The pictures are in reverse order. Numbers in the article below refer to the photos. 

GB 11 – The completed structure, now called, for obvious reasons, the Gingerbread House. Even the Salt Lake City window was restored, broken glass was replaced, along with new caulking, paint, and protected by a sheet of plexiglass from the weather. 

GB 10 - Brother Christian painting the jig-sawn pieces. 

GB 9 - We copied the gingerbread pattern on the D. G. Moyer barn outside Rebuck to use on the Creek House, and cut out dozens of pieces with the jig saw before sanding them. John Moyer is the current owner.

GB 8 – The only example of this time of construction I have seen in three decades of documenting Mahantongo buildings, in which the vertical corner posts extend to the base of the structure and the sills are inserted into it. Far more typical, and practical, is to have the sills joined with mortises and tenons, then the corner posts placed onto them. The method used in the Baum granary permits moisture, and eventually rot, to go directly into these primary structural beams, which happened here.

GB 7 - The elegance of timber framing shows how the structural supports are designed to counter-act the dynamic stresses the building will encounter. 

GB 6 - Such ill-fitting bracing indicates the granary was originally made at the Baum farm from reused lumber. None of the supports were hand-hewn – everything was circular sawn at a sawmill – which indicates the granary was most likely built after the Civil War.

GB 5 - Removing the 1990s double layer of rough-cut boards, to be replaced by planed boards and battens. The gable window was found in an abandoned Victorian mansion in Salt Lake City in the 1970s and brought east to Pennsylvania where we eventually found a use for it.

GB 4 - A paper wasp nest discovered after moving the Creek House to its current location at the Hermitage was an unexpected surprise. At least it was old and uninhabited. We had added the insulation during the first rehab because the building was initially inhabited during the winter, and a pot-belly stove supplied heat. 

GB 3 - Vertical slats were separated by narrow gaps to let in air to dry the stored corn cobs.

GB 2 - The former Baum granary moved to its first site at the Hermitage, along Kehler's Run. The vertical slats have been removed; the timber framing is exposed; and windows are being installed. Circa 1999.

GB 1 - The former Harry Baum farm just east of Christ Church on Schwaben Creek Road. The farm house, on the left, or north side, is the only major remaining building. The barn and most of the outbuildings were to the right on the south side of the road.

The Harry Baum Gingerbread House

by Johannes Zinzendorf

It was in the late 1990s when Felix and Neil Masser came to the Hermitage and told us they were taking down buildings at the old Harry Baum farm east of Leck Kill and wanted to know if we wanted any of them.

GB 1

I wish we could have saved the barn because it was magnificent. Its late construction was indicated by the circular saw marks on all the beams. Nothing hand-hewn here so it was not the first barn on the property. It was built at a time of great prosperity for a farm that was obviously producing large amounts of straw, hay, and grain, and also needed a large stable area on the ground floor for horses and cattle. The structural beams were made of local oak and the main vertical beams were a whopping twelve inches thick, practically unheard of locally. The barn was timber-frame, with its structural pieces mortissed and tenoned to interlock, held in place by pegs. It was built to last, until it was taken down.

We were able to salvage two of the three small buildings that Felix and Neil moved to the Hermitage. Timber-frame buildings of this size are relatively easy to move, and are easily adaptable to a variety of purposes beyond their original use. So the smoke house, which retained a scented hint of its original purpose, was transformed into a guest cabin at a time when we still hosted gatherings and retreats. After that, we turned it into a storage shed.

The granary also became a guest house, and we located it down in the hollow along Kehler's Run, which is how it became known as the Creek House. It was backed on its transport trailer across the creek at a time when the water level was particularly low, then gently pushed onto a prepared stone foundation. Designed to store corn cobs, it had vertical slates spaced an inch apart for air circulation to the drying cobs. We replaced them with two layers of boards. We replaced the rusting metal roof, with trap doors for loading the interior bins, with new metal.

GB 2

GB 3

It was an idyllic location. Step out the front door onto a narrow porch and be sure to turn left or right or else you would fall right into the creek. The sound of constantly flowing water, rushing after heavy rains, or flowing gently the rest of the time, provided soothing background music at its relatively isolated location, despite being just one hundred yards from Grove Road.

The building was basically abandoned for years when we stopped hosting retreats and gatherings, and we learned it was tricky to mess with Mother Nature as the stream diverted itself to surround the structure and even flood it periodically, though it was on a stone foundation. It became difficult to even reach and so we stopped trying and just left it alone. Some years went by, and we finally realized that being constantly in the water was rotting the sills, the lower wooden support beams on which the structure was built. The choice was either to move it or lose it. So we asked Glendon and Merlin High to move it as they had the equipment necessary.

By this time the land around the building had become water-logged and was basically a swamp. Still, the High lads gamely drove a skid loader next to the building so it could be raised sufficiently to put rollers underneath as the plan was to roll the building across the creek on skids, and then across the field to the road, and then up the hill to its new location.

What we hadn't counted on was just how water-logged the soil was, and as Glendon worked the forks under the building, even the large wheels of the skid loader sank deep into the much until we worried that it, and Glendon, might just sink out of sight.

Glendon called his brother Merlin to bring a tractor from their farm over on Ridge Road and they managed to attach a chain to the skid loader and extricate it from the mud. It wasn't pretty.

Finally, and persistently, they were able to move the structure on beams laid across the creek, then dragged it across the field and up the road to its new site, where we left it on cinder blocks until we could rehab it.

