A love story
Revolutionary war buffs buy dream house that was built in 1780s
Revolutionary war buffs buy dream house that was built in 1780s./
Jenna and Eric Schnitzer bought a house no one else wanted. It had been on the market for three years before the newlyweds walked in and fell in love in 2009. Despite its structural problems, the house was the Schnitzers' dream: a historic home built, to last, in the 1780s and then not substantially altered in all the years since. Many of the original features were buried underneath fiber board and bad design choices, but the bones were there and it was located in a farming community surrounded by agricultural land and buildings.
As historical re-enactors and students of Revolutionary War and early American history — Eric Schnitzer is a park ranger and historian at Saratoga National Historical Park and the couple met at stop six on the battlefield — this was the house they dreamed of restoring. They named it the Merritt House, after the merchant who built it.
"It's what's called a half house. A hall runs the length of the house and there's ell (a wing) off the back," explained Jenna Schnitzer. "All the rooms radiate off the hallway."
At the beginning, the Schnitzers had a rough idea of what they wanted to do, starting with converting an awkwardly placed bathroom. But the house dictated their punch list. Within the first month they were there, the septic system collapsed. The dining room floor collapsed the first year, then they discovered the kitchen, in a back corner of
their home, was structurally unsound. Imagine opening a door to water shooting out of broken pipes and there's no shutoff valve.
"We lived here for a few weeks and then thought, 'Oh God what did we do,'"schnitzer said.
The house has no central heating; for eight years, the Schnitzers slept in an unheated bedroom. On the coldest nights of the year, they woke in the morning to find water frozen in the glasses next to the bed and frost on their coverlet from their breath.
And yet, even the hardships held meaning for the Schnitzers. Immersed as they were in the historical time period, it gave them a hands-on appreciation for the lives people lived. But the house is not a museum. Although much of the decor is from the last quarter of the 18th century and the Schnitzers pass on antiques from later than 1830, they built a thoroughly modern kitchen, but the house has its original bread oven. It allows the couple to make recipes from the time period and cook them they way they were meant to be cooked.
The parlor, largest bedroom and guest room are all rooms furnished, or will be furnished, based on rooms of the period. Material culture is one of Jenna Schnitzer's interests and she made the curtains throughout the house based on patterns and designs that were popular in the latter part of the 18th century.
The Schnitzers focus now is restoring the hall. Removing the layers tells the history of the house. It was disappointing to see previous owners removed all the plaster and lathe, but they discovered wallpaper from the period and learned it was an arabesque pigeon design made in Boston in the 1790s. They will have reproduction wallpaper made for the hall. When the couple bought the house, the hall had been chopped up into small rooms (including that awkwardly placed bathroom, now gone) and doors were cut into the hall, resulting in seven doors leading to the sitting room. The Schnitzers next series of projects will fix that issue. After that is done, next summer they plan to restore the facade, replacing windows with 12-pane sashes and replacing the porch with a pediment with dentils.
Follow along with Eric and Jenna Schnitzer's Merritt House adventures on their Facebook page.