Rockingham Meeting House, Rockingham, VT

The Rockingham Meetinghouse  was begun in 1787, dedicated in 1798.

 After some preliminary analysis of the design and frame I realized in 2014 I needed to see it. I wondered if it would be as spare as the Rocky Hill and Sandown meetinghouses which preceded it.

It is.

 

 

 The site, on top of a hill with a view all around, emphasizes the simplicity of the structure. One can only come to it from below, and like many 18th c. New England buildings it sits upright and confident. It is very impressive.

I returned in 2018 and early 2020,  I updated the geometry as I learned more. I revised the drawings again when I gave a Zoom presentation in spring, 2021. What I first saw as a complicated geometry became simple and direct. 

This is not a dramatic design created by a London architect like Robert Adam to wow his rich patrons. It is a meeting house for a rural community. It is a straightforward layout planned by master builder, John Fuller, for a simple timber frame to be erected by a crew of local citizens.


The Town Fathers specified a building 44 ft. by 56 ft. The HABS drawings read 44'-4" x 56'-6". The difference could easily be the addition of the sheathing and siding to the frame. The porches (the end staircases) are square: 12'-2" x 12'-2". 
The difference could also be that the rule used then and the one we use today differ slightly. I am not sure they had a 'rule'. Poles of various lengths, 4ft., 5 ft., 10 ft., are in some illustrations.

 

'General' John Fuller, the master builder, was also the architect, engineer, framer. He knew the meeting house required an open space in the middle so everyone on the floor and in the balcony could see the preacher in the pulpit - and be seen by him. The pulpit was centered high on one wall, a window behind,the balcony on 3 sides.

 

He laid out a 3/4/5 rectangle. noted here in red. Then he laid out a square in the middle which defined the open space and divided that into thirds to set the columns for the balcony and the posts for the frame. See the black square and columns.


He extended the column spacing - the dashed black lines - to place the posts on the front and rear walls.This made the balcony the same depth all the around.
The porches are squares set in the middle of the west and east walls. The exterior posts were set at the porch corners, not at the 1/3 points of the wall. This also allowed for 2 windows on each side of the porches. 

 

 

 

Those 4 closely spaced posts in the center support the 4 attic trusses which are braced together to span the width of the church and allow the center of the meetinghouse to be an unobstructed space.

Walter Wallace, standing in the joined trusses under the ridge, gives a sense of how big the framing is.

 

 

The HABS prints of the End Elevation and the Interior Section for the Rockingham Meeting House are hard to read but their basic dimensions are clear.

The End Elevation is composed of 2 squares. The roof is framed using the 3/4/5 triangle. 

The notation to the right of the rafters says the pitch is a 9/12, modern language for the same thing.

 

 

The porches, the name for the stair towers, are set in the center of the end walls. The diagram shows that if the overall width of the wall is 8 modules (each square divided into 4 equal parts) the porch  is 2 modules wide.  

The proportions are 3-2-3, a graceful rhythm. If instead the massing had been 3-3-3 - all the widths equal - it would have felt dull. 

John Fuller, Master Builder, understood how to create with those simple shapes.  

 

 

The Interior Section shows the roof trusses, all using the 3/4/5 geometry. I've highlighted them in black for visibility

The meeting house height is divided in half horizontally. The columns which support the balcony divide the width of the meeting house in thirds.

If those columns has been the posts in the exterior walls only 1 window would have been possible on each side of the door. As I described above, the posts in the exterior walls were set differently (the black dot/dash line). 

 

 

 

 

With his frame laid out, John Fuller now needed to place the windows. The 6 posts on the front elevation were fixed. To allow any visual space* between the 2 windows on either side of the main door had to framed against the posts.  Here you can see how they were placed; there is no room for casings. 

* 'Visual space': the windows needed to be viewed as separate shapes, not as pairs.    

 

 

 

The red lines on the front elevation show the locations of the 6 bents for the meeting house.

 

One more window was needed on either side of the main entrance.

