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The Lost Village of Christian's Spring

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Boys' House

Images of Boys' House

This photograph depicts the cluster of buildings that formed the eastern side of the quadrangle that defined the footprint of eighteenth-century Christiansbrunn. The photographer would have been standing along the Monocacy Creek. The Boys' House is the second from the left. The stone building to its left, the Pfleger's House, is the sole surviving building from eighteenth-century Christiansbrunn. To the right of the Boys' House is the Gemeinhaus with its 1760 annex, which formed the northeast corner of the quadrangle. (Photo used courtesy of the Moravian Archives, Bethlehem.)

The Boys' House consisted of 4 rooms, 1 dining room, 1 kitchen, bakery and a washhouse. It was 35 feet long by 28 feet wide. 2 stories high. Wood frame with masonry. On a 1752 list of buildings, it is called the "New House"; on a 1758 list, "A House in which the Boys Live"; on a 1776 list, just "The Boys' House."

Most photographs of the Boys' House were taken, as far as can be determined, in the 1860s, the 1870s, and the 1890s. They do not depict the same moment in the afterlife of Christiansbrunn: in some the Boys' House has a small attached extension to the south, in some it does not.

 

The image below locates the Boys' House on a 1795 map of the Christiansbrunn community.