Fisher House (Hatboro, Pennsylvania)
The foundation of the home is built entirely of stone in, for Kahn, a traditional style of building. The stone foundation was necessary due to the home’s placement on a slope and its need for a solid anchoring into the ground of the site. The exterior and interior portions of the home are made from the same cedar wood sourced from the local Pennsylvania area. This was done to keep down costs. The woodwork of the Fisher house is often viewed as the most comprehensive of any of his woodwork during the period. Later projects were said to lack the continuity of the Fisher House, often smaller details such as interior doors were left unadorned in a way that left the project feeling incomplete to viewers. It was best in the end that Kahn was not allowed to build from all stone, because if he had the home would have been lacking in much of the great detail work that makes it so famous. The use of cedar wood throughout the interior and exterior of the home compelled Kahn to create amazing details in the building simply by folding windows into the building envelope to provide new habitable space on both the interior and exterior of the building. Had Kahn been left to build the Fisher House entirely from stone on the exterior then the details he created from windows never would have come into existence.
Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania
Sixty-Nine (69) Percent of the foundations are stone, which supports almost all buildings erected before ca. 1920. While stone as a foundation material is common in pre-1920s buildings, its use as a structural material is very rare due in large measure to the common availability and economy of sawn lumber, and the age of the community which postdated the vernacular use of stone as a regional building material. As a foundation material, stone was generally replaced in the 1920s by cast concrete block (generally molded as a rock-face ashlar), which in turn was succeeded by cinderblock and poured concrete after the 1940s. After concrete and cinderblock, concrete block is the third most common foundation material (almost 3 percent); it was also employed for garages, outbuildings and additions in the 1920s and 1930s. Most contributing houses bear full front porches, the vast majority of which are intact. Original roof materials were generally slate or tin (raised seam, corrugated, or pressed pattern). While a fair number survive, many others have been replaced for economy with modern asphalt shingle. Even where original slate roofs have been replaced, many decorative slate shingles covering the fascia boards of large window gables survive, especially on turn-of-the-century Gothic Revival types. This decorative practice, fairly common on houses built from 1900 to 1920 by the Roaring Spring Planing Mill Co., can be seen in other period buildings around the Morrisons Cove area where the Planing Mill's contractors are known to have worked.