Historic Architecture in the Oxford Hills
In 1902, working with a draft horse, Howard
Maxim built this barn above Locke Mills.
The author’s barn in East Waterford, built about
1855 by Marshall Sanderson
56 THE OXFORD HILLS MAGAZINE 2007–2008
19th century hand-split granite foundation
supported a chimney, fireplace and brick oven.
scott vlaun
In the Oxford Hills we see timber frames most clearly in barns, where the structure
is open on the inside. The earliest barns followed British practices, with doors in the
long sides of a rectangular building. The doors gave access for wagons; hay was stored
on one side and animals housed on the other. Such “English” barns are now rare,
having mostly been replaced by larger, more modern structures.
The significant change on barn design occurred around 1825, when the doors
were shifted to the ends of the building. This made longer, more capacious barns
possible, especially important as dairying became popular towards the end of the
nineteenth century and more numerous herds of larger cattle became common.
Dwelling houses in the Oxford Hills began with small cabins built of hewn
logs. Framed houses—that is, houses constructed as wooden skeletons sheathed
with sawn lumber—awaited the construction of sawmills accessible to the settlers. So we find that in Waterford, for example, though there had been substantial settlement since the end of the Revolution, the first framed house was built
some time after 1792, when the first sawmill in town began operating.
For their foundations, builders in Maine learned to use the abundant granite, splitting slabs from ledges and boulders using small iron wedges in hand-drilled
holes. Dry-laid foundations (that is, fitted together without the use of mortar) became the norm, with massive chimney foundation arches of split granite.
The basic design that became most common was the “Cape Cod” house in its various versions, one of the great New England architectural innovations. Such structures are
small, rectangular and symmetrical, with a center chimney. The entrance door is opposite
the chimney, and the houses are typically one or two rooms deep. The low roof allows for
a second floor only large enough to be used as a sleeping loft and storage space. Some early
Frost Farm Gallery Coll
ection
scott vlaun
scott vlaun
Courtesy of greenwood historical society
George L. “Shavey” Noyes with his dog Jack enjoys
his wigwam on Pennesseewassee Inlet ca. 1925
Architecture in its simplest form is
when you build a roof to keep the rain off
your head. And if there is an instinctive aesthetic sense in human beings, it surely displays itself in the infinite variety of forms
these shelters have taken throughout history.
Here in the Oxford Hills we have plenty
of interesting architecture to appreciate. And
while we have many fine public buildings—
Norway’s Main Street, for example—what
we pass by most often are the dwellings that
our neighbors built to live in, a wonderful reflection of the needs, desires and tastes of ordinary people over two centuries.
In New England the first European explorers found the natives living in
domed structures with frames of bentover saplings, covered with bark, boughs or woven mats. Later, when settlement
from Britain began, the newcomers used the building techniques and tools they
knew. The Pilgrims’ first houses were “earthfast,” having walls constructed by setting posts vertically in the ground. The walls were made weathertight with “wattle
and daub,” a common English building technique for all kinds of structures, with
brushwood woven between the posts (wattle), then filled by forcing in a soft mixture of clay and straw (daub). Roofs were thatched, as at home.
But New England weather was too severe for these buildings—the first storms
simply washed away the clay mixture. These early housewrights were skilful and inventive, and adapted by learning to split clapboards and shingles from straight-grained
oak, chestnut and pine. In England, deforested centuries before, such profligate use of
wood was impossible. Here the newcomers found a different world, the land covered
with forests filled with a huge variety of fine timber. Carpenters and craftsmen took
advantage of this bounty, and as building
techniques evolved they were often based
on utilizing this resource.
Still, for more than 200 years most
structures continued to be based on the
traditional European “post and beam” or
“timber frame” techniques, where builders create a strong skeleton by joining
large timbers with mortise and tenon
joints fastened by wooden pegs, then
construct the rest of the building by atMaxim’s children watch Howard drill for a mortise.
taching pieces to the frame.
Courtesy of greenwood historical society
sanderson collection
Lauren Mavian
by
David Sanderson
Pre-1800 Cape Cod house with additions at Frost
Farm on Pike’s Hill in Norway, as it was and as
it is today.
