Fountain-Bessac House

The Fountain-Bessac House, built in two stages, c. 1842 and c. 1853, is one of Manchester’s most stylish early residences. With its dramatic interplay of Greek Revival and Italianate massing and design, the house embodies the change in both national and local tastes which was taking place in the era of its construction. The house’s original, first-story section, built for flour mill owner Jabez Fountain, is notable for its Greek Revival detailing, some of which is patterned after designs in two of the carpenters’ guides published in the 1830s by the Boston architect Asher Benjamin. The cubical second story is one of Manchester’s earliest examples of Italianate design. The village of Manchester developed around a flour mill erected on the west bank of the River Raisin in 1826, about one hundred yards east of the future location of the Fountain-Bessac House. As late as 1833, when the first bridge across the river was constructed, there were only three houses at the village site, but the settlement grew rapidly within the next few years. Prosperous flour-mill owner Jabez Fountain purchased the lot on which the Fountain-Bessac House now stands on May 28, 1841. It seems likely that Fountain had the first-floor section of the house built in 1841 or 1842, but no records now exist to document the date of the house’s construction. Local carpenter/farmer Williams. Carr is named as the house’s builder in several histories. Carr, with his brother Elijah, were natives of Columbia County, New York, and were among the first white settlers in the Manchester area. The Carrs are said to have built many of the early homes and commercial buildings in Manchester. In 1850 Dr. William Bessac purchased the home. Born in Coxsackie, New York and a graduate in 1835 of Woodstock College, Dr. Bessac settled in Manchester after living in nearby Lima Center for several years. Dr. Bessac had the cubical Italianate second story added to the house. This addition is said to have been in place by 1853. As in the case of the construction of the first floor, however, no records survive to provide a precise date. Dr. Bessac’s daughter, Mary Bessac Haeussler, inherited the property and passed it on to her son, Raynor B. Haeussler. Mr and Mrs. Thomas Walton, the current owners, purchased the property from Raynor Haeussler in 1943. In the 1949-51 period the Waltons had the house repaired and renovated under the direction of Ann Arbor architect Emil Lorch. Lorch, the founder of the College of Architecture at the University of Michigan in 1906 and its dean until 1936, was the pioneer student of early Michigan architecture and the head of the 1930s Historic American Buildings Survey project in Michigan. Lorch’s work was partly a restoration and partly a remodelling. His work included the removal of a non-original west wing, the replacement of the original rear kitchen wing with a garage similar in style to the main house and connected to it by an open breezeway, and some modification of the interior for modern living. The interior renovation retained in place or reused most of the original material and new work was designed in a complementary style. The columns of the front portico were replaced with replicas which carefully duplicate the proportions and design of the originals (except for the provision of ventilation holes in the bases, which seems to have been a Lorch innovation). Lorch left intact all of the house’s most important features, while making the home liveable by modern standards. The Fountain-Bessac House is important in architectural terms within the Manchester and Washtenaw County contexts as an example of Greek Revival and Italianate design. The hip-roof, portico-fronted, one-story form is perhaps unique in Michigan, but is found in other areas where there are concentrations of Greek Revival houses, such as upstate New York. Whether this house originally had a central, clerestory or monitor-roof attic story such as other Greek Revival houses in Michigan and elsewhere have is not known. The most significant feature of the house’s Greek Revival design is the dependence of certain decorative elements such as the mantelpieces and front doorway and window trim on designs from two of the carpenters’ guides published by Boston architect Asher Benjamin in the 1830s. Benjamin numerous guides, published between 1797 and about 1860, exerted a tremendous design influence over the vernacular architecture of the northern part of the United States from New England to the Great Lakes states. In southern Michigan the Benjamin influence is seen in buildings with "frontispieces" or front entrances, window surroundings, mantelpieces, and other woodwork trim items modelled after or copied from Benjamin designs. In the Fountain-Bessac House the two front room mantelpieces are patterned after plates in Benjamin’s The Practical House Carpenter, first published in Boston in 1830. The west front room mantelpiece, with its fluted columns and Greek key frieze, is very similar to the design in Plate 51, while the east front room mantelpiece with its inset-panel treatment resembles the design in Plate 49. The details of the house’s front door and window surrounds seem to combine elements from various plates in Benjamin’s Practice of Architecture, first published in Boston in 1833. Dr. Bessac’s cubical Italianate addition of c. 1853 is, if the date is reliable, one of the earliest Italianate structures in Manchester. The village contains only one other Italianate structure built that early.

The Fountain-Bessac House was built in two stages around the years 1842 and 1853. The first story of this symmetrical wooden frame building is of Greek Revival design, is five bays in width, and features a full-length portico with full entablature supported by six classically-inspired columns. A truncated pyramidal roof gives way to a smaller, cubical three-bay Italianate second story, symmetrically placed above the first. Piercing the first-story roof are two tall interior end chimneys. A second truncated pyramidal roof skirts the flat-roofed cupola which crowns the house. The 1950 two-bay garage and breezeway addition replaced an old rear kitchen wing; this addition complements the house and, along with other changes made at that time, demonstrates an historically sensitive adaptation of the house to the demands of modern living. The house is in excellent condition with surroundings remarkably similar to those of a century ago, and possesses fine design features and craftsmanship.