Mill Springs National Cemetery, Lodge, 9044 West Highway 80, Nancy

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS KY-5-A. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

West Highway 80, Nancy, Pulaski County, Kentucky. The coordinates for the Mill Springs National Cemetery are W and N, and they were obtained in August with, it is assumed, NAD There is no restriction on the release of the locational data to the public.

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National Cemetery Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Prior to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was known as the Veterans Administration. The Veterans Administration took over management of Mill Springs National Cemetery from the U.S. Army in (Public Law Date: demolished after Builder/Contractor: Unknown. Description: There were three lodges constructed for Mill Springs National Cemetery, including a temporary wood-frame lodge, a Second Empire style brick lodge, and a bungalow. The bungalow was built in and razed after The bungalow was wood-frame with shingle siding, and it was one and one-half story in height. It had a side gable roof and foundations of concrete. The lodge measured 30 x 36 with a 10 x 20 kitchen.

There was a low dormer with a shed roof in the front slope of the side gable; the windows were wood sash and glazed with six-over-one lights. The sash windows in the front fa ade were paired, and the door occupied the center bay of the three-bay wide fa ade. A porch, with a shed roof extending from the front slope of the side gable roof, covered the entry and was accessed by a flight of concrete steps. The side-gable, with its low dormer and exposed rafters, was one element of the bungalow house type used in the lodge; the shingled walls and porch entry were other features of the vernacular employed here. There were seven rooms in the lodge, including the basement.

There was one bedroom on the second floor, while the first floor housed the living room, dining room, a bedroom, and the office. The kitchen and pantry were behind the dining room, at the rear of the building, in plan. The basement was primarily for storage: of coal, of wood, of potatoes. The floors were pine, and the shingles were asphalt-based. Linoleum was installed in the kitchen in Maintenance records for the cemetery account for improvements to the lodge from the time of its construction to the when the entries in the ledgers cease. The lodge was demolished MILL SPRINGS NATIONAL CEMETERY,

Lodge Hals

No. KY-5-A (page 2) sometime after Between and the lodge was remodeled twice. The first change occurred in the late when the kitchen and bathroom were redone, and the second took place in the In the room with the dormer window was converted into a bathroom and storage area, and in and the makeover spilled downstairs. Paneling was put in the living room and dining room, dropped ceilings were created, the office was remodeled, additional work was done in the kitchen including replacing the door, and the wood sash was switched out for aluminum. Repairs took place steadily throughout this time period. Mechanical systems were checked and upgraded, insulation was added, paint was applied, and floors were refinished. The brick fireplace was repaired, and so too the chimney.

The roof was redone twice, first in and again in The later job also involved the installation of six ventilators in the roof. Termites were discovered in the stair leading to the basement, and the damaged portions were replaced. A flagstone patio was put in behind the lodge and safety railings were installed on the front steps and porch. Site Context: The original cemetery grounds consisted of just over six acres and was laid out in a rectangular form with the northeast and northwest corner clipped. The flagpole was placed on the highest ground, in the center of the cemetery, and pathways traversing the grounds intersected at the flagpole. The graves were laid out in rows on a east-to-west axis.

Wrought iron gates were placed at the main entrance, on the southern boundary of the cemetery and portions of the original stone wall survive on the south and east sides. In the lodge then a building in the Second Empire style was shown outside the cemetery walls. It was west of the cemetery proper. Likely the bungalow built in was also placed in this location. History: Please see the contextual report for an analysis of the architectural development of the lodge as a building type for the national cemeteries and its place within this prescribed landscape (HALS No. In Congress authorized the appropriation of land for use as national cemeteries so that the Union soldiers who perished in service to their country could be buried with honor.

These became the first cemeteries in the national cemetery system; by the end of the decade almost men were buried in seventy-three national cemeteries. By that time the Office of the Quartermaster General, and the Quartermaster Montgomery C. Meigs in particular, had developed an architectural program for the cemetery. The program created for the national cemeteries included an enclosing wall demarcating the grounds and ornamental iron gates cast to instill reverence to those who entered and calm the wrought emotions of a nation in mourning for its lost sons. Specific plantings, such as the Osage-orange hedge and various trees, were selected to give a pleasing appearance and, likely, to screen outbuildings - the business of cemetery maintenance - from public view.

Less a commemorative architectural statement, the superintendent s lodge combined practicality with a respectful presence. Lodge plans first evolved from expedient wood-frame cottages to masonry buildings one-story in height and with a three-room floor plan. Construction of the temporary wood-frame lodges took place in the years to and overlapped with the construction of the first permanent MILL SPRINGS NATIONAL CEMETERY, LODGE HALS No. KY-5-A (page 3) masonry lodges built to a standard, single-story design from to Officers in charge of the cemeteries soon found the floor plans of the temporary wood lodges and the first permanent masonry lodges inconvenient and, increasingly, unattractive.

Moreover, representatives from the Quartermaster General s Office noted these three-room models were often too small for a superintendent and his family, and so in plans for a six- room, one and one-half story type were acquired from Edward Clark, Architect of the Capitol Extension. The design was refined over the next two years and in drawn for the Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs s approval. This standard plan featured a mansard roof and so became associated with the French or Second Empire style. Contemporary buildings, domestic and civic, exhibited this aesthetic and so the choice of the Quartermaster for a Second Empire style lodge is in keeping with national architectural trends as well as the personal taste of Meigs whose house also was erected in the Second Empire style.

On the national stage, Alfred Mullet designed the Old Executive Office building in Washington, DC, a building whose construction in the coincided with the building of lodges in the Second Empire style in many of the national cemeteries. The National Cemetery Administration identifies the Second Empire style lodge, referred to in the as the usual type, or even the full Meigs plan likely in reference to the Quartermaster s endorsement of the design, as the first generation of permanent lodges. It reflects a concerted effort to standardize what a national cemetery, including the lodge, should look like.

