Brothers' House Complex

Brothers' House Complex. . The Brothers' House (Bethania) was built on this site in the spring of 1746. Although it is difficult to determine the actual height of the building, the Brothers' House was probably a four-and-one-half story half-timber structure that measured seventy-four feet long from east to west and thirty-four feet wide from north to south. The Chronicon, the communal society's diary, tells us: “The house was so durably joined together by posts, beams, and joists that you will hardly find its equal in North America. All this carpenter work was finished in thirty-five days.”, The Brothers' Meetinghouse (Saal) was erected in November 1746 using the lumber remaining from the construction of the Brothers' House. Again, the building's exact height is not known but the Chronicon notes: “This was a stately building, containing a meeting hall for the community, specially ornamented with Gothic letters, besides galleries and halls for love feasts. After these buildings had been so well completed under the blessing of God, the Brethren moved into their new convent, called Bethany, where their different domiciles were distributed to them by lot.” The Meetinghouse was razed sometime prior to the Civil War and the Brothers' House was demolished around 1908., Sixty-five feet south of the southeast corner of the Brothers' House a base floor and foundation wall were located by archaeologists who defined two areas each nineteen feet long and sixteen feet wide. It is entirely possible that a printing operation or another craft workshop may have been housed there.