Standing in the creek for years had not been kind, and the move uphill and simply torn off one entire, rotted sill that had to be completely replaced. Fortunately the metal roof had protected the upper frame, but it became one of those instances when I had to work on an existing building from the bottom up, instead of from the top down.

GB 4

I ended up taking off the rough-cut planks I'd put on two decades earlier and so, once again, the timber-framing – with its vertical, horizontal, and diagonal bracing elegantly designed to counter-act the stresses all buildings encounter – was exposed. After making repairs to the beams, we covered them again, this time with smooth, planed boards.

GB 5

GB 6

GB 7

GB 8

The idea was that the restored building would be a companion exhibit building to the recently restored general store and post office we had already moved from the nearby village of Haas. In planning the work, I initially thought I was looking at a project that would just take a few weeks, however the reality was that it took the entire season of 2021, from early summer to late fall, to do all that needed to be done, including replacing the modern windows we had initially installed back with the late 1990s with period wood frame windows salvaged from a local demolished house.

We changed the name from Creek House to Gingerbread House, in honor of the dozens of wood cutouts we made with an electric-powered jig saw based on a pattern from a barn outside Green Brier originally built in the late 19th century by Daniel George Moyer, according to his great-great-grandson who still lives at the farm. The carpenter who actually made the hundreds of decorative pieces, all hand-sawn with a manual jig saw and attached under the eaves on all four sides of the barn, remains unknown. It is one of the few barns in the area that is decorated “chust for nice.” A house with the same decoration is located on the other side of Rebuck north of the intersection of Schwaben Creek and Cherry Town roads, presumably by the same carpenter.

GB 9

GB 10

Interested in the story of the Baum farm, we were fortunate to contact a neighbor, Elaine Snyder Wolfgang, whose mother, Lorraine Baum Snyder, was a daughter of Harry and Edna Baum. Elaine said her uncle and aunt, Lester and Marie Baum, lived in the two-story summer house for decades, while her own parents, Lorraine and Burton (Bubby), lived further east near Howerter's Cemetery. The summer house, now gone, was near the main farmhouse on the north side of the road, while the barn and most of the outbuildings were on the south side.

Elaine has an interest in genealogy and showed me the Baum family line that she has traced back to a Peter Baum, Senior, who was killed in the Revolutionary War, and whose widow then married Peter's brother, Henry, a not-unusual occurrence. The Baum farm is now owned by Elaine's brother, Robert Snyder, an accountant who lives out of the area.

She spent a lot of time at the farm visiting her grandparents and other kin. She said there were many outbuildings on both sides of the road, including a stable and chicken house near the barn, and the pig house and a two-story garage near the main house. Elaine said there was an unusual ground cellar for storing produce under the back parlor which retained its original earthen floor, unlike the rest of the cellar which had a later, cement floor.

So now, after being moved and rehabbed twice in its history, Harry Baum's granary has yet another life as the Gingerbread House. I am so glad to say it is finished and will open as a new exhibit space beginning in June, when the Hermitage and the Mahantongo Heritage Center reopens after two years by appointment. Once again we will also have an annual open house on August 14, noon to 4 p.m.

GB 11

Illustrations

1. GB 1 - The former Harry Baum farm just east of Christ Church on Schwaben Creek Road. The farm house, on the left, or north side, is the only major remaining building. The barn and most of the outbuildings were to the right on the south side of the road.

2. GB 2 - The former Baum granary moved to its first site at the Hermitage, along Kehler's Run. The vertical slats have been removed; the timber framing is exposed; and windows are being installed. Circa 1999.

3. GB 3 - Vertical slats were separated by narrow gaps to let in air to dry the stored corn cobs.

4. GB 4 - A paper wasp nest discovered after moving the Creek House to its current location at the Hermitage was an unexpected surprise. At least it was old and uninhabited. We had added the insulation during the first rehab because the building was initially inhabited during the winter, and a pot-belly stove supplied heat.

5. GB 5 - Removing the 1990s double layer of rough-cut boards, to be replaced by planed boards and battens. The gable window was found in an abandoned Victorian mansion in Salt Lake City in the 1970s and brought east to Pennsylvania where we eventually found a use for it.

6. GB 6 - Such ill-fitting bracing indicates the granary was originally made at the Baum farm from reused lumber. None of the supports were hand-hewn – everything was circular sawn at a sawmill – which indicates the granary was most likely built after the Civil War.

7. GB 7 - The elegance of timber framing shows how the structural supports are designed to counter-act the dynamic stresses the building will encounter.

8. GB 8 – The only example of this time of construction I have seen in three decades of documenting Mahantongo buildings, in which the vertical corner posts extend to the base of the structure and the sills are inserted into it. Far more typical, and practical, is to have the sills joined with mortises and tenons, then the corner posts placed onto them. The method used in the Baum granary permits moisture, and eventually rot, to go directly into these primary structural beams, which happened here.

9. GB 9 - We copied the gingerbread pattern on the D. G. Moyer barn outside Rebuck to use on the Creek House, and cut out dozens of pieces with the jig saw before sanding them. John Moyer is the current owner.

10. GB 10 - Brother Christian painting the jig-sawn pieces.

11. GB 11 – The completed structure, now called, for obvious reasons, the Gingerbread House. Even the Salt Lake City window was restored, broken glass was replaced, along with new caulking, paint, and protected by a sheet of plexiglass from the weather.