Pierre Martin House
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The Pierre Martin House (or Martin–Boismenue House) is a single-family French Colonial House and historic site in
East Carondelet, Illinois East Carondelet is a village in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. The population was 499 as of the 2010 census. Geography According to the 2010 census, East Carondelet has a total area of , of which (or 72.33%) is land and (or 27.67% ...
about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) East of the Mississippi River. The house, built circa 1790, is owned by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. and located at the intersection of First Street and Old Route 3 in North Dupo.


Description

The Martin–Boismenue House, built about 1790 by North American frontiersman Pierre Martin in what was at the time the French village of Pierre du Pont, is one of the oldest surviving structures in Illinois. Although the house was built after the American Bottom had been ceded to the young United States of America, the house reflects the French Colonial architectural traditions of the Mississippi River valley. The region immediately around
Cahokia, Illinois Cahokia was a village in St. Clair County, Illinois, United States. It was located east of the Mississippi River in the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, 15,241 people lived in the village, a decline from 16,391 in 200 ...
continued to speak French for several decades after the cession. It is one of six surviving ''
poteaux-sur-sol Poteaux-sur-sol ("posts on a sill" – sol is also spelled sole and solle) is a style of timber framing in which relatively closely spaced posts rest on a timber sill. Poteaux-en-terre and pieux-en-terre are similar, but the closely spaced posts ...
'' ('post-on-sill') structures, and the only one owned by an upper-middle-class individual. The poteaux-sur-sol style used vertical logs to construct houses; the style, originally developed in Europe, had faded in popularity before French colonists revived it. Only 33 vertical log buildings remain in the United States; of these, the Pierre Martin House is one of only two with a dressed stone basement. The traditional French building scheme shares many elements with traditional European half timbering. Squared-log outer walls support the roof; the logs, squared off by hand-hewing or with a pit saw, rest on a log
sill Sill may refer to: * Sill (dock), a weir at the low water mark retaining water within a dock * Sill (geology), a subhorizontal sheet intrusion of molten or solidified magma * Sill (geostatistics) * Sill (river), a river in Austria * Sill plate, a ...
mounted on a stone foundation. 'Galleries,' wide porches, enclose the house's north and south facades. The house consists of a two-room first floor, a large attic, a half basement, and the two galleries. There was no shortage of firewood in the Illinois Territory during the house's early history, and the three separate fireplaces were used to heat the home and acted as places for cooking. The Martin–Boismenue House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on February 9, 1990, as NRHP site #89002350. It is located at 2110 1st Street in East Carondelet.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, Pierre, House Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois Houses in St. Clair County, Illinois National Register of Historic Places in St. Clair County, Illinois Illinois State Historic Sites Colonial architecture in the United States French colonial architecture French-American culture in Illinois