Ephraim Hawley House - Structure

Structure

Began as a Cape Cod cottage

The house began as a 1 1⁄₂-story Cape Cod cottage thirty-six feet wide by twenty-six feet deep with an eight-foot-wide central stone chimney with three fireplaces. There were four rooms downstairs; a small entryway, parlour and dining room in front and the kitchen in back. The second story was one undivided loft. Due to its modest size, the house was expanded twice.

Oak frame and siding

The first growth white oak post-and-beam frame consists of eight by ten inch girts, eight by eight inch plates and eight by ten inch splayed posts. The common rafters are eight by eight inches and taper to six by six inches and the floor joist are six by six inches and spaced twenty inches apart.

The six inch by ten inch summer beams run parallel to the front of the house and are dovetailed into the girts. They are located above the interior walls that divide the front rooms from the kitchen. The floor joist do not rest on the summers. Since the house was plastered when built, the summer beams were reduced in size and concealed within the plaster ceiling. According to Connecticut Architectural historians, the introduction of plaster, as an interior finish, brought about the end to the tradition of using summer beams. The home builder, holding onto more traditional building methods, included summer beams in the framing, but in a reduced size, as they were being phased out altogether.

The roof sheathing and flooring is vertically quarter sawn one-inch-thick oak boards with random widths between twelve and thirty inches. The flooring is laid directly over one-inch-thick split oak boards that were not suitable to be used as flooring. The mortise-and-tenon joints are held by wooden pins, and the flooring is nailed with large hand-wrought iron nails (see image).

The four- to six-foot-length hand-riven oak clapboard siding is nailed directly to the oak studs with large flat rose-headed nails which was the typical material and application for the earliest New England homes (see images).

Stone chimney

The first floor of the house was built at ground level with a very modest field stone foundation. There is a partial dirt cellar located on the south side of the house. The eight-foot-wide stone fireplace is squared up to the chimney girts on all four sides. The three flues are laid up with clay on top of a ten-by-ten-foot stone foundation. The kitchen hearth is nine feet six inches wide by three feet three inches deep. There is a one-foot crawl space around the chimney foundation below the first floor. A forty inch deep brick beehive bake oven is built into the right rear wall of the kitchen fireplace and its small opening is spanned by a wrought iron lintel. The brick are seven and one-half inches long by three and one-half inches wide by two inches thick indicating they were made before brick dimensions were regulated in the Colony of Connecticut in 1685. There is a small tinder box built into the left wall of the kitchen firebox. The fireplace inside dimensions are four feet four inches high by six feet ten inches wide and is spanned by the original ten-by-ten-inch oak lintel, which rests on oak beams. The side walls of the kitchen firebox are roughly dressed granite. Cooking pots were hung from a lug pole. Above the ridge, the chimney flue outside measurements are forty eight inches wide by thirty eight inches deep with a course of three inch thick stone drip caps in the front and back.

Interior finish

The original front exterior door opened out and the stairs, closed in by vertical paneling, are parallel to the front of the house behind the parlor in the kitchen. The vertical feather-edge beaded poplar hardwood paneling alternate in width of thirteen inches and fifteen inches. The ceilings and walls are clam shell plaster on riven oak lath. Initially, there was no baseboard molding and the plaster finished flush to the flooring. The girts and posts were plastered over and not cased.

The ceiling heights are between six feet two inches and seven feet two inches on the first floor. The rear exterior door opening is five feet three inches high and originally opened out. An original casement window opening located on the east rear wall, in the kitchen, is twenty two inches square and is fifty four inches from the floor. This small opening was plastered over when the lean-to was built behind the wall in the 1840s. There is evidence that at one time shelving was installed in this opening.

The upstairs ceiling height is six feet. The surviving oak sash window frames have dimensions of twenty eight inches wide by forty six inches high, and also serve as studs for the clapboards and lath. The original interior doorways are twenty eight inches wide by five feet eleven inches high and the interior partitions are made of 1 1⁄₂-inch-thick vertical oak boards.

Renovations

The first expansion took place in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century when a seven-foot-deep lean-to addition was added onto the northeast corner of the rear of the house which might have been used as a borning room and eventually became the buttery (room) or pantry. The north exterior wall is made up of two inch thick oak boards. When the lean-to was built, the roof was extended, without a break, to within six feet six inches of the ground and gave the house its saltbox shape. The original hand-riven oak clapboard exterior siding is preserved in the attic that was created (see images).

The second expansion was completed after the American Civil War and before 1882 when a lean-to was added to the remaining rear of the house. The poplar vertical feather-edge beaded paneling, that had encased the original stairs, were used as roof sheathing. The rear exterior oak clapboards were preserved in place in the attic that was created (see image). A new central staircase and interior wall was built, since removed, enclosing the kitchen fireplace and turning the house into a two-family residence.

At this time, the front roof was raised to a full story in height by replacing the original common rafters with new vertically-sawn two inch by ten inch common rafters. The original oak roof sheathing was reused. The second floor was also petitioned into five small rooms each with a closet at this time. The new batten doors were hand planed pine and the cast-iron hardware, hinges and latches were made by Eli Whitney Blake.

In 1840, Schaghticoke Indian Truman Mauwee, or Truman Bradley, moved into the house as a tenant. In 1881, Bradley purchased the house from Charles Fairchild for $450 ($100 in cash and a $350 mortgage to Fairchild) and made the renovations. Once completed a year later, Bradley sold the house to next door neighbor Clarissa Curtis for $525 ($175 cash and Curtiss assumed the $350 mortgage to Fairchild).