Rhoads / Lorah House & Barn
Listed March 29, 2007 — Amity Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Submitted by Estelle Cremers to the Pennsylvania Museum Commission.
Six contributing buildings on Old Swede Road
The Rhoads/Lorah House and Barn are located on Old Swede Road (present Route 662) near a cross-road known as Yellow House in Amity Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. The buildings center closely around the house and barn under ancient shade enhanced by modern ornamentals and foundation plantings. The buildings stand on the west side of the highway 350' back from the road and face eastward across the small constant flow of five springs through a meadow. The buildings consist of a ca. 1830, 2-1/2 story limestone Georgian house attached to an earlier 2-floor, one room per floor, stone house (making a T-shape), a matching, large in-tact stone barn carved "J.Rhoads Sep 14 AD 1830" on its closed frame forebay, a one-floor, half in-ground, stone springhouse of early date, a mid-20th century frame drive-thru corn crib, a one-floor frame machinery shed, and a 1950s free-standing 3-car garage. There is on the nominated 6 acres (part of 11.4 acres) an ancient second spring under a much remodeled small brick secondary house, counted noncontributing. These buildings are counted as six contributing buildings (house, barn, spring-house, corn crib, machinery shed and garage) and one noncontributing building (the modified secondary house). The property is in excellent condition.
Listed
March 29, 2007
Criterion
Architecture (Criterion C)
Period
ca. 1830
Township
Amity Township, Berks County, PA
The ca. 1830 House
The 2-1/2 floor 42'x20' circa 1830 Georgian house faces east toward Route 662. It is built of local limestone, five bays wide with a centered front door approached by several steps up to a small stone-floored landing. The Body family declare that the entrance was originally covered with a gable-roofed hood supported on two slender posts, and that they removed the hood in 1950. Presently, the original single, 6-paneled entrance door is held within original reeded columns rising to corner blocks at the top moving into a simple 1950 flat wooden pediment attached directly to the stone wall. There is a 4-pane transom over the recessed door. All windows are flanked by wooden, three-panel shutters held in place by long wrought iron hooks.
Internally, the Georgian front section holds one room per floor on either side of a 7'-wide central hallway. Ceilings are a generous 9' high on both floors with four windows per room. The centered front door opens into the hallway, and there is a back hallway door into the original kitchen. There is a chimney on each gable end of the building servicing fireplaces in two of the four rooms. A built-in corner cupboard is featured in each of the first floor rooms, each with a 9 glass-paned upper door and a solid lower door. All inside doors hold German-style box locks.
Although the outside stonework matches well the stonework of the Georgian front of the house, the undated 17'x17' stone kitchen gives evidence of having preceded the building date of the formal front section. The inside measurements of the almost 8 foot wide keeping room fireplace are 3-1/2 feet deep by 5' high. The hearth is brick. Original iron crane and trammel bars and hooks remain along with the iron door that once connected a bake oven to the inside hearth.
The 1830 Barn
"J. Rhoads — Sept. 14 A.D. 1830"
The 66'x 41' limestone barn compliments the limestone five-bay Georgian house. It is a stone east-facing, closed-bay Standard Pennsylvania Barn. The two gable stone ends enclose and support the forebay with Peilereck corners. The gable ends are stone with slatted ventilation openings. The forebay is vertically sided between the Peilereck corners. There are four cattle doors and two 'people' doors to the east under the forebay.
Internally, the threshing floor, granary, flooring, bents and ladders are original to 1830. There are two 'throw-down' doors in the eastern wooden forebay of the barn floor and three 6-pane windows. The stable has been modified from its original dirt-floored enclosures to meet 20th century dairy regulations with concrete floor, feeding troughs, and gutters.
The Spring House
There is a one-room, half in-ground stone spring-house, of even date with, or before, the Georgian house, in front of the Georgian dwelling house. The building is roofed with a moss-covered, gabled, wood shingle roof. Entrance is in the south gable end down three or four stone steps. An outside stoned basin catches the springhead outside to the left of the steps. Inside, there is a poured cement floor surrounded on two sides with flowing water into which 40-quart milk cans were lowered for cooling.
The Brick-over-Stone Spring House / Guest House
Only the width of a driveway separates the Georgian house from the small 2-bay brick-over-stone-basement Secondary House. Believed by local residents to have first been a simple, covered spring, it became a useful work or wash house by ca.1830. Since 2003, with modernized kitchen and bath facility, it is used as a guest house. Because it has been so considerably modernized and doubled in size, it is considered historically Noncontributing even though its original spring and first building date are early components of the Rhoads/Lorah House and Barn nomination.
Garage, Corn Crib & Machinery Shed
Garage
Built in 1950, this stone, 3-car garage is built into a gentle hillside behind the house "T" and the secondary house and measures 33'x 24'. With roll-up doors, it has a 'person' entrance door on the north side. It sets part in-ground and faces east with a gable roof. The south gable wall holds a wooden, outside stairs to its loft. There are no windows.
