Champlain Canal Region Gateway Visitors Center

A Dutch Style Timber Frame

The Gateway Visitors' Center in Schuylerville, New York, was completed in partnership with the Historic Hudson-Hoosic Partnership. Culminating with a raising and celebration in June 2017, the project expanded the skills of more than 50 timber framers from across North America, who traveled to the region to learn from a team of instructors led by project manager Neil Godden, who is now executive director at the Heartwood School. 

Introduction: Schuylerville, NY, Community Building Project 

Several years ago, Joe Finan, Park Superintendent, Saratoga National Historic Park, approached Joel McCarty and Alicia Spence to enlist the Guild to fabricate and erect the timber frame for the first phase of a visitors center to be constructed in the village of Schuylerville, NY. 

Officially the Canal Region Gateway Visitors Center (GVC) will serve to “Direct visitors to the Canal Region's waypoint communities, heritage centers, and attractions; provide an introduction to the activities and interpretative themes of the region; and provide interpretation of key features of the Gateway Visitor Center site”  (Canal Region's Gateway Visitors Center Conceptual Design Study, Saratoga Associates).

Besides featuring the Champlain Canal and Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, the GVC will feature the Saratoga National Historical Park and the initiatives of the Historic Saratoga-Washington on the Hudson Partnership. 

Using the requirements developed by the design committee and the architectural style influences of the region at the time of its settlement, Saratoga Associates developed the design using a timber frame structure as would have the buildings built at the time of the Revolutionary War when this area was being settled. 

The Historic Hudson-Hoosic Partnership is a 24-agency consortium overseeing the project. As with any project involving such a large group of stakeholders, the project development and design extended over years.  As the process moved towards construction, the Guild hired Neil Godden to be the project manager and Mike Beganyi to be the designer.

Before they could get engaged, the inevitable Friday afternoon emergency call came in: the partnership needed a timber list for the following Tuesday Saratoga County forestry planning meeting. The emergency was compounded by a decision to make the raising a hand-raising and to work towards hosting it in the two days before the annual conference this year. So, Mack Magee and Ben Brungraber of Fire Tower Engineered Timber convened an emergency session to re-design the frame, from a hybrid bent and wall structure with principal rafters and common purlins, to a wall structure with purlin plates and common rafters more amenable to a hand-raising, and then sized the members for the client. Later, the team incorporated characteristics of the Dutch barn frames native to the area into the design.

Schuylerville NY Timber Frame Guild Community Building Project from Carolina Timberworks on Vimeo.

Honoring the history of the area

The timber frame is a modern take on a traditional Dutch style barn that was common in the Hudson Valley. The traditional design has been adapted to meet program requirements for a visitor center which will house interpretive displays, rotating exhibits, and host community events. Large anchor beams with thru tenons and celebrated joinery will tie together the frame of locally harvested pine and hardwoods. Additionally, they lowered the outshot beams to improve connections, removed unnecessary braces to open the floor plan, and made extensive design changes to exterior porches.