Trustee's Building, Canterbury Shaker Village
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NEW HAMPSHIRE DIVISION OF HISTORICAL RESOURCES State of New Hampshire, Department of Cultural Resources 603-271-3483 19 Pillsbury Street, 2 nd floor, Concord NH 03301-3570 603-271-3558 Voice/ TDD ACCESS: RELAY NH 1-800-735-2964 FAX 603-271-3433 http://www.nh.gov/nhdhr [email protected] REPORT ON THE TRUSTEES’ BUILDING CANTERBURY SHAKER VILLAGE CANTERBURY, NEW HAMPSHIRE JAMES L. GARVIN 18 NOVEMBER 2001 Summary: The Trustees’ Building or office of the Church Family at Canterbury Shaker Village was the chief point of contact and commerce between the Church Family and the World. The building was the first and only brick structure built by the Church Family, and was constructed of materials of exceptional quality and workmanship. Built with fine bricks that were manufactured by the Shakers, the Trustees’ Building reveals much about the Shakers’ skill as brickmakers and as masons. The Trustees’ Building is a structure of statewide significance in the history of masonry construction in New Hampshire. Although built between 1830 and 1832, when the federal style was quickly waning and giving way to the Greek Revival in neighboring communities, the Trustees’ Building is stylistically conservative. Its interior detailing reflects the federal style, as modified and refined by the Shakers, more fully than any other structure at the village and perhaps more fully than any other Shaker building in New Hampshire. The structure therefore possesses stylistic significance as a document of the Shakers’ adoption and modification of an architectural style that was prevalent in the World. The building’s significance in technology, workmanship, and style would make the structure individually eligible for the National Register of Historic Places if it were evaluated alone. The Trustees’ Building is presently listed in the National Register as a contributing structure within the Canterbury Shaker Village National Register Historic District (listed 1975). It is also a contributing structure within the Canterbury Shaker Village National Historic Landmark Historic District (listed 1993). 2 The Trustees’ Building remains in generally good condition, but has suffered some structural damage, principally from the shifting and settling of its foundations. The structure also retains a range of older technologies, some of them in full use today, which do not meet current standards of workmanship or safety. Because the building is partially occupied as a residential structure, these systems could jeopardize the safety of the structure and its occupants. History: Construction of the Trustees’ Building was begun in 1830 with the excavation of the cellar. The building was the third office built by the Church Family, the two earlier offices having been smaller wood-framed structures. The Trustees’ Building stands on a site that slopes rather steeply to the south and to the west (behind the building), providing for a two-story basement at the southern end of the building. Physical evidence within the structure shows that the sub-basement, which lies beneath the southern end of the structure only, provided for wood, ash, and water storage for a kitchen that was located on the main basement floor above. The sub-basement contains a brick water cistern at its extreme southern end. Adjacent to the cistern rises a large, arched brick chimney base with an ash chute and vault. A room in the southwestern corner of the sub-basement probably served as a larder or pantry for the kitchen above. The basement walls measure 42 feet by 72 feet, encompassing an area that is two to three times that of the average brick house of the period. Construction of the extensive double-depth cellar beneath the Trustees’ Building was in itself a major undertaking. Building the walls involved removal by hand of many cubic yards of earth and stone, shoring the exposed earthen walls of the excavation, laying the footings, and placing the many courses of large granite blocks. The complexity of building so massive a structure with largely unfamiliar materials is documented by the fact that in the early summer of 1830 builder Elijah Brown and tinsmith Thomas Hoit were sent to the Shaker villages at New Lebanon and Hancock to learn “how to build with stone and brick and tin the ruff” of the proposed edifice. 1 The basement walls are constructed of uniform courses of split granite, hammered to a true face where exposed to view on the “public” sides of the building. The stone walls extend up to and somewhat above grade level on the front (east) of the building, adjacent to the nearby road. Being almost entirely below grade, the front walls act as retaining walls, resisting the pressure of the earth outside. Behind the building, the walls rise to a height of ten courses above grade and are topped by a granite water table of somewhat lesser depth, which encircles the building and supports the brick walls above. Like other examples of granite splitting and shaping found throughout the village, these walls testify to the Shakers’ skill in locating excellent stone and in shaping this intractable material to 1 Scott T. Swank, Shaker Life, Art, and Architecture: Hands to Work, Hearts to God . New York: Abbeville Press, 1999, p. 30. 