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Hamlin house at Paris Hill, a fine example of
early 19th century residential architecture
photos this page scott vlaun
An early hip-roof design in downtown Norway
Victorian detailing on the Evans-Cummings
House, Main Street, Norway, a “Gingerbread
House” indeed
58 THE OXFORD HILLS MAGAZINE 2007–2008
scott vlaun
sanderson collection
C.A. Stephens buildings at Norway Lake, April 1901
The houses arrived in pieces, complete with lumber, nails
and everything else the customer needed. Most of the houses
were modest, often with porches and prominent wood trim,
reflecting the Midwestern bungalows that so many Sears customers favored. A good many kit houses must have arrived
in boxcars at the old South Paris station, because local side
streets are well supplied with houses recognizable from the
Sears house catalogs.
Modular “Cape” echoes local architectural history
History often creates odd and unexpected connections.
Today the modular home serves many of the same needs that
created the mail order house, with the Oxford Hills a leader in
the industry. These manufactured homes are built a bit differently; but look at the models there on Route 26 and count how
many of them still use that basic Cape Cod design. Perhaps
this is one of the secrets of innovation: find new ways to do it,
but never lose sight of old ways that have proven to work. n
courtesy of sears holdings
Late 18th century farmstead with early 20th century flat-topped dormers and attached barn
capes can still be seen locally. Look for small, nearly square houses with no second floor,
minimal exterior trim and a center chimney.
Sometimes the first dwelling was a “half house,” a single room with a fireplace at
one end, the other “half ” of the Cape Cod design to be added later. These first houses were small—an early Fryeburg ordinance requires that houses be at least 18 by 20
feet, with seven-foot ceilings. Like the early barns, these were gradually supplanted
by larger structures.
At places like Paris Hill or Waterford Flat we see houses that are more substantial, built by those who could afford to construct and maintain them. Generally they
share the blocky symmetry of the Cape Cod designs; the Massachusetts saltbox and
garrison house designs seem not to have been followed by early Mainers.
Two-story, nearly square, center-chimney structures form one category of larger
early house, as though the cape design had been expanded. A variation of this style is
the hip-roof, nearly square structures that were often the sign of especially prosperous citizens. The house next to the Universalist church near the head of Main Street
in Norway is a good example of the hip-roof design. A second general category is
houses that are also two-storied, but considerably longer than they are wide, usually with chimneys at each end. Again, they appear as adaptations of the Cape design,
one or two rooms deep.
These early designs persisted until about the middle of the nineteenth century,
when two important developments occurred. First, the arrangement of farm buildings changed to create the connected farms we see everywhere, more common in this
part of Maine than anywhere else. This change was a matter of modernity, not convenience. Encouraged by magazines and newspapers, farmers came to feel that the
new layout was an important sign of a progressive, up-to-date farmer, so they built
additions or moved buildings to create linked structures.
Second, technology made it possible to saw lumber much faster and more cheaply, while bulk manufacturing of modern wire nails provided inexpensive fasteners.
Beginning in the cities, new construction methods spread. The old timber-framed
houses were replaced with buildings whose skeletons were constructed of lengths of
small-dimension lumber nailed together, with wall and roof sheathing that added
structural strength. These new buildings required less skill to construct and used
standard components that were easily moved and lifted instead of heavy timbers.
As this “balloon framing” spread, urban architectural styles spread with it. New
houses shifted their orientation to a “side-entrance Victorian” style, with the short
side of the house facing the street and the main entrance at one side of the street end.
Such houses typically date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and they
are ubiquitous, especially in our towns.
The affluent everywhere emulated the most elaborate Victorian architecture,
which reached its peak in public buildings ornamented with towers, crenellations,
ironwork and carved stone. These were large houses, often with porches along the
side, and a formal-looking facade on the end of the house that faced the street. Norway features a couple of such houses, most notably the “gingerbread house” on Main
Street, now in disrepair but still showing most of the details added to the original
1850 house by the Cummings family. The C. A. Stephens buildings at Norway Lake
were a particularly spectacular example.
By 1900 architecture was mostly a matter of following blueprints, cutting and
fitting standard components, and driving nails; except for large structures like barns
the traditional building methods had disappeared. With construction methods simplified and standardized, the giant mail order companies saw an opportunity, and
Sears, Montgomery Ward and others began producing houses as kits. Tens of thousands of these mail order houses were sold; Sears continued to manufacture a variety
of styles and designs until 1940.
1913—Model 187, Sears Modern Homes Catalog
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