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The Lost Village of Christian's Spring

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Boys' House

Images of Boys' House

Rufus Grider (1817-1900) drew this sketch of Christiansbrunn on 25 October 1862. It offers a view of the west-facing side of the Boys' House (second structure from the right). The Gemeinhaus complex, the original structure and its 1760 annex, fills the left hand side of the drawing. The building on the far right, the Pfleger's House, is the only building from eighteenth-century Christiansbrunn that survived into the twenty-first century. One can see how that building (like the Boys' House) was built into the hill. The Monocacy Creek was at the bottom of this hill on the other side of this cluster of buildings. (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.