3 their needs. 2 The stone walls of the building are discussed further under “Significance,” below. According to a building journal for the Church Family compiled by Brother Irving Greenwood sometime after 1930, work on the superstructure started in April, 1831, and the exterior of the building was completed in November. 3 It is recorded that the Shaker community employed between ten and fourteen non-Shaker day laborers in completing the structure. 4 Since the Church Family had never before erected a brick building, these men may have included some experienced bricklayers from nearby towns, who would have been familiar with the special skills needed to construct a large brick edifice. The exterior walls were built of pressed bricks. These uniformly-molded and well-fired bricks were made at the Shakers’ Lake Meadow brickyard, which the community had established in 1824. According to an entry for that year in Francis Winkley’s daybook, the Shakers had “built a dam to flow the Lake meddow and we have made a Brick yard in said meddow and halled a building there for its convenience and dug clay and done a great deal more work on and about said meddow.” 5 The Lake Meadow brickyard was undoubtedly established mostly to supply chimney bricks for the Shakers’ framed buildings. It is clear from the evidence of the Trustees’ Building itself, however, that the community had become proficient in the manufacture of brick and square hearth tiles (which are essentially double-width bricks) in the seven years during which they had operated their brickyard. By 1831, in fact, the Shakers may have been producing the finest bricks being made in the upper Merrimack River valley. The brick walls of the building are discussed further under “Significance,” below. The window openings of the Trustees’ Building have lintels and sills of carefully hammered granite. The use of granite lintels and lug sills, instead of iron lintels and wooden slip sills, had become prevalent among bricklayers in neighboring communities by about 1830. The Shakers’ skill in splitting and hammering granite permitted them to obtain stone building elements that were equal in quality and finish to those being produced in the quarrying center of Concord at the same period. Early photographs attest to the fact that the Trustees’ Building was originally fitted with twelve-over-twelve and twelve-over-eight-light window sashes on the first and second main stories respectively. These were replaced by the current two-over-one sashes in 1904. Early pictures indicate that the original sashes were double hung, with both upper and lower sashes being counterweighted and movable to provide the most flexible possible ventilation. Though occasionally used in the finer houses of neighboring towns in the early 1830s, movable upper sashes were rare at that period. Their use in the 2 For a brief reference to the locations of some of the Shakers’ granite quarries, see David R. Starbuck, “Documenting the Canterbury Shakers,” Historical New Hampshire 43 (Spring 1988), p. 18. 3 Irving Greenwood, “Church Family Building Journal,” Canterbury Shaker Village Archives, p. 90. 4 Swank, Shaker Life, Art, and Architecture , p. 30. 5 Francis Winkley Daybook, Manuscript #25 (Canterbury Shaker Village Archives), entry for December 11, 1824, p. 68, quoted in Scott T. Swank and Sheryl N. Hack, “’All we do is build’: Community Building at Canterbury Shaker Village, 1792-1939,” Historical New Hampshire 48 (Summer-Fall 1993), p. 115. 4 Trustees’ Building clearly represents the Shakers’ determination to build a structure of the highest quality, convenience, and comfort. According to Greenwood’s journal, the building was completely finished and occupied by the trustees in November, 1832. The total cost of the building was $7,440.00. 6 The building was further remarkable in having a roof of Welsh slate, costing $400.00. 7 Although the community had originally planned to roof the building with tin-plated iron, the Shaker builders had apparently become persuaded, while building the structure, of the availability, greater longevity, and reduced maintenance cost of slate. Roofing slate was rare in New England in 1830, especially away from seaports where shipments might occasionally be landed. A limited quantity of slate was being quarried in areas of Vermont’s Connecticut River Valley by 1830, but this would have been still more inaccessible to the Shakers than Welsh slates delivered at Portsmouth and transported to Canterbury. The fact that the Shakers bore the trouble and expense of obtaining this expensive yet long-lived roof covering attests to their determination to make their office building a model of permanent construction.