The floor dimensions varied from 108 × 17 for three of the largest barracks to 16 × 16 for two guard-houses and 10 × 14 for two offices. The usual width was 17 feet. In almost all cases the height at the eaves was 7 feet, which with an ordinary pitch roof (apparently 10 feet at the ridgepole) would just allow comfortable head-room. The carpenter shop, though, to give space for handling lumber, was 65 × 28 × 9. The longer buildings were partitioned off into “cabbins” holding, like the rooms in the colleges, twenty men each. Most of them appear to have had chimneys and fireplaces—a highly desirable addition, as the windows seem to have been mere holes.[1] Only in a very few cases are “glass windows” mentioned, and then with evident pride. Besides the special constructions there were “also three Barns maid in to Barracks Two Store [storeys] high about 35 by 30 feet Big.”
Through the diary of James Stevens,[2] a carpenter of Andover, we can follow in considerable detail the erection of this sudden addition to the real estate of Cambridge and Harvard. On October 6, 1775, he notes, “this morning I entered the Carpenters works.” On the
- ↑ Two years later, a Hessian prisoner quartered on Winter Hill wrote: “These barracks have been erected without foundations, and with bare boards, through which, from above, below, and all around, drive in the wind, the rain and the snow. They have no windows, only holes.” Letter of December 18, 1777. Schlözer, Briefwechsel, Part IV, Book xxiv, 376.
- ↑ Essex Institute Collections, xlviii, 41 ſſ.
