This document provides details about the architecture of a house located in East Kingston, New Hampshire. It describes the layout of the main house, including two downstairs parlors and two upstairs bedrooms organized around a central chimney. The chimney structure is complex with multiple fireplaces and built-in storage spaces. Quotes from Herman Melville describe the chimney's central role in the home's design and how it contributes to the house's confusing internal layout with many interconnecting rooms. Photographs document architectural features like wall paneling, window shutters, fireplaces, and other interior and exterior details of the main house and attached carriage house.

1. A Brief Survey of Some Architectural Details House at Hog Hill 127 South Road East Kingston, New Hampshire Marilyn L. Bott August 21, 2009 Special Topics in Heritage Studies The Rural Cultural Environment: Architecture and Landscape Ben Amsden

2. The main section of the house faces directly south. There are two parlors downstairs – the front parlor for formal use is on the west side, the parlor for daily living is on the east side – and two bedrooms upstairs

3. Extensive deed research provided an approximate date of construction

4. The house is bounded closely on the west side by the road and even more closely on the east side by the driveway

5. Northeast elevation shows the kitchen with a bedroom above and an extension known as “the buttery,” which is partially below grade for cold food storage (roof seen in right foreground)

6. The main center chimney has four flues (a walk-in kitchen fireplace, two large parlor fireplaces and one small Rumford fireplace in the northwest bedroom); the newer kitchen chimney has two flues (for the cellar furnace and a kitchen woodstove)

7. Northwest elevation shows the transition to the cross-gable kitchen ell

8. Preserved patch of early shiplap clapboards (upper section of exterior wall shown here)

9. Northwest elevation shows the bathroom window tucked in under the upstairs eaves along with an interior view of the bathroom ceiling

11. Ornamentation on the front stairs – the same style of trim is found on at least two other homes in town that were built around the same time

12. “ Climbing the chimney in this part, is the principal staircase… … which mounts to the second floor…where, over the front door, runs a sort of narrow gallery, something less than twelve feet long, leading to chambers on either hand. This gallery, of course, is railed; and so, looking down upon the stairs…resembles not a little a balcony for musicians, in some jolly old abode, in time Elizabethan.” ``Herman Melville

13. “… midway up the chimney, is a mysterious door, entering to a mysterious closet; and here I keep mysterious cordials, of a choice, mysterious flavor, made so by the constant nurturing and subtle ripening of the chimney’s gentle heat, distilled through that warm mass of masonry.” ``Herman Melville

14. “ Here, by way of introduction, it should be mentioned, that besides the fireplaces all round it, the chimney was, in the most haphazard way, excavated on each floor for certain curious out-of-the-way cupboards and closets, of all sorts and sizes, clinging here and there, like nests in the crotches of some old oak.” ~~Herman Melville

15. “ On all its four sides, nearly all the chambers sidled up to the chimney for the benefit of a fireplace. The chimney would not go to them; they must needs go to it.” ~~Herman Melville

16. “ The consequence was, almost every room, like a philosophical system, was in itself an entry, or passage-way to other rooms, and systems of rooms – a whole suite of entries, in fact. Going through the house, you seem to be forever going somewhere, and getting nowhere. It is like losing one’s self in the woods; round and round the chimney you go, and if you arrive at all, it is just where you started, and so you begin again, and again get nowhere.” ~~Herman Melville

17. “ The puzzling nature of the mansion, resulting from the chimney, is peculiarly noticeable in the dining-room, which has no less than nine doors, opening in all directions, and into all sorts of places.” ~~Herman Melville

18. Shows a hinged wall panel (between bookcase and chair) that opens out, giving access to the interior spaces of the house and known as an “Indian cupboard”

19. Cutaways in the window moldings provided finger-holds for opening and closing the “Indian shutters” that slid out of wall pockets to cover the interior surfaces of the parlor windows

20. Interior door latches

21. Decorative wall stencils in the style of Moses Eaton, itinerant New Hampshire craftsman

23. Kitchen cabinetry

25. Pottery shards from the garden and bits of clay pipe stems from the field

26. Reproduction carriage house built in 1938 to replace a deteriorated barn and showing the effects of water damage to lower front wall resulting from the removal of gutters (in 1970s) from front overhang

27. West elevation of carriage house showing “cat-slide” roof on the north side for increased weather protection

28. Sources All photos by Marilyn L. Bott Quoted passages are from “I and my chimney” in The Apple-tree Table and other sketches, by Herman Melville; Princeton University Press, Princeton (1922).