245 N Liberty St

From the National Register nomination

Two-story log and frame house with aluminum siding, a limestone foundation, and a metal-sheathed gable roof. There are narrow 4/4 windows on the gable ends and 6/6 windows on the front (east) side. The front entry has sidelights and a transom in a simple frame. The present front entry porch dates largely to the mid-20th century, with metal supports and railing on the lower tier and a balcony with a metal railing and awning roof above, but it retains sawn wood brackets that support a beaded tongue-and-groove ceiling. The one-story full-facade back porch has replacement wood posts and vertical beaded tongue-and-groove in the south shed roof end. The top of an interior brick flue or chimney projects above the roof at the north end; a similar flue or chimney cap was once visible on the south end. Some accounts state the house was built for Joseph Gochenour in 1792. Ann McCleary notes that the south part is an antebellum two-story log house to which a frame addition was made on the north side after the Civil War. Emanuel Royer, a Pennsylvania-born carpenter, purchased the house in 1842 and presumably lived there with his wife Amanda. Later owner Oliver Helfenstein enlarged the house and weatherboarded it. Helfenstein was a tinsmith who made tin plates and cups for use by Confederate soldiers and who also fashioned Harrisonburg's first oil-burning street lamps. The house may be pictured on page 77 of Suter and Lyon's pictorial history of Harrisonburg. (Caldwell, "Journey into the Past," 29; Suter and Lyon, Images of America: Harrisonburg, 77)