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The Baum-Taft House: a Historiography

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The Baum-Taft House: a Historiography Spring 1988 The Baum-Taft House The Baum-Taft House: A Historiography Jaync Merkel The Taft Museum seems to be a perfectly exist, and early documentary evidence is fragmentary. The restored residence from the beginning of the nineteenth first statements made about the house in print, from the century, but it is, in fact, a building that has been enlarged, 183 o's, mention the building itself only in passing. Not until altered, restored, and redefined over a period of 150 years to the beginning of the twentieth century did historians men- serve a series of residential and institutional purposes. Simi- tion its architecture. Soon after that interest centered on the larly the history of the Baum-Taft house—or any version of architect who designed it, even though today it appears it—seems to describe something fixed and certain, but the likely that the original house was the work of a carpenter- study of its history reveals a series of assertions, assumptions, builder and that a number of architects, decorators, crafts- stories, and myths uncovered or invented to explain the men, and other professionals were involved in its design, building that the authors saw or thought they saw. The remodeling, additions, and renovation over the years. historiography of the Baum-Taft residence reveals as much The entry on the Baum-Taft house in G.E. about the writing of architectural history and commentary Kidder Smith's The Architecture of the United States, one of the in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the fabric of the most reputable guides to American architecture, typifies the house does about the building practices during that time.1 commentary made during most of this century: No original drawings or plans of the house The Taft Museum was built as the residence of Martin Baum, Jayne Merkel is an art historian Front (west) elevation of the who works as architecture Baum-Taft house (Taft critic of the Cincinnati Enquirer Museum), Cincinnati, Ohio. and WGUC. She also writes Photo by Jeff Friedman, Cin- regularly for Art in America, cinnati, Ohio. The Baum-Taft Inland Architect, and Artforum. house is one of the finest exam- ples of Federal architecture in the state of Ohio. 34 Queen City Heritage with James Hoban of Washington fame thought by some to be its inhabitants and consists almost entirely of literary evidence: architect or at least a consultant. The house also recalls Jeffersonianletters, deeds, articles, papers, and word of mouth. Hardly principles of proportion. (Some attribute the house to Latrobe butanyone actually looked at the building or studied old maps, this is not borne out by Hamlin.)... Its architectural ambitions drawings, and photographs. Most of the researchers were attain elegance, with two-story central block and lower wings atnot art or architectural historians by training, but even those either side, and an unusual play of oval lights in the central section. who were did not conduct a thorough visual analysis—research A positively scaled, well-projected Tuscan portico marks the entry,with a crow bar, literally digging into the walls and under the giving a Greek Revival touch to the Federal Style building. The floors — that Richard Cote, Curator of the White House of entire house is of white-painted wood.2 the Confederacy, and other scholars have been doing recent- Like most of the people who studied and ly on historic houses in Virginia. wrote about the house, Kidder Smith did not base his attri- Also, most of the people who worked on the bution on visual evidence or connect it with his own descrip- Baum-Taft house in the past did not list their sources. Some tion. When the facade of the Taft Museum is compared to did not even include footnotes or bibliographies so their Hoban's most famous work, the White House in Washing- statements, dates, and attributions cannot be substantiated. ton, it is obvious that the two buildings could not have been When the same date appears again and again, it is impossible designed by the same architect. They are both white houses to determine whether it was repeated because the author with flanking wings and classical colonnades but the resem- found it in a book or article or if he came to the same blance stops there. The roof lines, the window frames, the conclusion on his own. Although much of the existing materials, the scale, the degree of detail—the whole approach research has limited usefulness for further inquiry, it shows to the classical vocabulary—is radically different. But those what the house has meant to previous generations, enriches differences were not noted in the literature on the house the lore of local history, and demonstrates the complexity which showed little interest in the building fabric of the involved in gathering information about even a well-preserved, house, what it looked like, how it was made, how it worked, existing structure. and how it evolved over time. The first document that pertains, even periph- The research on the house that has been done erally, to the Baum-Taft house is the earliest map of the city over the years concentrates mainly on the builders as well as in the collection of The Cincinnati Historical Society: Israel Illustration of the front (west) ing and the 1857 lithograph on elevation of the Baum-Taft page two of this publication. house (TaftMuseum) published in Harper's Weekly, July, 1858. Please note the architectural differences between this draw- Spring 1988 The Baum-Taft House 3 5 Ludlow's Plan of the Town of Cincinnati in 1802, which is Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufacturing, hand-drawn in ink. Since it does not take in the area where and the Domestic Economy he served as a trustee of the the house is located, it provides only a kind of negative Select Council of the corporation of the city but declined an evidence. It suggests that the area east of the public landing offer to represent the district in the United States Congress.7 and Fort Washington had not yet been platted and developed. Visual evidence exists to support Baum's acqui- On September 1, 1812, Martin Baum pur- sition of the land where the Taft Museum is located. It chased the site of the Taft Museum from Daniel Symmes, suggests that if not by 1812, then by 181 5, the city had and the transfer of the land is on file in the Hamilton County grown to encompass the site. A Plan of Cincinnati, Including Courthouse.3 Baum had come to Cincinnati during the All the Later Additions and Subdivisions Engraved for Daniel mid-1790's. Marilyn Ott, a former Taft Museum docent, Drake's Statistical View of 1 815, in the collection of The found his name in the church records of the First Presbyteri- Cincinnati Historical Society, extends about five blocks east an Church of Cincinnati as early as June 11, 1794, and in the of Broadway along the river. The land in the newly incorpo- birth and baptismal registry of the Salem Reformed Church rated eastern area is subdivided, and a big green space appears (now the United Church of Christ) in Hagerstown, Mary- on the side of the eventual site of the Baum-Taft house, land, where Baum was born on June 15, 1765.4 Other located between Symmes and Congress (later Fourth and sources, such as H.A. Ratterman's Der Deutsche Pionier ofThird) streets east of Pike Street. And, in the memoirs of 1 878s and a 1954 Literary Club paper, "Benjamin Latrobe, John Hough James, who lived in Cincinnati from 181 3 to Was he the Architect (?) of the Taft Museum," by librarian 1826, there is a reference to a garden planted for Baum on Carl Vitz6 maintain that Baum was born in Hagenau, Alsace, the west side of Deer Creek by a gardener named Schnetz Germany. The City Directory of 182 5 lists his place of birth assome time around i8i6or 1817.8 Pennsylvania. On another map of Cincinnati which is next When Baum arrived, Cincinnati was a village in a chronological sequence, the Plan of Cincinnati, Including of 500 with ninety-four cabins and ten frame houses. He All the late Additions & Subdivisions Engraved for Oliver Earnsworth built a two-story frame structure across the street from in 1 819, the green space is not shown. There are no lot lines Yeatman's Tavern (the center of the city's social, political, around the Baum property. But there is a house in the and economic life at the time) on the northwest corner of vicinity, one of the five large and imposing ones in the city Front and Sycamore streets, opened a general store, and that were illustrated on the map. It is probably the William soon became one of the city's wealthiest citizens. In 1804 he Lytle house which stood in what is now Lytle Park. married Ann Sommerville Wallace and eventually became Documents from the next year indicate that a the brother-in-law of several prominent early citizens such as house was under construction on the Baum property. There Judge Jacob Burnet, Nehemiah Wade, Samuel Perry, and was a financial "panic" in 1820 when the Cincinnati Branch Matthew Wallace, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. of the U.S. Bank sent some notes to Washington that had After his marriage, he built a brick residence next to the store been issued against land and other collateral, and the central at Front and Sycamore streets. He expanded his business U.S. Bank sent them back.
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