A REMARKABLE FIND!

A photograph documenting the 1923 destruction of the 1847 East House was recently discovered in a family home by Mark Hardison, Woodburn, Kentucky. Mark, who is a former member of South Union’s Board of Directors, graciously contributed several pages from a ca. 1923 album once owned by his grandparents, William Irvin and Minnie Ruth Wells Hardison.  The Hardisons came to work for Oscar Bond soon after he took possession of the former Shaker village of South Union in 1922. In the album were several photographs of the Centre House, but the picture that proved to be the most valuable was one of the East House in the midst of being torn down. A tornado struck the building on March 11, 1923, not only heavily damaging the structure but ripping away most of its roof. Soon after, Oscar Bond directed his hired men to take the building down.  Finished in 1847, the East House was South Union’s largest communal dwelling. Several photographs of the building’s exterior have been published, but images that provided information about the interior had never surfaced, until now. Photographed looking north, workers have obviously begun to tear away the building’s “ell” first. From this vantage point the image reveals a large arch on the second floor and a smaller arch on the third, an arrangement identical to the interior of the Centre House. These arches opened into cross halls with doors on the second floor and windows on the third that opened east and west for light, access and ventilation. Evidence of baseboard, chair rail and peg rail are visible in the photo, as is the plaster that was applied directly to the brick walls. It is likely that the meeting room was on the second floor and that retiring rooms occupied space on the third; similar to what is found in the Centre House. The door on the fourth floor undoubtedly led into the East House attic. Unlike the Centre House, the front section of the fourth floor housed an additional level of retiring rooms, not low-ceilinged garret rooms.

The South Union Shaker Village is most grateful to Mark Hardison, who donated these photographs in memory of his grandparents, William Irvin Hardison (1895-1970) and Minnie Ruth Wells Hardison (1896-1987).