216 Forest Home Dr Ithaca

One of the many small mill workers' homes in the community.   This is a rectangular one-and-a-half story open gable house with a large center cross gable on both the front and rear elevations. Siding is clapboard, and windows are one-over-one and two-over-two double hung sash. Local historian Albert Force believed that this house was as old as the neighboring Greek Revival house at 214 Forest Home Drive. The small eyebrow windows on the top half-story are similar to the ca. 1830s mill era houses built nearby.

A two bay flat-roofed porch extends across the center third of the front elevation. It is glassed in with fixed multi-pane windows. According to Helen Bayer, who lived in the house from 1965-2019, the front porch was built in the twentieth century.  Judging from the lattice work on the porch columns, it may have been built in the late nineteenth century and enclosed at a later time.

The house appears on the map of Free Hollow in the 1866 Tompkins County Atlas, labeled, "S. B. Fletcher." The house was still called the Fletcher House long after it had changed hands several times, according to Albert Force in Free Hollow: The First One Hundred Years of Forest Home (1954) [https://www.fhia.org/free-hollow/]. The Gazetteer and Business Directory of Tompkins County, N.Y., for 1868 listed S. B. Fletcher as a paper maker.  The Gauntlett and Andrus paper factory was located nearby, at the side of the creek below the buildings that are now 229, 233, and 235 Forest Home Drive.  See Extract in 1853 Map of Tompkins County showing Free Hollow (now Forest Home) [https://www.fhia.org/historic-maps-of-forest-home/#1853].

Changes in ownership, to the extent known, are listed in the Appendix to Free Hollow to Forest Home by Liese Bronfenbrenner (1974) [https://www.fhia.org/free-hollow-to-forest-home-appendix/]. Sisters, Helen and Sara Knox, both teachers, acquired the property in 1922.  Neighbors remember that in the 1940s, when still occupied by Helen and Sarah Knox, the house had a rose garden and white picket fence in front.

Included in Forest Home Historic District with USN 10906.000058. To access the Building-Structure Inventory Form (sometimes referred to as the "Blue Form"), from which many of the details above are drawn, including the estimated date built, follow these Lookup Instructions.