Where would they fit so that they were part of the whole, not call attention to themselves, and enhanced the main entrance ? 

Fuller used geometry to place the outer windows in relationship with the others. 

On the right side of the entrance is the front elevation as it was built.

On the left the outer windows are shown set in relationship not to the posts, but to their next closest windows and the left side of the elevation. The entrance is flanked, but not crowded by the windows.

 

 

The 'empty' wall to the left becomes part of the geometry. It shares the  proportions, being 1/4 of the wall. It is not 'left over'.

 

You can see the design succeeded. The uneven spacing between the windows is interesting and enlivens the facade, but it does not detract from the main door with its pediment. On either end the stretches of wall without a window anchor the meeting house to its site. 

 

 

Here is the main door. Its height is the determining dimension. Half the height is the radius for a circle and its square, drawn in red. The rotated square is drawn in black. The intersections determine the width of the architrave, the columns. The location of the plinth blocks and the depth of the moldings in the architrave, over the door are governed by the sides of the smaller square to the original circle.

The pediment follows Serlio's instructions:
 half of the width dropped below the base of the pediment - black lines - becomes the point for an arc whose radius -dashed red line - is the distance to the edge of the pediment. The dropped line is extended up to the arc; that marks the height of the pediment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This way of laying out a pediment is shown in Asher Benjamin's 1797 pattern book:

 

 

The door itself came after the frame was in place. It was built to fit the opening. 

First the door's rails and stiles were laid out. 

Then the Rule of Thirds divided the remaining space in half and sized the panels and the stiles between the panels.

 

 

 

 

Last picture: The windows on the sides of the meeting house were framed against the posts as they also were on the front and rear elevations.

Just as at the Rocky Hill Meeting House in Amesbury, MA, the eaves on the porches bump into those windows. Neither master builder had solved that problem.

 

For excellent information about trusses in meeting houses and churches see Historic American Roof Trusses, Jan Lewandoski, et al., published by the Timber Framers Guild, 2006. www.tfg.org.

The Rockingham Meeting House is not included but the theory, practice, and evolution of the trusses used for similar meeting houses is laid out with clear photographs and Jack Sobon's drawings.

If you do not know how to use of the 'Rule of Thirds' square as a design tool, see: https://www.jgrarchitect.com/2020/08/lesson-6-rule-of-thirds-part-1_21.html 

Geometry of the Cobb-Hepburn House, Part 3, front elevation

Here's the  Cobb-Hepburn c. 1780, in Tinmouth, Vermont, as it was  being dismantled last winter.

This front elevation feels bare and stark, less  sophisticated than similar houses built at the same time  in New England.
The 4 closely paired windows on either side of the facade, and the wide expanse of wall between the windows and the door seems 'not quite right'. As I travel, though, I see the same spacing on other houses near by. Am I seeing a local variation? the same framer working on many houses?

The frame is well built even though it was completed in stages.









The geometry, however, is rudimentary.  The plan for the posts and beams begins with squares, crossed to create a rectangle. The distance they are crossed is based on the arcs used to lay out the square - one of the first manipulations of practical geometry that an apprentice would have mastered.

The first plan shows the posts and beams with the crossed squares in red. The second plan shows how the width the squares are crossed was determined by the crossed arcs - dashed red lines - of the squares. 

(The center beam is off set to allow the chimney to pass and exit the roof at its peak.)

Was the framer never taught the geometry? He was capable of quality timber framing; he must have served a apprenticeship. Was his training interrupted by the American Revolution?
What he uses here are only the very elementary forms of practical geometry.



Here is the first page of  Biddle's Young Carpenter's Assistant. published in 1804. Biddle wrote his book for carpenters like the man who framed this house.
To see the bibliographic information about Owen Biddle's book please see the links at the end of this post.