Drive-Through Corn Crib
Directly west of the barn is the Drive-through Corn Crib, a gabled building measuring 30' x 23.8'. The center drive-through is enclosed with doors on both ends and is dirt floored. The corn cribs on either side speak to years of corn production on the farm.
Machinery Shed
Standing to the rear and west of the corn crib is a wooden building on a stone foundation, 18' long by 20' deep with a 27' lean-to on the north end. As a machinery shed, it stored any machinery that was not housed elsewhere on the farm.
Chicken House & Small Pond
Chicken House
A small 20'x12' frame, one room building presently stands in front of the barn and milk house. It is termed a chicken house and may be a remnant of the 1940s/50s/60s chicken/brooder business of Henry Body. It appears to have been repositioned from somewhere else on the farm at some unknown date and does not rest on permanent foundations.
Small Pond
A small pond is seen in front of the barn. Built about 1950, when farm ponds were encouraged as insurance premium rate-reducers to farm owners, it is little more than a scooped-out hollow to impound flow from the five springs. Local memory recalls a 'natural fountain' between this pond and the NE end of the house where now there is only a circular metal cap at ground level.
Area of Significance: Architecture
Period of Significance: ca. 1830
The Rhoads/Lorah House and Barn, built ca.1830, is a product of the dissemination of the Georgian/Federal aesthetic in Berks County, and an example of adaptation of the work of two regionally prominent master builders, Conrad Henry and Gottlieb Drexel, of the post-1800 period. The Rhoads/Lorah House and Barn meet National Register Criterion C in the area of Architecture as an example of adaptive use of regional components scaled to an admiring farmer's purse, and as a fine example of progressive architecture among the German farmers.
Coming out of the 183 acre farm pioneered by Johann Jacob Rhoads in the 18th century, this 19th century set of buildings clearly shows the family progression into a more comfortable abode and awareness of architectural trends. It retains in barn and land-use much of its inherited agrarian culture, while the house speaks to a greater allotment of time to the pleasantries of life.
Early known to inhabiting Lenni-Lenape Indians as The Place of Five Springs, a 183 acre pioneer farm was purchased by Johann Jacob Rhoads, II, from John Campbell's estate sometime between 1742 and 1750.
By 1825, animal husbandry was appearing as more than a cow or two and a few sheep, hogs, and chickens for the table. The Rhoads 'boys' moved with the times. In 1830, John built the gray limestone house and matching barn, the barn bearing his initials and the date, 1830, on the barn forebay.
Mary Rhoads married neighbor George Lorah a few years after father Daniel died. John Rhoads wrote his Will in 1859 devising the "new buildings" with roughly 54 acres to his now widowed sister, Mary Lorah, and her two daughters. John Rhoads died in 1861.
Mary Rhoads, 20 years younger than her bachelor brothers, married George Lorah between 1825 and 1831 when their first child was born. In 1859, John Rhoads' Will recites the bounds of 54 acres 50 perches to be set off "to my sister, Mary Lorah."
John's Will is the most descriptive document found to date of the physical layout of the western side of the Rhoads farm, indicating that John by that time was living with his widowed sister on the west side of the highway.
The matched quality of the standing Georgian-fronted house and the dated barn are strong indications that they were built in approximately the same 1830 time period. Mary Lorah's residence is noted on maps until she died in 1881. In 1927, the sisters sold the 76 acres to Henry A. Body, a poultry farmer in the area. Henry died in 1981, and his widow, Dorothy, continued to live there until 1999, when her estate sold the buildings and the remaining 11.4 acres, and they, in 2001, to David and Liz Goldfarb of New York, present owners.
Georgian tradition in limestone
Limestone farmhouses and matching barns are a part of the German and Georgian tradition of southeastern Berks County. The Rhoads/Lorah farmhouse and barn are part of that tradition. The seven southeastern townships are dotted along main roads as well as back roads with a diversity of farmhouse and village design on the Georgian/Federal theme. Usually well balanced five-bay facades and almost always two-and-a-half stories high, they are two-rooms per floor separated with a central stair hall, usually with an off set kitchen extending to the rear.
The Rhoads/Lorah House and Barn relate to this Georgian pattern, clearly opting for the balance and grace of the Drexel/Henry style but on a more modest scale either by choice or necessity.
John Rhoads' use of the words 'new' buildings in his 1859 Will begs the question of how long one can continue to call buildings new. Without firm documentation in taxes or census, we cannot know.
That bachelor, John Rhoads, claimed ownership is evidenced in his name above the date on the barn. It may have been a wedding gift at c.1830 to sister, Mary and George Lorah from the Rhoads family. We do not know.