The last cemeteries for which the Quartermaster contracted for this style of lodge were for Mobile, Alabama, and Beaufort, South Carolina, in The L-plan was revised in for the lodge in San Francisco, and then employed for the lodges in Mound City and Loudon Park. The revised plan was further improved for the construction of the lodge at Cypress Hills. The revision to the standard L-plan primarily included a change in roof form from the mansard to a cross-gable and the use of banded brick in the exterior walls. Cypress Hills was a simpler expression of the type, with segmental arches over the windows instead of stone lintels and having no banded exterior brick in the walls. In the the plans called for an elongated office wing.

This change to the L-plan accommodated an entrance hall in the middle of the building; the elongated L-plan was built in Santa Fe, Fort Smith, and Fort Leavenworth. By the century s end, standards of living called for conveniences the L-plan lodges lacked. Advances in plumbing and heating technologies, in particular, made the L-plan outdated as expectations about the appropriate level of domestic sanitation that the government should provide to its employees changed. Even so, the Quartermaster omitted indoor toilets from the lodge floor plans until Maintenance of the existing lodges, as well as ell additions, addressed some of the inconveniences of the older buildings, and made the lodges more comfortable as living spaces.

Between the and improvements to the existing lodges included the installation of indoor plumbing and bathrooms, central heating, closets and cupboards; adding a kitchen ell and converting the original kitchen into a dining room; and maintenance of windows, shutters, and porches. MILL SPRINGS NATIONAL CEMETERY, LODGE HALS No. KY-5-A (page 4) By the Quartermaster determined some lodges warranted a complete overall, rather than renovation, and the department began to replace some of the buildings in the national cemeteries. For the new lodges, it created a succession of twenty-two different plans between and Nine of these plans were used to build multiple lodges, but thirteen were unique designs, used only once.

Compared to the extended popularity of the L-plan, which lasted from to in its mansard-roof form and to in its later variations, the rapid succession of designs in the twentieth century suggests a new awareness among those directing the cemeteries of the need to construct lodges that were aesthetically and technologically up-to-date. Over five decades, the Quartermaster endorsed a progression of plans from four-squares to bungalows to Colonial Revival designs and then to suburban ramblers. This progression paralleled the changes in form, style, building materials, and construction practices that occurred in the private housing market.

Most of the lodges built in the twentieth century are indistinguishable from typical American middle-class and upper-middle-class suburban dwellings, with the exception of a second entrance for the superintendent s office. In some instances, such as in Hampton, Virginia, and in Annapolis, Maryland, the army made a particular effort to match new lodges to their local surroundings, usually by building period-revival designs in places where those designs would have particular resonance.

In a nod to the colonial heritage of the Chesapeake, the Quartermaster built one-and-one-half-story brick lodges in a Colonial Revival style at these cemeteries in In another example, the desire to match designs to localities prompted the alteration of the L-plan lodge at San Francisco into a Spanish Mission Revival building in and the similarly extensive reconstruction of the Santa Fe lodge into the Pueblo Revival style in In the the Quartermaster s department tried a bungalow design for the national cemeteries in keeping with trends in domestic architecture at the time. Only two lodges were built using the bungalow design which specified a one and one-half story wood frame building with shingle siding.

The floor plan accommodated four rooms on the main floor and a bedroom tucked under the side gable roof. The first of the bungalows was constructed in New Bern in to replace the Second Empire style lodge on-site, and the second was erected in Mill Springs in The Mill Springs lodge was slightly smaller than the New Bern example. Both lodges are significant as early twentieth-century examples of a residential architectural form adapted for use in the national cemetery system, although the example in Mill Springs is no longer extant. Mills Springs National Cemetery was established in and is located on the site of a battle between Union forces led by Major General George Thomas and Confederate troops under the command of General Felix K. Zellicoffer in January of that year.

Thomas s troops forced the Confederates to retreat, and Zellicoffer was killed in action. The fallen Union soldiers were buried on land that is now the national cemetery. After the war, remains of those located within 40 miles were exhumed and reinterred at Mill Springs. Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General reveal that a one-story, temporary frame lodge with three rooms was built in the cemetery in or and that the Quartermaster replaced the temporary wood-frame lodge with a brick lodge in the Second Empire style in 76. The contract for the brick lodge was let to Job Winans Angus and the estimated cost of MILL SPRINGS NATIONAL CEMETERY, LODGE HALS No. KY-5-A (page 5) construction was The L-shaped, brick lodge had a stone foundation.

The interior woodwork was predominantly pine, although some poplar was used as well. There was a full cellar. By the concrete coating of the cellar floor had worn off, leaving the brick exposed. Similarly, the exterior brick was painted but the job was done poorly that the paint soon faded. In lumber for repairing the lodge and rebuilding some fencing was approved and acquired; in the improvements were authorized. The Second Empire style lodge burned in May The bungalow lodge cost to build and was completed in

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS KY-5-A. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

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Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,

Source document Quoted word for word from HALS KY-5-A. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The documentation of the lodges and rostrums in the national cemeteries was undertaken by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), one of the Heritage Documentation Programs of the National Park Service, Richard O'Connor, Chief. The project was sponsored by the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) of the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Sara Amy Leach, Senior Historian. Project planning was coordinated by Catherine C. Lavoie, Chief of HABS. Historical research was undertaken by HABS Historians Virginia B. Price and Michael R. Harrison. NCA Historians Jennifer Perunko, Alec Bennett, and Hillori Schenker provided research material, edited and reviewed written reports.

Field work for selected sites was carried out and measured drawings produced by HABS Architects Paul Davidson, Ryan Pierce, and Mark Schara.