AN OVERVIEW OF THE TAVERN

Chase’s Tavern, built ca. 1800, is of full two story, wood frame construction and is stylistically transitional, containing elements of both the Georgian and Federal styles. The house measures 40 feet long by 32 feet deep with its principal facade oriented toward the north. The house is built upon a stone foundation with a full cellar. The exterior is finished with clapboards and the windows are proportionately spaced across the front, with those of the first and second stories vertically aligned. The roof is a single pitched gable with two chimneys projecting through the ridge line.

The interior floor plan is that of a two room deep ‘double’ house with interior chimneys on either side of the entry hall. The front door, located at the midpoint along the north wall, leads into a wide entry hall with a staircase to the second floor. The hall extends southerly until it terminates at a back room which served as the kitchen. To the left (east) of the front door was the parlor and to the right of the hall was the tap room. At the rear of the house is the dining room on the east end and the kitchen to the west.

Climbing the stairs, one first encounters a door that once led to the meeting room. This room occupied the southern half of the house and extended the entire length of the building. The former room is now divided into three rooms, a bathroom at the mid-section and a bedroom at either end of the house. At the front of the house, divided by a center hall, are two additional bedrooms at the east and west ends. The stairs to the attic begin at the north end of the hallway and lead to the mid-section of the attic, which shows no signs of ever having been finished. Flanking this central attic space are two early/original sleeping chambers with plastered surfaces and wood trim, with a closet in each room.

Given the age of the house and the fact that it has sat vacant for so many years, the Tavern is in remarkably good condition although a significant amount of work needs to be done. The economic downturn in Unity after the middle of the nineteenth century probably benefitted the building’s present architectural integrity, as did the fact that it sat vacant for thirty years at the end of the twentieth. It has seen comparatively few alterations over its two hundred year existence.

Other structures on the property did not survive quite so well. In its earliest years, the house included at the west end a small wing, which may have replaced an even earlier and smaller wing. Soon thereafter this wing was incorporated into a much larger addition and the east/west dimension was more than doubled in length. There is good photographic evidence showing details of this larger addition, built in at least part as a carriage barn. The foundation stones of both the original wing and the addition are still in place although some of the stones are missing. More about this wing and addition is included in the main body of the report.

About 16' west of the west gable wall of the large addition was a formidable barn with its gable facing the north. Little photographic evidence of this barn has been found to date, but it is known that it was razed in the latter part of the 1960's. The barn did have a few small windows as well as a sliding barn door on the north gable.

At some point, the timing of which is unknown, another smaller carriage shed was built that possibly connected the barn to the west addition. A limited view of this shed is shown in a ca. 1900 photograph. This shed was removed prior to the 1960's and before the demolition of the main barn.

The only other known structure in the immediate vicinity of the Tavern was a vertically sided shed that sat alongside the Center Road. Its ridge ran approximately parallel to that of the house and its north wall shows signs of being used to post various public notices.

EVOLUTION OF THE FLOOR PLAN AND OTHER ALTERATIONS

Many houses that have stood for more than two hundred years have undergone a great number of changes over the years. It is not rare to find a house that has been altered so many times that the original house has become almost unidentifiable. Fortunately, such is not the case with the Chase Tavern. The relatively few that occurred were usually made not to keep up with the latest style, but rather to maintain a modest level of comfort in times of changing lifestyles. It is also fortunate that most of the known changes in the Tavern can be reversed without diminishing its usefulness in the twenty-first century and in its proposed use.

Attached to these reports are drawings of what is likely to have been the original floor plan of the Tavern. Most of this is based upon physical evidence found in the house as well as a photographic record. In only a limited number of cases do we rely upon eyewitness accounts of former residents or guests of the house, and where possible we have tried to tie such accounts to supporting physical evidence. One such instance where we could not find corroborating physical evidence is in the meeting room of the second floor. Although there is no physical evidence to support this, the drawings show a moveable partition dividing the meeting room space in approximately half. This is based upon an account of one former tenant who resided there in the 1930's who recalls there being “a sliding door that slid into another wall”. Another resident, from the 1960's, was told by the people that she purchased it from that there used to be a “moveable partition” that divided the room. In any event, it was common to have such a partition, so that the meeting room could be divided into two separate rooms.

