UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 25, Page 8
March 25, 1993
Grad student enjoys documenting historic architecture

     Since her undergraduate days at Dickinson College, the varied
historical buildings of south central Pennsylvania have provided a
lodestone of research data for Nancy Van Dolson, currently a University of
Delaware graduate fellow in the Center for Historic Architecture and
Engineering of the College of Urban Affairs and Public Policy.
     Majoring in history and the fine arts, Van Dolson combined these two
interests in her first research project, a study of the historic
architecture of Carlisle, Pa., the home of Dickinson College, for her
senior thesis.
     While working for her master's degree in history at the University of
Delaware, Van Dolson became interested and wrote her thesis on the
brick-cased, log houses dotting the Pennsylvania countryside in Cumberland
County.
     The houses are distinctive, she said. The pattern of the brick is
different;  walls extend to the ground, not to a stone foundation, and the
walls are unusually thick.
     The brick walls also are studded with intermittent spikes that anchor
them to the log walls. "The brick enclosures were frequently added when an
addition was put on a house so that the exterior would look the same," she
said.
     Some of the houses she discovered by driving around the countryside.
She found others by researching old tax records. Van Dolson discovered a
total of 52 brick-cased, log houses, and people who know of her interest
have contacted her about new finds.
     During this time, Van Dolson was working for the Historical Society of
Cumberland, and the project led to further research and a book, entitled
Cumberland County: An Architectural Survey.
     For her doctoral dissertation, Van Dolson is conducting case studies
of  distinctive communities and their buildings, ranging from a religious
settlement (similar to the Shakers) to a town settled by free African
Americans before the Civil War. Another phase of her research is the
influence of the architecture of the Cumberland Valley upon other parts of
the country. This occurred as settlers heading south and west came through
the area and eventually integrated the local architectural styles into
their homes.
     Snow Hill, Pa., is one of the areas Van Dolson is researching. A
German religious community settled by Seventh Day Baptists, women and men
there were celibate and lived in separate dormitories.
     The farms were thriving during their time, with barns, a mill, a
cooper shop, a church and other buildings on the property.
     Because the sect members believed that Saturday was the Sabbath and
worked on Sunday, they were involved in a court case that gave insights
into their way of life, Van Dolson said. When the last brother died in
1893, everything was left just as it was and remains that way today, as if
the members were still living there.
     Mercersburg, Pa., is another town whose old homes Van Dolson is
documenting for her dissertation. Before the Civil War, the town housed a
settlement of approximately 70 free African Americans. In some cases, the
descendants of the original owners still live in the old houses. The homes
in which the African Americans and others lived are distinctive
story-and-a- half houses.
     In East Pennsborough, Pa., she is doing research on the various kinds
of ethnic homes built in the town--from Georgian to the large, square
German houses built around a central chimney to the Scottish-Irish homes,
known as hall/parlor houses. These houses had two or three downstairs
rooms, with the kitchen as a part of the hall, Van Dolson explained.
     Van Dolson documents the homes by measuring, making drawings, taking
photographs and researching their origins.
     The owners of the old houses share her interest and have always been
helpful in making their homes available to her, and telling her what they
know about the history of their houses.
     As for leisure time, what else would an architectural historian do but
be involved in restoring her own house, located in Green Park, Pa., north
of Harrisburg, and dating back to 1813.
                                        -Sue Swyers Moncure