Stencil House

Stencil House, built in 1804 on one hundred-acre farm in Columbus, New York, was modeled after a Capen house, a small, side-gabled structure prevalent throughout the colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries. Named after Parson Joseph Capen of Topsfield, Massachusetts, who built one of the earliest such structures in 1692, Capen houses reflect the British influence on early Puritan architecture. The house is now an 18th-century period historic house museum located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.HistoryBuilt around a large central fireplace that opened on multiple sides to maximize warmth, Capen houses, like their medieval English counterparts, typically possessed three or four rooms on the ground floor: a parlor, a “hall,” a kitchen, and sometimes a foyer. The parlor traditionally functioned as a formal space and was not heated in the winter except on special occasions. The kitchen and hall acted as communal living spaces. The stairwell, not yet considered a focal point of design, remained a discreet and functional element of the house’s plan. While American colonists maintained the basic floor plan of the European houses, the ready and cheap supply of timber allowed them to use clapboard siding and shingled roofs rather than the mud and thatch common in Britain.Although Stencil House was constructed along this basic plan, the interior reflects a 19th-century decorum rather than the Puritan simplicity of earlier Capen Houses. The parlor maintains its position as a reception room and while the “hall” has become a formal dining room. Only the kitchen, at the rear of the structure, maintains its original use as a communal family area.