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Calvin Coolidge House Tour
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Calvin Coolidge House Tour
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" So Plymouth Notch is a wonderful place to come and learn about presidential history, also a great place to look at the vernacular Vermont farmhouse, and this 1, the house that Coolidge grew up in is a great example of how a small farmhouse telescoped out to meet the barn and to beat the cold winters. Let's talk with Tom Visser who's a professor at the University of Vermont in the Historic Preservation department. Hi, Tom."
" Hi, Bob."
" This is a great little house. I love the scale of it. Now, did it grow up in bits and pieces? What we're looking at back here is the original house, right?"
" Actually, the original part is over here----"
" Oh, okay."
" in the 1840s. This section was built in the 1870s----"
" Uh huh."
" and then it expanded in the 1890s. If you look over on the left here, we see the main part of the house. What's curious about it is that there's no front door here."
" Right."
" In the 1890s, they added on the 2-story bay window."
" Okay."
" The front door is actually just around the corner."
" Around the corner. And then, some of the elements that you see here are quite unusual. When we think about shutters on windows, we think of them as flat against the wall as decorative items, but here, there they're kind of all bumping into each other."
" These are functional shutters. And, these were put on in the 1890s with movers, and often, they were actually closed during the summer days to keep the sun out to keep it cooler."
" So the front porch, the door leads directly into the kitchen and this would have been the kind of life out here in the summertime, right?"
" This would have been it."
" Yeah."
" Including out here under the shade of these trees."
" What's the story with these rockers?"
" Well these rockers actually go back to the period when Calvin Coolidge was president."
" So, he actually sat in these."
" Exactly."
" Great."
" Exactly."
" Now beyond the front porch and the kitchen and all that, we have more kind of telescoping masses. What goes on in there?"
" Well, from the kitchen, 1 would pass into the woodshed, and then, from the woodshed, go to a workshop, and then from the workshop, into the barn."
" So theoretically, in the depths of winter here in February, you never had to go outside. You could go straight to the barn and milk the cow. You could work. You could do anything you need to do----"
" Exactly."
" Without going out into the cold."
" Yeah."
" Fabulous."
" Exactly."
" Now the church across the street is quintessential New England."
" This is a wonderful example of an 1840 Greek revival vernacular church."
" Uh huh."
" It is simple, and yet, if we look at the details, there's an elegance here."
" Yeah. It's got all the classical details of a Greek temple."
" Indeed, it does. It has 4 columns, if you will, across the front. Plasters."
" Yeah. But they're just made up of flat boards. They're not really millwork."
" Flat boards, but if you look at the top, they're finished off with a small capital within the tiniest molding."
" Yeah. Beautiful."
