18^TH CENTURY LOG HOUSE

IN DOVER COMMUNITY PARK

 

The 1740’s log house was moved from Black Bridge Road, York, PA to the park on West Canal Road, Dover, PA.

 

The log house was dismantled piece by piece and log by log by the students and community volunteers of Dover.   It involved taking apart walls of logs up to 30 feet long, a foot to a foot and a half thick, and getting them onto a flat bed truck. Some of the logs were made from Oak and very heavy.  The bottom logs were from chestnut and even heavier.

 

When the house was dismantled all the logs had turned out to be notched. (There wasn’t a nail in the place.)  Framing of the four original windows were of half logs.  The floor boards – later to disappear along with their joists while they were stacked awaiting transport –were random width and original. Another telltale sign of the age of the house was the whitewash used as a wood preservative.

 

Much of the window glazing was the wavy glass of antiquity.  Some of that was lost to vandals during the reconstruction, but the builders pieced together enough of the original panes for the first floor windows.  The doors are original, along with all but 12 of the logs.

 

The house underwent updating during the centuries on Black Bridge Road, as evidenced by the clapboard covering the logs and the brick chimneys.  It now has a few modern improvements like treatment of the logs with pentachlorphenal, a strong wood preservative, and chinking of stryofoam and chicken wire under the rough plaster.

 

John Schein the former director of Historic York, Inc. discovered the log treasure hidden under German-style wood siding and advanced Deterioration.  The former owner, the J. E. Baker Co., made the building available to anyone who would move it from the firm’s quarry property near the San Carlos Restaurant.

 

Research traced the house back to 1744 and found it had ownership connections with several old York area families.  Because of its size the house likely was built by someone of means.