After explaining how to make a drafting board, fix paper upon it and make a T square  - A,B, and C,  - Owen Biddle lays out solutions "to some of the most useful geometrical problems, which every Carpenter ought to be acquainted with."   
E: how to raise a perpendicular,  F: how to let fall a perpendicular, G:how to add a perpendicular at the end of a line.
And then H:  which I have marked with a red square 
how to layout out a square.
 I shows how to draw a 3/4/5 triangle which will always have a right angle. J  shows how to divide a circle into 12 equal parts.

Very simple work with a compass - and the geometry used in the design  of the Cobb- Hepburn House.




I have labeled the floors, the rooms, and the windows and door on the frame for easier understanding.  





The floor plan used the intersection of the arcs  of the square based on the width of the house for the placement of the interior beams ( BII and BIII).
To read the 2 previous posts which discuss this please see the links at the bottom of this post.

The front elevation uses the same geometry - the intersection of the arcs derived from the height of the house is both the edge of the posts for BII and BIII and the top of the 2nd floor plate. See the black dots where the arcs cross.

The framer next needed to place the windows and the front door. He 'crossed' the rectangles (BI to BII on the right, BIII to BIV on the left) on either end of the front wall. They cross in the center of the shape, which is also the 2nd floor plate. Upstairs and downstairs windows are symmetrical to that  crossing.

 I have outlined the right side with a red dashed line and added the diagonals.

Then it was easy for the framer to 'cross' the lower half of the rectangle. I drew it with black dashed lines. Where the red diagonals and the black diagonals cross is the center of the window frames.

The location of the door is similarly found by dividing the left over center space in half.    

http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2015/06/geometry-for-cobb-hepburn-house-part-1.html
http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2015/07/geometry-of-cobb-hepburn-house-part-2.html

Geometry for the Cobb-Hepburn House, Part 1

When does geometry enter into the design and construction of a building?
Not at first.
Only when the basics are answered can layout and design begin, can geometry be considered.

The design of any building begins with need, ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’.

Next comes, ’How big?’, ‘Where?’

Then, ‘What material?’, ‘What will it look like?’  

Of course people often start with the vision, what they want the space to look like, materials they hope to feature. They may focus on a specific use for the space.

Sometimes they just begin with ‘Bigger than this!’ The planning then must cycle around to answer the other questions.

 

The Cobb-Hepburn House began with most of those questions already answered.

About 1780 the Charles Miles family needed a house on their land in Tinmouth, Vermont.

The house would look like houses they knew: a 2 story box with a gable roof and a center chimney, with a layout that was also familiar: a hall, a parlor on the front and a kitchen with service spaces behind. 

Here is their house after the modern siding was removed. The original house was probably not painted. It would have had small paned windows and a larger chimney.

The house would be framed of wood of which they had plenty. The foundation and chimney of stone – which also ‘grew’ right there. The frame would be 4 bents long and 2 bays wide.  

14 feet square +/- seemed good sizes for the Parlor and Hall. The space for the chimneys needed not be as large.

Here began the geometry.

Please read left to right. I have shown in the first 5 diagrams 2 points for each straight line. After that I have assumed the geometry is reasonably clear. I have also added a description even though I often find it easier just to read the drawings. 

1 -- The width of the house was laid out: 28’-6”: the length of the first bent.
 Just a line:  A -B

2 and 3 -- A square was drawn, using the line as an arc:  A -B - C - D
All the sides are equal.

E marks the intersection of the arcs.

4 -- Diagonals were added: F is the center.

5 -- The square divided in half both ways: the second bent. 

6 -- At E a vertical line was drawn: the third bent.

7 -- E is the center of the second square. The length of the sides of the square could have been stepped off to match the first square or laid out with geometry.

The fourth bent is the right side of the 2nd square.   

8 -- is the plan for the house, showing the locations of the posts - almost.

The as-built plan for the Cobb-Hepburn House, shown here, is not quite symmetrical. 

Here is the plan showing the posts and  beams for the 2nd floor with the 2 crossed squares in red.

