Bryn Mawr man finds 300-year-old log house beneath stucco facade
For years, Jude Plum had kept tabs on the tiny old house next to his childhood home near Bryn Mawr Hospital. He remembered the hermit with a long, gray beard who died in the back yard. And how Plum had once read a line in a local history book that suggested the dilapidated little parcel on Haverford Avenue had once been special.
But when the Main Line cosmetologist bought the squat eyesore out of pre-foreclosure four years ago, and removed five layers of exterior, he was shocked by what he found: a log house, formed by two stories’ worth of oak logs notched together at the corners — all rotting, but otherwise untouched since it was built in 1704.
This oddity adjacent to the far more ordinary house where Plum grew up was, he would soon realize, among the oldest surviving houses in Pennsylvania and one of the two oldest extant homes in Lower Merion Township. He embarked on a staggering restoration odyssey, creating a showpiece so out of sync with its surroundings on a bustling Main Line thoroughfare, it has left passersby mystified by the sight of it among the concrete clutter of modern life.
“This is the beginning of our country,” Plum said last week inside the refashioned abode, whose two original stone fireplaces connect like a wishbone, and whose smoky-brown-log walls with white chinking resemble a chocolate layer cake. “I want to put it on the National Register.”
The structure was taken apart and rebuilt from scratch, each log hand-hewn using a 200-year-old broad axe to chisel the flat sides to perfection. Aside from a splashy kitchen, a motion sensor-activated toilet bowl, and a few other deliberately modern touches, Plum adorned the interior with period furniture, paintings, pewter and other accoutrements, making it feel like the museum he hopes it one day becomes.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/montgomery/bryn-mawr-man-finds-300-year-old-log-house-beneath-stucco-facade-20170630.html?photo_9
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