John Blake House  The John Blake House is located on Homestead Avenue (NY 208) in Maybrook, New York, United States. It is a brick building from the late 18th century, one of the oldest houses in the village  John Blake, a prominent local politician, built the house around an earlier log cabin. A wing was added in the mid-19th century, but it has not otherwise been altered. In 1984 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a well-preserved example of the kind of home built by settlers of English descent in the early years of the Federal style of American architecture. The one-and-a-half-story house sits on a lot with many trees shielding it from view. It is made of brick with a stone basement and topped with a gabled roof shingled in asphalt and pierced by two brick chimneys near the end walls. The brick is laid in Flemish bond on the south and west with common bond in alternating rows of stretchers and headers on the other sides. The windows are trimmed in flat-arched molded brick. A small wooden porch frames the entrance, a wooden paneled door with transom and sidelights. It opens into a large central hall leading to equally sized rooms on either side. Most of the mantelpieces are in the Federal style but one, in the northwest parlor, is Greek Revival in style. The double Dutch door, once the original rear entrance, now connects the house and the kitchen wing added later. Upstairs are bedrooms, and a third level has been carved out of unused attic space. The basement, supposedly built for the earlier house, takes up the eastern half and includes a large arched chimney base. Two of the original outbuildings remain, a shed and a privy. The foundations of three others can still be seen: a barn to the south of the house, a smokehouse to the northeast and the buttery once attached to the east of the house. The house is conservative in form, hewing more closely to English vernacular traditions seen elsewhere in the Hudson Valley. Its low, square base is at odds with the generally more vertical buildings that typify the Federal style, manifested more in the interior floor plan and decor. The different bonds used in the brick suggest a bricklayer capable of a high degree of craftsmanship, but used on this form it does not appear that the builder was trying to apply any particular style or design trend. Blake, an early settler of the area, built the home around 1794 as the centerpiece of his father's 200-acre (50 ha) farm, "The Blake".