HVVA
NEWSLETTER, September 2001 From
the JOURNAL Saturday, August 18 nine people attended a short tour of two barns in the Town of Saugerties, Ulster County. They were Jean Goldberg, Alvin Shaffer, John and Marian Stevens, Hank Zigler, Jennie Marshall, Alec Wade, Barry Benepe and myself. It was organized by the Saugerties Historical Society and HVVA. The first barn visited was the 3-bay Dutch barn on the Solite Corporation property. An effort has begun in the Saugerties Historical Society to obtain the building for its 1.5-acre museum site at the 1724 Kierstead stone house a few miles away. It would be an ideal solution for preserving this building. The project would involve not only the work of moving and restoring the barn but an archaeological and historical survey of the site that includes the foundation of a house and a small intact stone building.
The Solite Dutch barn (Uls-Sau19) is one of about
6 surviving examples with a The rafter system of the Solite barn is not a New World tradition but the survival of a European tradition with Medieval origins. We have very few examples of pre-Revolutionary barns. Most of our experience is with the 19th century or late 18th century examples almost all with common rafters but these early major/minor rafter system barns suggest that Hudson Valley architecture of the 17th and early 18th century may have had more Old World features than we are aware of.
The oak frame of the Solite barn is in generally good condition. A metal roof and recent repairs to one wall plate and replacement of several rafters has stabilized and saved the structure. It no longer has a threshing floor and not much of its sills survive. The Brink barn has a wood pegged threshing floor in good condition and many original features that could help in the restoration of the Solite barn. In both barns the longitudinal struts on the cow side have been removed. On returning to the Kierstead house we attended a festival being held to announce a new historic preservation project, the rebuilding of the North River, Fulton's first steam powered ship to sail the Hudson River in 1807. Like the revival of the Catskill Mountain Railroad now underway it will be a great tourist attraction. I expressed my concern about the safety of steam having read of a recent accident with a steam tractor in Iowa but the HW A's senior historian of architecture and transportation, John Stevens, assured me that Fulton's early engine was low pressure, 5-lbs per square inch. Not as efficient but safer than later high pressure models. Saturday, August 25 spent the day at the Hornbeck/Grace farm (# 58 in the Town of Rochester, Ulster County, NY, registration). Worked with Robert Stevens, son-in-law of the present owner of this third generation Grace family farm, and with a tenant removing and examining timber from the collapsed frame of the 1766 Dutch barn. The bents of this 5-bay Dutch barn with 30-foot anchorbeams and gouged marriage marks match those of the 3-bay Niewkere/Kaufman barn in Hurley and the two barns were probably erected by the same builder in the same year. The barn was altered in the 19th century by raising the side walls and its major/minor rafter system replaced with common rafters
Three of the six 30-foot anchorbeams survive including the "AHM
1766" inscription beam. The Hornbeck farm was visited by Helen Wilkinson Reynolds who described both the house and the barn in her classic 1929 book, Dutch Houses of the Hudson Valley, page 207. We also jacked and placed blocks under the wheels of a wooden wheeled box wagon and two independent sets of wheels that were sinking into the moist mud floor of the cellar of the granary. The wheels seem in good condition. Wagons and barns were made for each other and both are endangered in the Hudson Valley. I returned a week later with Bob Hedges to estimate repairs to the side entrance barn and moved a few more parts. Acquired a 2-foot section of a notched manger strut for a future museum. 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.
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