Throwback Thursday by Matson Insurance: ‘The Porch’

Matson Insurance is partnering with Jefferson County History Center to offer exploreJeffersonpa.com readers a look into Jefferson County’s past. Today, “The Porch” is being showcased.

[Pictured above: Porches were gathering places for family and friends during much of our county’s history. (JCHS Collection)]

THE PORCH

Can you imagine those homes along Jefferson Street in Brookville without their front porches? Without those broad airy spaces where folks once sat on a summer evening swinging on the porch swing or rocking in a rocker as they whiled away their time with conversation? Can you imagine a time when neighbors met on those porches to talk about the events of the day?

Neighboring for those first settlers took place when they met to raise the cabin for the newest arrivals, or at a worship service when an itinerant preacher arrived and the word was passed that there would be a Communion service. Those early dwellings had no porches, and we suspect those pioneers had few evenings to pass the time of day.

By the middle of the 19th century they did have time and porches began to appear. Readers of the London Illustrated News, a newspaper read here in the county, included etchings of English houses built in the Gothic Revival or Carpenter Gothic Style and pattern books picturing the styles became available. When the first log cabins, log houses, and “shanties” began to be replaced, people looked to newspapers, magazines, and pattern books for ideas. Carpenter Gothic houses and the styles that followed, Italianate and French Second Empire, had porches. Good examples of all three styles of architecture exist in Brookville and in the countryside.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, there is a resurgence in the use of pattern books among home builders. Tired of look-alike houses, people are turning to them so they can pick, choose, and combine the various parts of their future home. Fortunate, indeed, are the owners of many homes in Jefferson County―the porches are already there, ready for a quiet read on Saturday morning, or waiting for conversations with the neighbors after the evening meal.

Once upon a time those porches and the creaky porch swing were for courting as well. Who knows what happens on those grand porches today after the sun sets.

Copyright@Jefferson County Historical Society, Inc.

Throwback Thursday is brought to you by Matson Insurance in Brookville.

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Submitted by the Jefferson County History Center.


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