Salem Towne Dwelling
Charlton, Massachusetts, 1796
Moved to OSV, 1952
Barn, crafted by OSV, 1955
Sheep Shed, reproduced by OSV, 1980
Cider Mill, Brookfield, New Hampshire, c. 1835
Re-erected at OSV, 1985
From its hipped roof lighted by rows of monitor home windows to its sophisticated doorway, the symmetry and very careful architectural detailing of this house mark it as the perform of a skillful nation builder. In truth, practically all of the end on the house—the home windows, cornices, moldings, and about-mantels—can be identified illustrated in the 1792 American edition of William Pain’s Useful Builder, a guidebook of designs for English carpenters. Watchful study of the woodwork reveals how the builder combined and matched factors from the a number of options revealed in Pain’s illustrations. Within and with no, this dwelling was crafted to impress its site visitors.
Centre villages usually boasted a number of such handsome residences, reflecting the style of prosperous leaders who introduced new tips and fashions to rural society. This was the residence of the relatives of Salem Towne Jr. of Charlton, Massachusetts, who inherited the dwelling at the death of his father in 1825. Salem and Sally Towne headed a well-to-do institution, but still occasionally worked alongside their hired assistance to take care of the farm, dairy, and the property. Their domestic was a big and intricate just one that included children—seven of their nine have been living with them in 1830—farm laborers, hired gals, and occasionally relations who ended up going to or necessary a place to keep.
The property and its furnishings mirror the parents’ tastes and pursuits, and the bustling lifetime that they oversaw. There are four rooms on every single floor, on either aspect of a wide carpeted hallway—a far more official style and design that sets this dwelling aside from the museum’s other residences. The house’s furnishings are classy and highly-priced by the specifications of the countryside. In their option of carpets, wallpaper, home furniture, curtains, and ceramics, the Townes have blended imports with New England-created merchandise, and put together merchandise that could possibly have handed down through the household with the fashions of the 1820s and 1830s.
Like his father, Salem Towne Jr. was a gentleman of company, a land surveyor, a Justice of the Peace, and an lively determine in politics, as effectively as an progressive, “progressive” farmer. The furnishings of the sitting down place mirror some of these pursuits.
Of the four bedchambers upstairs, two have been produced by dividing a big room that was at first created as a ballroom and employed until finally 1806 for Masonic meetings. Almost certainly reflecting its authentic use for Masonic rituals, the space has placing painted murals, partly preserved from that early time, depicting an unique landscape.
The floor-floor kitchen features a sanded ground, a attribute early 19th-century way of preserving issues clean up. There is also a solid-iron stove, a superior case in point of the initial American domestic appliance. Broadly advertised as equally producing cooking less complicated and preserving on gas, stoves were being coming into use in prosperous rural homes for the duration of the 1830s.
Down the stairs is another kitchen area for tough perform, and the dairy room exhibit, which displays the equipment and utensils utilized in generating butter and cheese. This exhibit points out the financial aims of a progressive farmer and tells why the dairy was a very important section of Salem and Sally Towne’s farm. It interprets altering marketplaces and improvements aimed at better productivity, even though a online video presentation describes the dairywoman’s perform step by stage. To the north of the house is the Townes’ farmyard with barn, stonewalled enclosures, milking stalls, and sheep sheds.
On a smaller parcel of land next to the barnyard lies the Townes’ apple orchard, and just over and above it sits the Cider Mill. Simply because only a affluent several farmers in each and every community owned cider mills, they typically rented them to their neighbors immediately after their own cider producing was finished. In September and Oct, cider mills like this a person have been at get the job done all over New England, as their horse-run crushers and hand-operated screw presses transformed most of the region’s apple crop into cider. New Englanders customarily barreled cider as a beverage for home usage and still left it to turn “hard” or alcoholic. But following 1830, cider mills were not as hectic as they had been previously. Underneath the affect of temperance reform, each cider intake and the acreage of farms planted to orchards were diminishing.
The formal garden at the Towne Residence, with its symmetrical format and abundance of blooms, suggests the rising curiosity in ornamental gardening of a lot of affluent New England households.
Excerpted from Outdated Sturbridge Village Visitor’s Manual
© 1993,1996, Aged Sturbridge Inc.
www.osv.org/investigate_find out/village_tour.html?L=37
Posted by Itinerant Wanderer on 2009-11-01 21:29:14
Tagged: , new england , massachusetts , old sturbridge village , dwelling background museum , dwelling
#furnishings #Diy #woodwork #woodworking #freedownload#woodworkingprojects #woodsmith ,wooden craft, wood planer, fantastic woodworking, picket chairs, wooden doing work instruments, common woodworking, woodworking textbooks, woodworking workbench designs
