The Shingle House
Location: 7 Forester Ave.
Located on Forester Avenue, the Shingle House was The first building acquired by the Historical Society of the Town of Warwick. It was built in 1764 by Daniel Burt for his son Daniel Jr. He chose an excellent location, next to where The King's Highway passed. The Highway was a major colonial route from Pennsylvania and New Jersey up to the Hudson River and New England. Daniel Sr. lived in a home on the site of what is still a private residence on Galloway Avenue (17A) marked by an historical marker; in going back and forth between his own house and his son's, he created what was then called Burt's Lane, later known as Lake St., and now named Forester Avenue, in honor of famous author and sportsman Frank Forester (Henry William Herbert ) who visited and hunted in Warwick frequently in the early 1800's. A memorial plaque to him stands a short distance away in the traffic island at the intersection of Colonial Ave. and Main St.
The Shingle House, with its shingled sides and saltbox outline, reveals its New England heritage. According to local oral histories, the shingles for its sides and roof were hewn from a single tree. Few of them have had to be replaced in the house's 215 years. A small rear porch and ground floor wing on the northwest are the only exterior alterations.
Inside, the original stairway, the characteristic paneled wainscoting, built-in corner cupboard with decorative shell top, and remarkable central chimney with four fireplaces and its hidey-hole, are still for the most part as they were when Daniel, Jr. moved in, in January 1770. The 'hidey-hole' is also referred to in some writings as the 'Tory hole'. During the revolution the area was subject to raids and counter-raids by loyalist and revolutionary groups, and as the Burts were a Whig family, it is likely they made this secret space as a refuge from Tories.
The house has six rooms, four on the first floor. The two front ones were both living rooms. The fireplace in the left-hand room was closed up many years ago, and a Franklin cast-iron stove placed in front of it. It is on the paneling above this stove that ones finds the unusual and rare primitive paining of the Battle of the Hudson River, said to have been done by a Revolutionary soldier in gratitude for having been nursed back to health by the Burts.
The Shingle House was bought by the Historical Society in 1916, and since then considerable restoration has been done.
The huge kitchen features a tremendous open hearth for cooking, beehive bread oven, Dutch walnut kaas ( a kaas was used as a wardrobe cabinet and was also used for storage of linens and blankets), primitive table and bench, and numerous household implements of the late 1770's.
The first floor "borning room is so called because this room nearest the fireplace and kitchen was used for pregnant women, as well as the sick and elderly. The two upstairs bedrooms are also appropriately furnished in period pieces.
Burt, Daniel, Forester Ave., Shingle House
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