The Murphy House, Murphy Road, Bennington, Vermont

UPDATED  February 1, 2025

Murphy House

Murphy Road, Bennington, Vermont

 

A little house, a cape, sits at the intersection of Murphy and Austin Hill Roads. Its simple shape with few windows, a steep roof, and a center chimney are hallmarks of early Georgian houses in south west Vermont, built before the American Revolution.

The Hinsdill Map* shows a dot here - indicating there was a house in this location in 1835. The map labels another dot, nearby to the west, as 'Breckenridge'.                                          

The Breckenridge Papers, a family history written about 1910, are housed in the Bennington Museum.  The Papers say that in 1788, John Breckenridge’s father, Daniel (1769-1847) built a “substantial and capacious house perhaps a quarter of a mile from the pioneer cabin in which he was born”.  That ‘substantial and capacious house’ is the one labeled on the 1835 Hinsdill map. JY Breckenridge died in 1880. The family moved away. The house burned in 1889. A photograph of it survives and was printed in The Shires of Bennington, in 1985. The house pictured has a gambrel roof, a style which was built in Bennington after the Revolutionary War.

 The ‘pioneer cabin’ is the dot on the Hinsdill map, “ a quarter mile” from the family's new house, whose dot Hinsdill labeled ‘Breckenridge’. 

Bennington’s Registry if Deeds records that on April 4,1860, Micheal and Mary Murphy paid JY Breckenridge $130 for the land and house. The Murphy family owned the house and land for 148 years. They sold both in 2008.   

 The current owner of the Murphy House graciously showed me the fireplaces, the timber frame, the room layout, the stone foundation; all of which date the house to c. 1761, before the Breckenridge Standoff.

Daniel’s father, James Breckenridge, who came to Bennington in 1761, built the cabin.  It is the dwelling which the NY Sheriff came to destroy, the house which the Bennington citizens defended.

Since the 1930's, a stone memorial has commemorated the Breckenridge Standoff in front the house built in1788. The memorial is in the wrong place.

*A copy of the 1835 Hinsdill map can be seen in the Bennington Town Clerk’s office as well as in the Regional History Room of the Bennington Museum.

The Columns of Bennington

Yes, this is a column about the columns that builders in Bennington used before 1860. There were many, most of them fluted.

This is the Charles Cooper Residence.

Below it is the home, and probably the office, of Dr. Goodall.
Both have 2 story tall porticoes with dramatic Doric columns.

These houses were photographed in 1904 for the Bennington Souvenir. Both date from the 1850's and were on Main Street.   The Cooper Residence was extensively updated in the 1880's as can be seen by the curved roof over the veranda that nestles between the wings of the house.
Both were, in 1904, painted several colors, no longer the classic white preferred in the 1850's.

The first house is gone, the second one also. I show them as examples of the many Bennington houses which had dramatic columns. 

Here is Bennington's Town Offices, built in 1842 for the Root family, given to Bennington in the 1920's to be the Town's offices.

For more about the Root House, see: https://passingbyjgr.blogspot.com/2020/11/benningtons-town-offices-originally.html

 

 

 

 

It also has Doric columns; columns with flutes,  no base at the bottom and simple capitals at the top: classic American Greek Revival.

 

 If you cut one in half it would look like this:

Long wooden shafts, 2" thick minimum, with their sides cut at angles so that when they are set side by side they join in a circle.* After three flutes are carved in each shaft, they are glued together on the edges and the inside with angled blocks and hide glue. 

 

 

 

In 1842 this was new.  As recently as 1836, when the Norton-Fenton House on Pleasant Street was built, the columns had been made from full trees, cut, shaped, and smoothed, with added capitals and bases. 

 

 

 

  

The columns in the Old First Church, built in 1805, are also trees. Local tall, straight white pines. debarked and shaped, support the balcony, the ceiling of the meeting house, and the roof as part of the attic trusses. 

 

The next time you visit the church check the columns. You can see where tree branches were lopped off when the columns were shaped, and where the young men who sat in the balcony carved into those trees during church services.

 

 

Why did this change?     Supply and technology.

The supply of tall straight trees close to the major seaport cities had dwindled. As early as 1820, the trees for the timber frames of houses along the seacoast north of Boston were being hauled by oxen and rafted down rivers from forests 50 miles away.  Remember that in 1840, a 3 mile journey to town in a wagon took 45 minutes. Bringing the lumber to the cities cost money and time. Those logs was too precious to use whole.

At the same time the technology of saw mills had greatly improved. Saws could cut not just one board from a tree, but many boards at once. 

Bennington  still had the trees. It wanted the newest  style: Greek Revival. The pattern books written by master builders and architects had plates and descriptions, including how to build the new fluted columns.
 

Asher Benjamin in his book, The Architect, or Practical House Carpenter, showed a Doric column  with its base and capital. He included the proper proportions on the left and the profile on the right.

Benjamin accompanied his drawings with detailed instructions to the carpenter.* He wrote:

I especially like his explanation of the necessity of accuracy and 'exactness' in order to keep the work from being 'bad'. 

Doric Columns, some much larger than those on the Town Offices, were used on Main Street, Pleasant Street and West Road, on Prospect Street in North Bennington. Those at Powers Market were brick, specially formed for that purpose.

 

 *The image of the Doric column is part of Plate IV, titled: 'DORIC ORDER From the Temple of Theses in Athens'.
*The image of the cross section is half of Plate XXIV, titled 'Glueing up of Columns'.                       *The excerpt is from Page 52: PLATE XXIV To glue up the Shaft of a Column.
All are in  The Architect, or Practical House Carpenter, by Asher Benjamin. 1830; reprint by Dover Publications. 

