Whereas most houses in and around 1830's-1840's Austin were either log cabins or simple plank dogtrot structures, the Boggy Creek Farmhouse is a Greek Revival design, with identical rooms flanking a central hallway. Its floorplan is similar to that of the French Legation, one of the three oldest existing houses in Austin(thought to have been built 1840-1841). Both are essentially an enclosed dogtrot style. The two front rooms of the Boggy Creek Farmhouse, the parlor and the owners' bedroom, are large, measuring about 16' square. The two back rooms are smaller. Each room has a fireplace, three with the original mantles intact (the fourth lost its mantle to a cooking stove fire). The bricks forming the fireboxes and chimneys are Austin Common. The fireboxes are shallow, a design popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They draw the smoke extremely well; no evidence of sooted or burned spots are found on the mantles.
There are two chimneys to serve the four fireplaces with duplex flues in each. There are no closets in the house. The original Bastrop loblolly pine floor exists under a narrow pine floor installed in the 1930's (by the Siegmunds). Walls in the house were originally lath and plaster. When wall paper became popular, the lath and plaster was exchanged for shiplap boarding, and wallpaper. There are no original light fixtures and most of the 7' x 3' cypress, pegged, four-panel doors were stolen during a period when the house was vacant.
The original kitchen, Texas style, was in a separate building near the kitchen well, but it later occupied 3 different rooms in the house. The first indoor kitchen was located in the east back room, which was closest to the well on the east side of the house. The wood-fired stove, flued through the chimney, at some point caught the mantle and floor on fire. When the City of Austin extended water lines out to the area, probably in the 1930's, the kitchen was moved into the west back room, closest to the new line. The 3rd and last location of the kitchen is the back part of the central hall area.
The exterior of the house is cypress siding fastened with square nails. All of the windows are original, with some original glass, except the bedroom windows, which were installed as part of the renovation in the late 1930's. At that time the windows on the two front rooms were moved side by side, eliminating the shutter space between them. We hope to restore them to their original position and also reconstruct the originally larger front porch. The roof is pitched up to a flat area between the two chimneys.
Old outbuildings on the property include a garage, probably built in the 1920's. A former resident remembers Grandfather Siegmund's Model T car parked between hay bales in the garage. The garage now houses the Boggy Creek Farmstand. Behind the house is an old shed. When we dug a water line out to the field, we uncovered, at a depth of 14 to18 inches, kitchen garbage such as chicken and roundsteak bones, pottery, and silverware, all in disrepair, very near this simple plank shed. We are told by the Siegmund family that two outhouses were located a little ways beyond this shed. (Thankfully, former families have installed two bathrooms in corners of two of the rooms.) Speaking of digging, it seems that everytime we dig anywhere, we uncover "artifacts," ranging from pottery fragments (identified as from the 1840's) to horseshoes. A professor of archeology, Dr. Karen Bell, and her students, are presently conducting a five-year "dig" on the grounds, hoping to uncover more of the Farm's architectural history.
