The house at 619 Ann Street is a one and a half story timber framed structure on pier and infill foundations. The house is said to date from around 1832 and the structural and decorative details appear to confirm this supposition. The house has two dormers over the front porch and a modern interior chimney on the east gable. The four-bay asymmetrical façade has a large six-panel door near the center of the house. The dwelling has been altered and expanded at the back of the original section.
The house has a center passage plan with three rooms and a winder stair in a back northeast corner. The second floor is a half story with dormers and three rooms whose footprint was altered in a later alteration, which echoes the first floor plan. Only one room on each floor was heated originally. While the fireplaces remain in their original locations, the stacks have been rebuilt; the west exterior chimney is modern Flemish bond.
The rafters are both pit and sash sawn. They are joined with mortise and tenons pegged at the apex. The east gable weatherboards are undercut to fit on the cripple studs, in similar fashion to 201 Front Street. The rear north room on the ground floor has an overhead beam that indicates the position of the end wall of the original house before it was extended northward in the 1930s.
The house is conservative in its use of moldings. Some architraves lack backbands, others that do have Roman ovolos. A few of the moldings are quirked, such as the Greek woodwork that adorns the parlor mantel. The surbase in the passage and in the heated chamber is Roman, but that in the north room has chatter marks, indicating that it is modern, machine-made material.
Upstairs, the plan has been altered slightly but contains three board-and-batten doors that seem to be original and are hung on strap hinges. The doors to the south-facing rooms have backward mounted strap hinges to accommodate the batten. These two openings along with the one between the heated room and the north room are original; the architrave has no backband and only a small bead on either side of the opening. The two south facing dormers are original, but the north-facing ones have been altered. One was removed when an addition was created to the north of the original house in the 1930s and one was shifted to accommodate other alterations.
On the west side of the structure are the remains of a cistern. The structure has a diameter of six feet eleven inches, a height of three feet and half an inch, and its walls are eight inches thick. The salmon brick has been covered in plaster. While both headers and stretchers can be seen, not enough of the brickwork is exposed to determine any pattern. - Carolyn Quenstedt (field school student) Photos and drawings by Carl Lounsbury and field school team.
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