To date, the configuration of the original wing at the west end of the house is unclear, due to a lack of physical evidence. Based solely upon nailing patterns found on the wall sheathing in certain places and the complete absence of nail holes at other areas, it seems that there was nearly always a wing here, though as first built, it measured only 12' deep from north to south, with an unknown east to west dimension. The two later additions to the wing are more clear and are discussed separately later in this report.

The drawings also show a door entering into the tap room at the west side. As a door is located in this position now, and because such a side door was common in New England taverns, we have included it in the drawing. There is some evidence of an original opening having been in this location, but we cannot be certain if it was for a door, window, or some other feature. It is hoped that the present-day modern door will be removed during the restoration process and that answers to such questions will become apparent.

The door at the south wall into the kitchen is another inclusion to the drawings based solely on the likelihood of there originally having been a door along the wall. Here again there is a modern door in this location that may be a later replacement.

Finally, at the west wall of the meeting room, a window is shown in the floor plan. Recently, a batten door was found to be buried, along with its framework, in this location. If the west wing, as originally built, was of a two-story configuration this early batten door would have serviced it. If the wing was only one story, which seems the more likely scenario at this time, there almost certainly would have been a window in this bay.

Other than the aforementioned, the floor plan presented is based almost entirely on the physical evidence and is quite likely an accurate one. Although we cannot be certain of the uses for each room, we have arrived at names for them based upon room use in similar buildings as well as appointments contained in some of the rooms. An example of this is the dining room. This designation is based in part upon the existence of a china closet that was accessed from this room. Another example is the kitchen, which is most certainly correct as it contains the largest fireplace in the house, with a bake oven.

The Floor Plan:

One of the earliest changes that took place in the house was the closing off of the second floor hallway from the staircase leading to the attic. Were it not for the balustrade going up the attic stairs, now hidden by the vertical boarding enclosing the staircase, it is possible that this would not have been recognized as an alteration. The door and frame, the hardware, and the methods employed are indistinguishable from other such details in the house. It should be noted that this doorway appears to have been temporarily removed during a “restoration” that took place in the 1970's or 80's and then skillfully reinstalled.

The most significant event to take place was probably the enlargement of the west wing. Additional time is needed to review both the physical evidence and eyewitness accounts of this wing, but it seems likely that the original wing was either removed or the enlargement of the new wing encompassed the original one. Its depth along the west wall began at the southwest corner of the main house and continued north for 22' where an inside corner board relating to the addition can still be found. Its east/west dimension is estimated to have been about 22'. It is believed that this enlargement was for the purpose of creating more living space and was one and one-half stories in height. As already mentioned, this wing is discussed in greater detail in the main body of this report.

Before ca. 1900, yet another significant alteration was made to the house, again involving the west wing. At this time, another large addition was made to the west wing, incorporating a carriage shed. With this change, the wing now measured 44' in length and its depth remained at 22'.

Perhaps contemporaneous with the addition of the carriage shed, but more likely at a slightly later date, another shed was added to the west end of the west wing, though considerably smaller, and possibly connected the west wing to the large barn of unknown age. The only evidence of this shed and the barn are photographs dating to around 1900.

Another change to the exterior of the house at about this time was the replacement of the windows. Little is known about the configuration of the original windows but they were likely to have been a 6-over-6 sliding sash. Sometime about 1900, these windows were changed to a 2-over-2 lite arrangement. It is not known whether just the sash were changed at this time or if the entire window frame was replaced. Recent evidence seems to favor the former rather than the latter. More information on this is included in the more detailed “windows” section.

It was also at about this time, but certainly after 1880, that a minor change to the floor plan was made. This was the division of a closet at the east end of the meeting room allowing for a closet at the northeast chamber. Two vertical nailers were attached to each the front and back wall of the existing closet and to these were nailed horizontal rough sawn boards as a dividing wall. At the northeast chamber, a doorway was added to access the new closet. The nailers to which the boarding was attached have been fastened with both wire common nails and cut nails.

Additionally, it is likely that at this general time the kitchen went through a renovation which included the installation of a vertical wainscot. The paneling is 30" high except at the south and west walls near the southwest corner of the room, where it is 62" high. (For more detail, see the ‘interior trim’ section of this report). This was probably the time that the original planked flooring of the kitchen was removed and a hardwood strip flooring was installed, some of which is still in place under the kitchen base cabinets.

Between 1900 and 1960, a number of minor alterations were made to the residence, the timing of which is somewhat sketchy. We do know that by the 1930's there was at least one apartment in the house and this could have been the impetus for some of these renovations. These changes are listed as follows, but their order does not necessarily denote the actual sequence of events.

