Barrett, George, Concrete House

The George Barrett Concrete house is located in the village of Spring Valley in Greene County, Ohio. On Lot #26 of Moses Walton's fourth addition it sits at the southern base of the Shawnee Indian Mound on the eastern bank of the Little Miami River, 1/4 mile from the current intersection of SR725 and SR42. The house stands at the northeast corner of the intersection of Terrace and Main (formerly Pike) Streets. The most unusual feature of this house is the fact that it was built of poured concrete in 1853, a fact which is documented in great detail in Barrett's treatise, The Poor Man's Home, and Rich Man's Palace: or The Application of The Grave1 Wall Cement to the Purposes of Building.

The frame home Barrett built around 1847 consisted of a main central portion with one story wings on either side and a separate kitchen in the rear, all on a stone basement and foundation. This house, with the exception of the left wing and kitchen, burned in 1852. It is onto this original left wing and kitchen that Barrett built his two and a half story Greek Revival style concrete home. The front facade to the southeast 1ooks much the same today as it did when first constructed. The 2 bay wide, rectangular shaped central portion sits on a poured concrete foundation and has a 13" thick first-story and 9" thick second-story walls around its perimeter.

The shallow-gabled pedimented roof extends over the frontcreating atwo-story veranda which features, on both the upper and lower story, a recessed door with transom to the left of two full length 1/1double hung windows with functional shutters. This concrete portion of the home is three bays deep with 1/1 double hung sash windows above two openings on the ground floor.

/Architect George Barrett Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) Criterion C The George Barrett 1853 Concrete House is architecturally significant because it is the oldest known concrete house in Ohio. Mid-nineteenth century concrete houses represent the innovative era in American architecture when house construction was influenced by Orson Squire Fowler, a phrenologist and a prolific writer on health and happiness. In his 1853book, A Home for Al1 or the Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building, Fowler advocated the octagonal plan for its increased floor space, and gravel walls as the perfect building materlal, but Barrett devised his own plans for a concrete house after a fire destroyed his frame residence in Spring Valley in 1852.

The construction of this mid nineteenth century concrete house is well documented in a book Barrett published in 1854. George Barrett was born in Danby, Vermont on December 6 , 1796, son of Jaazamiah Barrett, a first generation Irish immigrant farmer. George was quite intelligent and highly motivated as well as inventive and became a woolen manufacturer in Danby. He later moved to Half Moon, Saratoga County, New York where he established another woolen mil1, married Mahala Merrett and proceeded to raise a family of ten children.

In 1837 they moved to Middletown, Vermont, in 1839 to Delaware, Ohio and in 1843 to Spring Valley, Ohio which, lying in an area served by abundant water (needed for power and transportation) and on the path of the soon-to-be-completed railroad line, promised to be the ideal site for a mill. In each woolen mill he constructed, Barrett developed an improved design and invented more efficient machinery. Spring Valley he invested heavily in local property and constructed a frame house, most of which burnt to the ground in 1852.