Hiram Waters, a master builder whose shop was on Monument Avenue, Bennington, owned a copy of this book. It is possible that he was the carpenter for these houses.  

For more on Hiram Waters, see https://passingbyjgr.blogspot.com/2020/10/hiram-waters-workshop-monument-avenue.html  

See also issues of the Walloomsack Review, published by the Bennington Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Bennington's Town Offices, originally The Root House

 

 

Now that the leaves are off the trees, pause on Union Street, look toward South Street and admire the Root House that was set  right there for you to see.

 

 

Today this is Bennington's Town Offices. 

The house was built for the Roots' family. Elisha and Betsy Root had come to Bennington in 1833. Their son, Henry Green Root, a tin smith, had joined with Luther Graves, a peddler, to make and market tin goods. The Root family lived here until the 1920's when they gave their house to the Town.

When it was built in the 1840's it was the latest style.  Facing the gable end of the house to the street was the new way; so were the wings. English gentlemen had country houses like this. So did successful merchants in the Mid-Atlantic states. 

Now the style had come to Bennington.  Copying the solid rectangular shape, the strong moldings, and columns of Greece temples was all the rage. 

 

These photographs, each bringing the viewer closer to the house, help show how a visitor approaching on foot or in a carriage would have perceived the house - not as we see it today in one photograph or passing by in a vehicle.

 Setting the house back from the street away from the hustle of the town, was also the latest style. It  presented the house within a vista. A visitor needed to approach the house deliberately, not just  happen by.

The veranda - the name used for a porch in the 1840's - helped. It was a platform: showing off the house.

 
It also was a place to see and be seen. It spoke of a family who had leisure time to spend on that porch.
The windows which looked onto the veranda came to the floor - you could walk through them. The house became porous, not just protection from the elements. In the winter the windows would have interior shutters and drapes and the newest heating system, cast iron stoves, for warmth.

 

 

 The large, fluted, and slightly tapered columns with simple capitals copied those of Greek temples.
They were not cut from one tree, but assembled from many planed and carved boards.

 Columns in early Bennington buildings, for example: The Old First Church, 1805, and the Norton-Fenton House, 1836, were trees.

 The gable triangle, emphasized by moldings reminded the viewers of a classic Greek pediment. The flat boards -  set side by side, not lapped as clapboards are  -  referenced the stone walls of  Greek temples The boards were probably made smooth by a water powered planing machine, not by hand. What a time saver that would have been!

The columns and the flat boards required newly emerging technologies that Bennington embraced.   

 

The house - seen here in the center of the colorized 1887 Bird's Eye View map of Bennington - had barns and out buildings. One - on the left at the corner of South and Elm Streets - had begun as the Root and Graves' company workshop. It is now Bennington's Welcome Center.

To the right is the house that is now used for Harvest Brewing and a restaurant and then the brick wall of Jay's Art Shop and Frame Gallery.

 

 

 

Here's the house as photographed by WT White or WH Sibley for the Bennington Souvenir. published in 1904.

Mary Root Mollica once told me that when she was a child (early 1930's)  her Morgan horse was stabled in one of the barns. 

Hiram Waters' workshop, Monument Avenue, Bennington, VT

 

 

Hiram Waters was an excellent carpenter. This is his workshop on Monument Avenue in Old Bennington; built in 1835, with help from the community to replace his old shop which had burned down. 

 

 

His apprentices roomed upstairs; the kitchen was in the basement. It’s shape - a story and a half, gable facing the street, is standard for the time. The center door says it’s a place of business: the visitor enters into a show room. A residence would have a side entrance leading into a hall with a room on one side .

Enjoy his skill as a joiner - a finish carpenter. He understands the latest style: Greek Revival. His proportions fit his facade - not too big or too little. He includes all the right classic architectural details. 

 

This is now residential and connected to the house to the left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Pattern books' were published to share the latest designs with country carpenters. We know that Waters owned at least one of Asher Benjamin's pattern books, which included detailed drawings of columns like these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A handsome classic sequence of curves on the pedestal! 

However the half rounds that make up the column are fascinating - classic flutes curve in, here they curve out, 'reed molding'.
Did he not have the right plane?  Was he inventing using the planes he had? Or did he prefer this shape?

 No matter - it's handsome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I count 6 layers of molding - 6 shadow lines for the capital from the top of the column to the frieze (the flat piece). And then the 'rope': delicate, tucked between 2 larger simple surfaces and a plain fillet. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The running bead continues up the rake, under the overhanging eaves. It is small - best seen by a pedestrian, which is 1835 would have been almost everyone.

 

 

 

The cabinet shop itself is a statement of Water's ability as a builder; the rope molding is frosting on the cake. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pattern book  we think Waters owned was Asher Benjamin's  Practical House Carpenter, first published in 1830. This frontispiece comes form the edition published 

in 1844.
Benjamin's books were very popular.  He published regularly from 1797 until his death in 1845. His publishers issued later editions until 1862. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is part of Plate XII, the architrave for an Ionic column.

Waters didn't copy the architrave or the others in Benjamin's book exactly . for example, he left out the dentils, and added more moldings which emphasize the parts and created more shadows. 

He was also adapting the design for a free standing column to a corner pilaster.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is part of Plate V, the base for a Doric column.

The sequence of curves on Waters' base is quite similar to this.

 

 

 

I first posted this on Facebook.  I have copied it here so it's not lost.

 

The images of Asher Benjamin's Plates come from The Architect, or Practical House Carpenter (1830), Dover Publications reprint, 1988. 

That book does not include this frontispiece.  That came from an original edition available online. I chose to use the original fonts and layout because I wanted to share with you, the reader, the cover page which Hiram Waters saw.