The house was brought into the modern age by the new owners, Henry and Dorothy Body, in the 1930s and '40s in the form of indoor running water, plumbing and central heat. Henry Body reduced the 76 acres by several sales during the next 30 years, and his widow and sons reduced it still more after Henry's death in 1981 to bring the parcel down to its present 11.4 acres.
Yellow House and the Oley Valley
Laying between Boyertown and Reading, at Yellow House on Route 562, Amity Township is in the path of burgeoning modern development. The area known as Yellow House is rapidly building into lot developments of varying size; but Yellow House itself is bordered on the north by Oley Township which, almost in its entirety, is a National Register District. The Rhoads/Lorah House & Barn relates strongly to the Oley heritage.
Major References
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01
Berks County Court House, Reading, Pa. Recorder of Deeds, Register of Wills, and Agricultural Conservation Office (Amity Township) Tax records unavailable.
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02
Census Records: Internet for Amity Township, Berks County.
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03
Croll, Rev. P.C. - Annals of the Oley Valley. Chapter VI (Fisher) Reading Eagle Press. 1926.
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04
Huber, Randall B. - "The Legend of Gottlieb Drexel, A Re-evaluation of History." Historical Review of Berks County. Winter 1998-1999. page 10
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05
Montgomery, Morton L. - History of Berks County in Pennsylvania. "Amity Township" Everts, Peck & Richards, Philad. 1886
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06
Montgomery, Morton L. - Historical & Biographical Annals of Berks County, Pa. J.J.Beers & Co. 1909. Chapters IV & VI - Nationalities and Agriculture.
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07
Pencil Points Reference lost. Ca. 1930s/40s. Article on Gottlieb Drexel and the Fisher Farm.
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08
Pendleton, Philip E. - Oley Valley Heritage, The Colonial Years 1700-1775. Oley Valley Heritage Association. 1994. Chapters 2 & 3. plus special mention of Rhoads & Greiner families.
Interviews:
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01
Mrs. Alice Kutz, 96 years old - close friend of the Body family. 2003
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02
Her husband built the porch/kitchen towards the barn for the Bodys. Albert Kutz - son of above -10/21/2005
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03
John Body, Trexlerville. Lived on the farm after 1930.
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04
Mr. & Mrs. Lorah, Lobachsville, Oley Twsp., 10/15/2005
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05
Leon Berndt - Douglassville. Lived on John Rhoads farm during the 1940s.
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06
10/16/2005 Internet searchs by David Goldfarb
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07
Bierman, Guy L. 'Descendants of Johann Jacob Rodt,' May 4, 2003.
Verbal Boundary Description
Beginning at the northeast corner of the property where a dirt/gravel driveway leads from the west edge of Pennsylvania Route 662 into the Rhoads/Lorah buildings, move westward along the center of the driveway approximately 500 feet passing close by the north side of the 1830 barn to a surveyor's pin set for a corner in the driveway. Thence move southward approximately 400 feet along the Rhoads/ Lorah west boundary line to a point about half-way of the full Rhoads/Lorah west boundary line; thence, leaving the west boundary line, turn eastward at a 90* angle and draw a straight line about 450' to Route 662; and thence follow along the western edge of the highway R/W, following the curve in the road, to the place of beginning Containing approximately half (or 6 acres) of the almost 12 acre current property size.
Boundary Justification
Current plot size of the Rhoads/Lorah - now David & Liz Goldfarb - property is 11.4 acres with all the buildings oriented eastward to the early Old Swede's Road (Route 662). Since the buildings are clustered in the northwest quadrangle of the 11+ acres, and the property is being presented as eligible under architecture, (no longer producing agricultural products), only the acreage around and in the viewshed of the buildings have been included in this presentation. The unincluded south roughly six acre field holds only one remnant of the Body 1930-1980 poultry business - a frame, not large, and in poor condition turkey run. It neither adds nor detracts from the ambiance of the property. A larger brooder house in this field was demolished some years after 1980. For these reasons, the six acre south field was dropped from the nomination.
The meadow that lies between the buildings and Route 662, on the other hand, is part and parcel of the charm and setting of the architecturally important limestone house and barn. They cannot be separated one from the other anymore than the barn could be important without its house or vice versa. They, together, with the meadow, the spring runs, all of which are on the nominated half; and such accompanying smaller buildings as remain tucked close-by to declare the seat of a surviving family endeavor and an architecturally important generational residence.
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1.
It is locally thought that the first floor windows (9/6) have been reversed because of wear and more frequent use, and that the second floor 6/9 with less wear was probably the original setting.
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2.
Ensminger, Robert F. The Pennsylvania Barn. Pg. 124-125 & 214.
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3.
Berks County taxes are unavailable for this period. I have been told on the telephone that they have the tax records, only to find when I get there that they do not. I will continue to search.