More House, circa 1816, located at the Farmers' Museum, Cooperstown, NY

The More house, circa 1816, was reconstructed on the north end of the village green at the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York. The roof was built with a box gutter, a trough located at the eves that runs from one end of the roof to the other. The trough empties into two leader boxes that are located under the soffit at each end of the house. They in turn drain to the ground through leaders or downspouts. The photograph (below right) shows the pipe that empties water from the box gutter into the leader box. A short section of this pipe is visible just above the top of the leader box and in line with the decorative star on the front of the leader box.

Box gutter construction detail

Leader box and soffit detail

Leader Detail

More House, Back Corner

Leader box and soffit detail

Downspout and Rain Barrel Detail

It was decided to reproduce a circa 1825 leader box that is owned by the museum for this part of the restoration. The fact that the leader box and the house were both originally located in the Cooperstown area in central New York made this choice all the more appropriate. This commission involved reproducing four leader boxes, making enough pipe for the leaders on three corners of the house, and an off-set leader located at one corner of the rear of the house. Even though the original leader box and leaders were made using tinplate, it was decided to construct the entire system from copper since, even though it would ultimately be painted, it would withstand the elements far better than tinplate would.

Leader Box detail

By far the most challenging and time-consuming part of this project revolved around reproducing the leader box. The two for the front of the house were to be made exactly like the original; the two for the rear of the house were to be made without ornamentation (years ago, houses that were painted white on the front and sides had the back surface painted red since paint made with red pigment was cheaper than paint made with white pigment; by the same token, money was not wasted decorating the leader boxes on the back of the house since passersby would never know the difference). Special tooling had to be made to make an exact reproduction of the decorative star. To make the crescent moons it was necessary to make clay impressions of the original; the impressions were then used to make the necessary dies to form the crescents. The relatively small size of early 1800's sheets of tinplate dictated that the leaders be constructed in ten inch long sections. The sections were soldered together using a special jig in order to keep the assembled sections in perfect alignment and the resulting 16' long leader straight and true. The design of the brackets used to fasten the downspout to the house was copied from period brackets.