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Conservation at Home: Relocating a Timber Framed Church from New York to Ohio

Virtual Event

Thursday, December 3, 2020
5:00 - 6:00 EST

A view of the Christian church from the southeast. Image courtesy of Rudy Christian.

Moving is never an easy task. Moving your home across three states takes it to a whole new level. Please join APTNE for one couple's journey! One of the last "aisled churches" in America was built in 1815 in Oxford, NY for a Presbyterian congregation. As Oxford grew, the church was moved whole in the early 1800's to a "better" neighborhood. In 1844, the church was deconstructed and barged down the Utica Canal to become a Methodist Church in Chenango Forks, NY. In 1992, it was again deconstructed by Rudy Christian and his wife Laura and moved to Burbank, OH to become their home. This presentation shows the challenges and process of that adaptive reuse project.

Event Leader: Rudy Christian

Rudy R. Christian is a founding member and past president of the Timber Framers Guild, founding member and past president of Friends of Ohio Barns, founding member and past Executive Director of the Preservation Trades Network and is a founding member of the Traditional Timberframe Research and Advisory Group and the International Trades Education Initiative. His experience includes national and international speaking engagements and instructing educational workshops as well as publication of various articles about historic conservation.

Rudy’s professional experience as President of Christian & Son, Inc. includes reconstruction of the historic “Big Barn” at Malabar Farm State Park near Mansfield, Ohio and relocation of the 19th century Crawford Horse Barn in Newark, Ohio. Christian & Son’s work includes working with a team of specialists to relocate Thomas Edison’s #11 laboratory building from the Henry Ford Museum to West Orange New Jersey where it was originally built, and the restoration of the Mansfield Blockhouse a hewn log structure built by the U.S. military in 1812. Since May 2015 Rudy & Laura have been working as consultants to the World Monuments Fund in the restoration of the Golden Palace Monastery in Mandalay, Myanmar. In the summer of 2017 they reconstructed the historic timber frame belfry at Glendale Cemetery in Akron, Ohio in collaboration with Stan Hywet Hall, and recently completed restoration of the timber frame roof system of the 1721 Jean Hasbrouck House on Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz, New York.

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Thank you to our sponsor, Keim!

We hope to see you at the next event and thank you for your support of APTNE!