1. The common board wall between the china closet and parlor shelving closet is removed and the shelves of each of these are cut back allowing for a passageway between the two rooms (see ‘ interior trim’ section).

2. A photograph taken in the late 1930's shows that at least a couple of sash at the east end of the north facade had been changed to 2-over-1 lite. A former tenant of the house has mentioned that the hurricane of 1938 caused “some damage” and the change to the sash configuration may be a result of this event.

3. A bathroom is installed in what was once the tap room. This is the earliest known bathroom in the house and was located at the northwest corner of the room. A partial hole in the sub-floor of this area is for a water closet drain pipe and other floor sheathing in this area has been patched in. A 1958 photograph shows a vent stack penetrating the roof above this area and an eyewitness account has stated that this was the only bathroom in the house in 1960.

4. At the closet at the west end of what was formerly the meeting room, there is a paint ghost on the wall indicating that a kitchen style cabinet had been installed along the north wall. Holes in the floor are consistent with those that would be cut for a hot and cold water supply as well as a hole for a sink drain. The cabinet had a counter top height of 36". This may be the base cabinet that is now stored in the attic. There are no similar paint lines suggesting the use of upper cabinets in this area. It was probably at this same time that the original closet door as well as the south closet wall were removed.

5. Prior to 1958, the windows were again in a transitional state as those of the first floor and the rear of the second floor were changed to 6-over-6 (see ‘windows’ section).

6. Before 1959, the small shed connecting the west wing to the large barn had been taken down, as had the small shed alongside the Center Road and the porch at the north side of the west wing. Both of these are missing in a 1959 photograph.

7. By 1960, we are told that all of the fireplaces in the house had been “covered over”. The cause for this action may have been a chimney fire that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century.

8. Lastly, the wood shingles were removed from the roof of the main house and replaced with asphalt shingles. The barn roof appears in a photograph of 1958 to have been re-roofed in an asphalt rolled roofing. The west wing of the house retained its wood shingles at this point in time.

Between 1958 and 1988, other alterations to the former Tavern are known to have taken place. The list, not necessarily in chronological order, is as follows:

1. The remainder of the windows at the second floor are replaced with 6-over-6 lite double hung windows.

2. The closet at the northeast corner of the dining room is converted to a bathroom. The door and original walls of the closet remain in place.

3. Although it may have happened earlier, the two south windows of the kitchen are shifted, probably to allow for the installation of kitchen cabinets along this wall.

4. The passageway between the meeting room and the northwest chamber is turned into a shelving unit at the meeting room side and, with the installation of a door, the other end becomes a closet for the northwest chamber. The rabbetted jamb of this door is assembled with galvanized wire nails.

5. The meeting room is divided by the installation of a bathroom at the center of the room. The bathroom is flanked on either side by a bedroom.

6. The closet wall and door at the northwest corner of the former meeting room is reinstalled using modern materials. The doorway is shifted to the east. The base cabinet and sink is removed. A small portion of the floor is patched.

7. A doorway from the northeast chamber to the small hallway is cut in allowing for direct communication between the northeast and southeast chambers. This doorway shows no signs of ever having a door hung in its opening.

8. The fireplaces are uncovered.

9. The stone foundation walls at the north, east, and south walls are rebuilt with poured concrete and concrete blocks. A concrete slab is poured throughout the cellar.

10. Most of the hardwood strip flooring in the kitchen, hall, and tap room is removed and salvaged pine flooring is installed.

11. The bathroom at the tap room is removed.

12. The ‘passageway’ between the tap room and kitchen is turned into two closets with one at the kitchen side and the other at the tap room side.

13. The west wing and the large barn are removed. About 1989, the shell of a small addition is added back on to the west end.

14. Fiberglass batt insulation is installed in walls and attic floor. Sheetrock is installed at most of the interior surfaces.

15. All of the wooden floors throughout the house are sanded with a large floor sander removing at least two layers of paint. Floors are lightly stained and clear finished.

The above is not intended to be a complete list of all of the changes to the house, but just those of the most significance and those we have been able to document. Other changes are discussed in the main body of the report. In some instances, we have elected not to list potentially significant alterations. An example of this would be the remembrances of a five-year old child of there being a porch that spanned the entire front of the house, for which to date, there has been found no physical evidence. The porch of her memories may have been that of the former porch on the north side of the west wing.