sunday February 20, 2000 with Jim Decker visited the Otto Goos/Martocci stone house (Sau-24) on Flat Bush Avenue Saugerties, owner John Martocci. We did a brief inspection but took no measurements. It seems to be a 1760-1770 two room Dutch stone house with a framed side aisle. We were given, for the chapter's collection, a first period exterior cellar door being used on the dirt floor to bridge a wet spot. It is a batten door with evidence of the original Dutch earn-latch. One pad hinge is intact with round finials and leather pads on the nails. The best evidence of the first-period house is in the cellar that is divided by a stone wall into two rooms. On a later visit to the house with Fred Steuding it was determined that the center wall may have originally been an exterior wall so that the house began with one-room and added another soon after. There were end-wall fireplaces on the main floor. The brick arched hearth-support that has survived at one end of the cellar could have been for a jambed fireplace that replaced an earlier jambless fireplace. There is no corbel in the back wall but the large hearth beam has trimmer beams. The beams above are hidden behind a plastered ceiling. They may contain evidence of the building's original condition. The two room stone house has an early wood frame addition with a lower but continuous roof line off the back side. The frame has lapped braces with two nails in the exterior frame. Benjamin Meyer Brink in his 1902 Historyof Sauaerties describes and regrets the passing of these framed additions on the stone houses of Saugerties that served as a summer kitchen often with long horizontal flap doors that when open were used as shelves for the shallow dishes of milk set to separate the cream. There are a number of first period door frames and moldings as well as federal and victorian doors and trim on the first floor. February 25 to 27, 2000 at a Rigging workshop sponsored by the Timber Framers Guild held at the shop and home of Jim Kricker in Saugerties, Ulster County. About twenty people, some with families and dogs, came from New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland and Massachusetts to participate. Friday afternoon included supper and a Clearwater concert at a church in town, a sing-along with Pete Seeger, followed by a wonderful young people's fiddle group Saturday was a hands-on workshop with Theodore F. Haendel from Long Island, Associate Professor of Nautical Science, United States Merchant Marine Academy, a teacher with passion for the science, lore and language of fiber cordage. By the afternoon, all manner of hitch, knot and splice were learned by the group and each received a thick packet of written material on the subject. In the late afternoon Philippe Petit did a "teach and telL" Philippe is the daring, rebellious and incorruptible French high wire artist, who in 1974 brought one ton of rigging equipment secretly to the top of the Word Trade Center in New York City, and before his arrest, after his early morning performance, had walked the wire, rigged between the towers, seven times. Philippe, who has taken his..art to five continents, is building a small timber frame home here in the Catskill Mountai.ns and dreams of some day walking a cable across the Grand Canyon. After supper, Ed Levine, with an overhead projector, showed measured drawings of the Brown timber frame in Massachusetts and gave a few principals for calculating loads when raising bents. Some of the audience had helped raise the Brown frame and there was an interesting discussion of the process. The following morning Ted Haendel and Jim Kricker demonstrated correct and incorrect methods of running line between blocks (pulleys) and of calculating their advantage. Using a circa quarter-scale model of a gin-pole, the principles of this raising devise where shown. Monday, March 6, 2000 with Roger and Todd Scheff and Conrad Fengado of Staten Island, returned to the Hammock house in Morris County, New Jersey. (See bottom page 1. Vo1.1, No. 9.) The early frame is now fully exposed. The four ceiling beams are 35 feet long and were supported by a center wall. From evidence on the end of the purlins and from empty brace mortises on the queen posts, it now appears that the odd proportion of the present gambrel roof is because it is only half or one-third of the original. Carla Cielo is measuring and drawing the frame so that the house will be well documented before leaving for its new home in Indiana. A truck load of radiators and other parts have already arrived at the site and these will be followed by its beams, braces and boards. Perhaps the mystery will eventually unravel of the many changes the Hammock House has gone through since its beginning in 1722. The rafters of the gambrel roof of the Hammock house rest on purlins that are supported by posts (queen posts). David Cohen in his 1992 book, TheDutch-AmericanFarm, points out the similarity between New England and the Dutch of New Jersey in the framing of their gambrel roofs using purlins and queen-posts (purlin-posts) . We do not find this queen-post framing in the MidHudson but rather the use of rafter ties and wide thin boards in place of purlin timbers, as in the unmeasured drawing on the next page.
From the Editor...The unofficial Mid-Hudson Chapter now has 84 paying members, $126 in the working account and $330 in the Oliver Barn Fund. 17 people attended the Saturday February 19,2000 meeting of the Mid Hudson Chapter at the Marbletown Firehouse: Bob Eurick, Andy Dougherty, Tom Colucci, David Baker, Darryl Brittain, Robert Hedges, Alvin Sheffer, George Van Sickle, John Martocci, Fred Steuding, Darren Romero, Vaughn Maldfeld, Jim Decker, Russell Ley, Peter Sinclair, Todd and Roger Scheff. The recent meeting with the DBPS society was discussed. The fact that a chapter would mean a dual membership sharing a $20 fee, many thought it would be better to give ourselves another name and a separate not-for-profit status but remain affiliated with the DBPS as an organizational member. The following names were suggested:
Jim Decker will continue to pursue the Department of Education for a not-for-profit status and all input, ideas and names are welcome. Send them to the newsletter or bring them to the next chapter meeting where we hope to resolve the issue. It will be held: Chapter Meeting After a short business meeting, Marry Howell, county historian, and Alvin Sheffer will give background on the Palatine history of the area followed by a tour of the Dutch Reformed Parsonage. This side-hall stone house retains many original and early features including a cellar fireplace, doors and paneling. We plan to visit another house nearby and compare these two houses that seem to be the work of the same builder. We will document molding profiles. Peter Sinclair, editor Copyright © 2004. Hudson Valley Vernacular Architecture. All rights reserved. All items on the site are copyrighted. While we welcome you to use the information provided on this web site by copying it, or downloading it; this information is copyrighted and not to be reproduced for distribution, sale, or profit. |
