Moravian Preservation Master Plan.indb - Society for College and ...

Moravian College • Preservation Master Plan
The new residence hall under construction in this
area led to the removal of the three root cellars
dating to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Contributing features:
• Main Street
• Church Street
• Monocacy Creek
• Bluff/slope
• Central green
• Axial placement of Single Brethren’s House
on der Platz
• Der Platz space
• Pleasure Grounds space
Missing features:
• Community gardens of early Bethlehem
• Female Seminary gardens and recreational
facilities
◦ Sundial Garden
◦ Rose Garden
◦ Tennis courts
◦ Sunken Garden
Land Use
Land within the Hurd Campus character area has
been primarily used for institutional and residential
purposes since it was purchased by the Moravian
Seminary for Young Ladies in 1814. Prior to the
establishment of the school, religious institutional
use, in the form of church-owned residential
buildings, dominated the area.
Over the property’s life as an educational
institution, some of the buildings and landscapes
have undergone a change in use. Buildings that
were once residential, such as the Single Brethren’s
House, are now used as classrooms, while the
former Gymnasium is now the Payne Art Gallery.
The Widows’ House, Main Hall, Clewell Hall,
and Frueauff House are still primarily residential.
The Widows’ House, purchased by the College in
1992, contains 13 apartments and two guest rooms.
It currently houses a mix of seminary students
and Moravian widows. The new Residence Hall,
currently under construction, will be used for
student housing.
Agricultural and medical uses of the Hurd Campus
grounds were documented during the pre-Seminary
era, when the land was used as vegetable and herb
gardens, providing both food and medicinal herbs
for community members. The Single Brethren’s
House also served as a hospital during the
Revolutionary War, adding another facet to the use
of this property for medical purposes. The land
was also used for storage, both in sheds (visible in
historic views) and in underground brick cellars
built into the hillside. After the practical uses by the
Moravian community ceased and the land became a
school campus, the open space at the middle of the
campus was used for passive and active recreation,
but in recent times, the majority of active recreation
was relocated to the Main Street Campus and the
space is used primarily for band practice, parking,
and circulation.
Contributing features:
• Educational/Institutional
• Residential
Missing features:
• Agricultural
• Religious/Communal
• Active recreational
• Medical
Buildings
The Hurd Campus area contains Moravian College’s
oldest academic buildings, including the Single
Brethren’s House and the Widows’ House. Both
reflect variations on stone-constructed vernacular
Germanic architecture. Other historical styles are
also represented, including Classical Revival in the
Payne Art Gallery and French Second Empire in the
Clewell House. Other buildings have details that
can be attributed to the Italianate and Queen Anne
styles. Please see Chapter 8 – Historic Buildings of
this Preservation Plan for photographs and more
details about these buildings, as well as condition
evaluations.
A number of smaller buildings are no longer extant
within this character area. These include a number
of small outbuildings behind the Single Brethren’s
and Widows’ houses (see figures 5-8 through 5-11);
the Principal’s House, which was replaced by Main
Hall; gazebos or summerhouses in the Pleasure
Grounds (see figure 5-16, left side); and the band shell
that was located in the Sunken Garden area.
John Milner Associates • October 2009 • Chapter 5 • Cultural Landscapes • 79