I have seen the use of 'Crossed Squares' in many New England floor plans.Before I explored the geometry of this house I had not seen layouts use the intersections of the arcs as determining dimensions.

The framer used his intersections as the outside of the post location for the center bents. He seemed to set the center posts and beams back about 8" so that the chimney could more easily exit at the ridge of the roof. 

Here is an elevation of the bents from front to back for the house.
It fits within a square.

If the square is divided into its 4 smaller squares and the arcs of the length of the smaller square are drawn the intersection is the location of the top of the plate - see the green square on the upper left side and intersection.

Once the height of the house frame was set, the rafters could be laid out.
The second floor location was determined very simply: the top of the beam was located at mid point of the distance from the first floor to the plate  -  shown with a dotted green square on the lower right side.  

In both cases the framer used his intersections as the outside, not center line, of his beams.

The elevations of the house used the same geometry. That's next.

  

The Cobb-Hepburn House frame , Tinmouth, VT

Here is the Cobb-Hepburn House coming down.

Glenn Tarbell recorded its dimensions as he and his crew dismantled the frame this past winter. I drew the framing diagrams. My measured drawings of the house before de-construction served as a reference.

The drawings tell a lot about how the house evolved.

Local records show that Charles Miles came to Tinmouth from western Massachusetts. He built this house about 1780. When he moved to Ohio about 1810, he sold the farm to Amos Brown. In 1821 Brown sold it to his son-in-law, Edward Cole. His daughter, Jane Cobb, inherited the farm and house when Cole died in 1852.
Hod Hepburn was the last owner who lived in the house. After he died the new owner asked Green Mountain Timber Frames to take down the house.
.

The house is 28'-6" wide by 39'-0" long, 2 bays (3 bents) wide and 3 bays (4 bents) long.
Its layout is derived from some of the earliest houses built in colonial New England

Center chimney floor plans were rarely built in seacoast New Hampshire and Massachusetts after 1760.  However, the first floor plan often appears in 2 story houses in New Hampshire and western Massachusetts up to 1770 and is a common plan for 2 story houses in Vermont through the 1840's.

The drawing is by William Lawrence Bottomley from his introduction  The Architectural Heritage of the Piscataqua, John Mead Howells, Architectural Book Publishing Company, Inc. 1937. His 10 page essay is one of the best introductions I know on early construction on the New England Seacoast from Salem, MA, to Portland, ME, .

Here is the probable floor plan for the Tinmouth House. I have labeled the rooms to match Bottomley's drawing.

The kitchen and the  pantry/dairy had been divided into smaller spaces by the time I measured the house in 2015. The other rooms still existed.
The first floor joists and sills were too rotted to be saved. The actual location of the original fireplaces is educated conjecture. A bake oven may have been beside the kitchen fireplace - we uncovered a mantle and cabinet door set in that wall.



The frame is massive, 10"x 10" posts rising to 10"x 14" and 10"x 16" gun stocks. The beams are 6"x 9", the plates 12" x 9". This is the 2nd floor SE corner seen from the 1st floor.
The roof rafters are of similar heft. The basic house frame was erected all at one time. Completing the interior frame took about 50 years.

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The way the framer set back the longitudinal center bent -  about 12" from the center - allows the chimney (drawn in red) to rise through the roof at the ridge.



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The frame for the north wall has missing and added studs as well as blocked windows, showing  how the house was changed through the years. The original 1st floor windows were directly below those on the second floor.








The west wall framing also shows window openings where we found no sash.
A door was added at some point and then closed off. A stud pocket remains in the beam above.









Empty joist pockets at the stair opening in the front hall indicate that the frame was reconfigured to allow space for the narrow, steep stair to the 2nd floor.




The second floor joists were made at the same time as the original frame.

The  Parlor, Hall, Bedroom and Kitchen joists are regularly spaced. The pantry/dairy joists aren't.
Quite a few of the joists have bark and wane; those above the parlor and the pantry/dairy are more logs than hewn.
The larger space between joists beside BII may indicate a stair.



