“Big House, Little House…”

“Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn.”  So goes the 19th-century children’s rhyme. The rhyme refers to a particular kind of farm structure – connected farm buildings. Most often seen in Maine and New Hampshire, but also sometimes in Needham.

Farmers are, above all, practical people. In the days before long-distance freight and subsidized monoculture, their livelihoods depended on their unsentimental ability to make to make the best use of the resources they had – the soils, the topography, the weather, the materials. Today we might look at a traditional farm as a quaint addition to the scenery, but of the many decisions that once went into building that farm, “quaint” was not even on the list.

Farm buildings are functional, and their form and layout reflects the farmer’s needs and constraints. The above rhyme refers to a particular kind of farm structure – the connected farm buildings, most common in Maine and New Hampshire.

Connected farm buildings were a response to the bitter cold and short growing seasons of these northern states. We are more used to seeing farms with separated outbuildings – sheds and large barns that are across the yard, or even across the road. For the connected buildings, these parts were all joined as a single unit, shotgun style:

• The Big House was the dwelling structure, with the social parlor and the bedrooms. This part of the house would contain the finest of the furnishings and ornamentation, consistent with the economic resources of the family.
• The Little House was the family workroom, the kitchen, and the storage for firewood and the equipment for household work. Separating the kitchen not only kept the house fresher, but it minimized the risk of fire to the main house. The little house was where most of the women’s work took place.
• The Back House connected the little house and the barn. It was the carriage bay, the workshop space, and storage area for the household. This is also where the privy was located. Together, the little house and back house formed the Ell, and divided the working parts of the house from the more formal and presentable dwelling portion.
• The Barn was the largest unit in the structure. This was where the livestock were sheltered, and their food was stored. Cattle, pigs, and horses cannot survive winter outdoors, so they had to be housed and fed in the barns.

Joining the parts of the house had several benefits, especially in the cold months – the food and tools (and the privy!) were accessible through the house rather than going outside, the little house and back house provided space for winter (non-farming) work and therefore additional sources of income, and the warmth of the livestock added significantly to the warmth of the house. The winter work in the workshops included the necessary household production that was put off during the busy farm season – weaving and clothing, woodworking, furniture making, and general repair. Winter also allowed some time to produce some of these goods and crafts in surplus for sale, as a source of cash. The indoor winter work also allowed for some experimentation, being less crucial to the food supply, and therefore became a source of innovation and improvement in the work of the farm. An excellent and extensive study of this house type, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: the Connected Farm Buildings of New England, was written by Thomas Hubka in 1984.

Connected farm buildings were not the prevalent type of farmstead in Needham in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was more common for the house to be rectangular, with two parlor rooms on the first floor and two bedrooms above them on the second floor. An ell extending at right angles from the back of the house housed the kitchens, workshops, and household storage.  The barn was a separate structure to the side or back. There are still several examples of this type of house in Needham, built between about 1720 and 1850. The shape can be seen in photos of the old Samuel Woodcock house (1777, since demolished) and the George Stevens house on Great Plain Avenue (1727, also demolished). Our Mills House (1834) is another good example; the fireplace room is the remaining part of the ell.

However (and you knew this was coming!), there are/were several good examples of connected farmhouses in Needham. Possibly the best (and certainly the one with the best picture!) was the Townsend-Richards house on High Rock Street. The structural history of the house/s on this property are a bit difficult to untangle. The original house on the property was built in 1757 by Samuel Townsend, son of the town’s first Minister, the Rev. Jonathan Townsend. The property later came into the possession of Col. William McIntosh, Needham’s Revolutionary War hero. It descended in the McIntosh family through the 1800s, and the house was altered or rebuilt in 1842 by Joseph Richards into the classic BH-LH-B-B shape seen in the picture. The house is still standing at 75 High Rock Street, but it has been extensively rebuilt and it is not clear to what extent the 1842 house was incorporated into the current house.

Another good example was Nathan McIntosh’s house on Great Plain Avenue.  This house was built sometime between 1840 and 1850 (now demolished). Nathan McIntosh was (among other things) a glue-maker, a shoemaker, and a keeper (briefly) of his father’s tavern on the corner of Great Plain and Central Avenues. He served the town as tax collector in the 1830s. He was a grandson of Col. William McIntosh. Nathan McIntosh also harvested and sold ice from the nearby Trout/Sportsman’s Pond (in those days, known as McIntosh’s Pond). Other examples are the Deacon Jonathan Newell House (1839; still standing at 1038 Central Avenue) and the Spencer Fuller house (1835; at 167 Charles River Street).

Another detail I find interesting, is the external visual distinction between the “house” and the “barns.”  The ell on the Woodcock house was finished with the same fine clapboards as the main house, presenting them as a seamless unit. For both the Townsend-Richards house and the McIntosh house, the back house and barn were shingled and unpainted, and much rougher in finish than the big and little houses – a clear distinction between living/social and working spaces. For the Newell and Fuller houses, which are no longer farmyards, the outbuildings have been spruced up to match the main house.

The components of a farmyard are pretty consistent – a house to live in, sheds for storage, barns for the livestock. Connected farmhouses are a regional variation in response to the harsh conditions of a place where winter was the longest season of the year. Thankfully (and despite the way this winter felt), Needham is more temperate than Maine and New Hampshire, so connecting the barn to the house was not a necessity. Nevertheless, it was the preference of at least several of Needham’s farmers. Maybe the ones smart enough to know that there was a better way to get to the privy than forging through the snow.

It will not always be summer.  Build barns.

Hesiod (Greek poet, 7th c. BCE), Works and Days