Menu
DPU farm house deconstruction yields community event
Free materials for home improvement DIY and art projects will be available to the public at a community event Friday and Saturday, June 23 and 24 in Greencastle.
DePauw University is continuing the deconstruction of the house located next to the campus farm (1521 W. CR 225 South). As part of a year-long project, three students -- sophomore Yuting (Ruby) Huo and juniors Drew Johnson and Connor Berry -- are working with Professors Jim Mills (Geosciences) and Jen Everett (Philosophy, Environmental Fellows Program) on an experiential program that focuses on the deconstruction of a house with the goal of learning how material can be re-purposed and recycled instead of sending it all to a landfill.
Some of this material will be reused in the construction of buildings at the site of DePauw’s relocated campus farm.
Other rescued items that are still functional will be made available for community members to pick up Friday and Saturday (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) at no cost -- save for the stories of what they intend to do with them.
Items include a white range oven, cabinets, interior doors, ceiling tiles, wood paneling, an air conditioning unit, some vintage wood pieces, spare lumber and OSB boards, a baseboard heater, as well as some of the earlier contents of the house -- shelving, light fixtures, an office chair and more.
Another community day will be scheduled in the fall as the exterior structure of the house is disassembled.
“Part of what is exciting about the project is uncovering the beautiful structure of the original house, built in 1900,” Jennifer Everett, co-director of the Environmental Fellows Program at DePauw, said. “There were 10-foot-tall interior doorways. The original plaster was made with horsehair.”
The group has found three layers and several different patterns of wallpaper and a wall where a child’s height was measured.
“Although it’s easy to see this house as a collection of more or less useful stuff, more or less attractive things, we are trying to keep in mind that it was also a home for several generations of Putnam County families -- a place where holidays were celebrated, meals shared, children raised,” Everett added. “We hope that members of the community who have historical knowledge of the property or of families who lived there and who would like to see it before it is completely disassembled will stop by and share their stories.”
This is the third DePauw course focused on the house still known to many as the “Jones Property.”
Back in January, students in a Winter Term course began emptying the house of its contents and removing surface items, as covered in the Banner Graphic on Jan. 12. In April, the senior class members of the Environmental Fellows Program held a community give-away of many of those household items -- including a cast-iron claw foot bathtub, lawn furniture, sinks, folding doors and more.
The goal for the current phase of the project is to “gut the house back to its studs,” Everett said, yielding materials that may be useful to local community members for DIY home improvement or creative projects.
The plan is to complete the deconstruction during fall semester as part of a first-year seminar.
The fall 2017 course, Deconstructing DePauw’s Farmhouse: An Experiment in the Study of Stuff, is described as follows:
“Once there was a home in Putnam County on a small parcel of farmland. Now DePauw owns that property, and the house is beyond repair. What do you do with a vacant old house that is beyond renovation? Ordinarily, you tear it down with heavy equipment and haul it away to a landfill. Or you can take it apart, piece by piece, discovering what it’s made of, where those materials came from, what secrets they keep, what stories they could tell, and what value they might still hold.
“In this course, we will both participate in and make a case study of the process of deconstructing the farmhouse situated next to DePauw’s campus farm. The first project of its kind at DePauw, this course constitutes a collaboration in which students and professors work directly with facilities staff on the process of physically ‘unbuilding’ or deconstructing a house. We will learn about the green art of rescuing, revitalizing and reusing building materials, and will explore scientific research, scholarship and artistic works that reconceive the stuff we produce, consume and throw away.
“In the laboratory portion of the course, students will learn to use a variety of techniques and tools to carefully unbuild and disassemble the farmhouse. The rescued materials will be disseminated to a variety of organizations for reuse, including buildings at the new DePauw campus farm. Students’ research, writing and visual records will be incorporated into an institutional history of the old farm house.”