Here is a possible explanation:


Charles Miles framed the house. He finished the Hall, Parlor and Kitchen; the Bedroom (which was usually reserved for the infirm or new mothers). Then he ran out of money, time, or energy. He finished the last joists with rougher wood. His family lived on the first floor.
Living in a partially finished house was not uncommon. Sections of a house were often used for storage and then added into the living space, just as we today add dormers to attics and insulation to  porches.



The attic framing was a different pattern: joists 2'-0" oc with intermediate 12" x 9" plates.
The joists all match: 3"x 6", cut by a sash saw at a mill.
The stair was relocated to where we found it.

As the frame was exposed we saw that bedrooms #1 and #2 were once one room, that bedroom #4 had neither lath nor plaster while the other rooms were finished.



Which owner installed the attic floor? The answer might depend on when sawn joists were readily available from a local mill.


The photograph shows the attic floor joist pattern. The window to the right had been blocked, but its outline was visible in the plaster wall. The window to the left was not original:the cut stud above and the lack of a stud on the left side were the signs of later construction.




Probably the Coles eliminated the fireplaces. Cast iron stoves were being manufactured in the 1820's.They were widely used by 1840.

 After stoves came central heat.We dismantled a modern cement block chimney serving a furnace and a modern wood stove.
Soot and char on beams implied that the framing around the chimney coincided with the installation of wood stoves.


For views of the house as dismantling began please see the previous post: http://www.jgrarchitect.com/2015/02/baring-bones-of-house.html

Baring the bones of a house: The Cobb- Hepburn House

The Cobb- Hepburn House is coming down.

Luckily it will be saved and reused.

I was there to measure and record.






The house suited its site. It was "built to the weather".

Set on a foothill ridge with fields sloping off on all sides, it had good drainage all around.

It faced east and looked south to the road, the view, and the sun. The parlor was in that sunny front corner. Deciduous trees just beyond let in winter sunshine, shaded the house in summer.

The wind here comes from the west and the south, The house was backed up against the mountain to the west, sheltered by it, below the wind coming over the ridge. The kitchen and its door were on the north end. An orchard to the southwest scattered the wind's force.

The family had died out; the land sold to the farmer who lives next door.
His daughter didn't want to live in the house.


It wasn't built for our modern era and it had not been cared for.


The entry hall is 4 feet deep, almost too small for 2 people to pass; certainly too small to welcome visitors.
The stair is 30 inches wide, and steep.
The only bathroom is on the first floor off the kitchen.

The bedrooms are only accessible through each other.

One door was mounted upside down, including the latch. Was it a quick fix - 100 years ago? - so the door would swing the right way?

Except for electric wires stapled to the walls and some interior storm windows the house hasn't been updated since the 1950's.

I was there to record its layout and proportions, to record how the builder used the materials he had: wood, plaster, nails, some iron, marble, stone, and glass.
It was cold - 5*F when I began measuring in the morning, about 15*F when I left mid-afternoon: not ideal for exposed fingers.The crew needed me to measure so they could continue dismantling, so I kept my hand warm with a propane heater. I photographed the rooms as an auxiliary record.

I have been back several times. The temperature has never been above 20*F at 2pm in the sun.






The crew is knowledgeable, experienced and interested. We share what we find and what we know, what we wonder about. We measure together.They need accurate dimensions to repair the frame for reconstruction.

2 kinds of scribe marks and offset marks are clearly visible. The 'B' on the post and beam are one pair of many.

The frame seems to have been built several years before the second floor ceiling joists - cut by a saw mill, laid out in a different pattern - were installed. Other joists were moved to allow space for the stair.
A third fireplace and another exterior door (frame and door!) were found under layers of wallpaper.
The 1st floor sheathing on the front facade had been replaced with plywood. One bedroom had not been finished until cast iron stoves were in use, 40+ years after the house was framed.

The videos are by Dan McKeen of Green Mountain Timber Frames. http://www.greenmountaintimberframes.com