The Skinner-Tinkham House, commonly known as the Barre Center Tavern, is located at Maple Street and Oak Orchard Road (New York State Route 98) in Barre Center, New York, United States. It is a brick house in the Federal style built around 1830. It was renovated after the Civil War, which brought some Italianate touches to it.
Originally it was a tavern along one of the Western New York region's busier transportation routes, renovated into a house by a wealthy local farmer after that business ended. It is a rare surviving Federal-style brick tavern in Orleans County. It is currently vacant and in a state of disrepair, although some restoration efforts have been made. In 2004 it and a nearby barn were listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Buildings and grounds
The house and barn are located on a lot at the northwest corner of the roads, on the hamlet of Barre Center. The hamlet is a small group of buildings on small lots grouped along the highway in the midst of the surrounding rural area. To the immediate south is a commercial building and church; a general store is located across the street and to the southeast. The land in the area is flat.
Exterior
At the northeast corner of the lot, the house is a two-story five-by-two-bay structure faced in brick laid in Flemish bond on a stone foundation topped with a gabled roof currently covered in tar paper, pierced by two brick end chimneys. A one-and-a-half-story brick wing with similar roof projects from the south face; from its west projects a frame wing of similar height sided in clapboard. Between the main block and south wing is a small wooden addition in a visible state of disrepair. In the center of the south wing is the entrance to the cellar.
A two-brick water table runs across the front of the main block at door sill level. Steps that would lead up to the centrally located main entrance are missing. All windows on the east (front) facade have wide stone lintels and sills; the main entrance has a round-arched stone lintel with keystone, filled with a wooden fan. The center lintel on the second floor has "1829", the date of the house's construction, carved into it. The wide overhanging eaves at the roofline shelter a wide plain frieze and are supported by wooden brackets.
On the north and south sides the brick is laid in common bond instead. The gable fields have blind lunettes with their original wooden fans. The west (rear) elevation has more of the foundation visible, exposing limestone blocks laid in a random ashlar pattern. Only the sills are stone on its windows; flat brick arches top the windows. The south elevation of that wing has one centrally located window on each story. The larger one on the first story has a similar treatment to the eastern first-story windows on the main block; the one above it has a stone sill and flat brick lintel.
The west wing's foundation is coursed ashlar on the south elevation, and coursed rubble on the other two. Its cornice is bracketed only on the south side, the side visible from Maple Street. A one-story concrete block addition with gabled roof extends further west from that side.
Interior
The front door is framed with its original semicircular limestone arch with keystone and impost blocks. It opens on a large square room filling the building's southeast corner and extending two-thirds of its depth. A fireplace with original mantel is on the south wall; a narrow stair goes to the upper story behind the west wall while a door opens onto the rear porch. The past presence of a chair rail in the room is evident from the plaster behind where it was. The original baseboard and some window trim remains.
In the north end of the wing are two rooms. The larger one, in the northeast corner, has its black marbleized mantel on its fireplace on the north wall, as well as its original architrave and window moldings. The smaller room, in the northwest, no longer has its mantel but its chimney cupboards remain.
The south wing has a single room. A former fireplace has been closed up. From the room a door and former window, now converted into shelving, open into the west wing. In it are two large rooms separated by a core with pantry, closets, and vestibule. The inside of the concrete addition has a track in the ceiling, a water supply and floor drain, attesting to its use as a slaughterhouse.