Have you ever noticed the little house with the red tile roof on Heckewelder Place? This little house has fascinating story. It was built in 1758 in the Christianized American Indian village of Nain, located approximately one mile northwest of its present location.
When the village was dismantled in 1765 and the American Indians moved west, Andreas Schober, a Moravian stone mason, bought one of the houses and moved it to the southwest corner of Market and Heckewelder. Then in 1905, to save it from demolition, the house was moved once again to its present location at 429 Heckewelder Place. Known today as the Nain-Schober House, it is believed to be the only 18th century log structure extant along the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor to have been both built and lived in by American Indians.
Much of the original fabric of the house remains. Each time it was moved, it was taken down piece by piece and carefully reconstructed maintaining the original floorboards, log walls, and exterior shutters. The walls are made of white oak timbers with dove-tail joints. The exterior is covered with period appropriate parging scored to look like stone. The Moravian Museum of Bethlehem purchased the house in 1992 to restore the structure and preserve the history of the village of Nain.
Please join us for a special open house for BHDA members on Saturday, July 15 from 11:00am to 2:00pm.
– LoriAnn Wukitsch, Vice President and Managing Director, Historic Bethlehem Museums & Sites
Photo courtesy of Bethlehem Museums & Sites
