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NPS Form 10-900-a OA48 AppmvaMm 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of - Historic Places Continuation Sheet. Section number 7 Page 2 Wertz-Bestle Farm St. Joseph County. IN The interior of the house, never ornate, survives virtually intact. The original doors (photo 5), surrounds. and stairs. which appear to be of walnut. all remain. Most are painted, as they likely would have been from the start: the doors are stained and retain their original hardware. Spatially the interior remains essentially the same: the load-bearincr walls are brick covered with plaster. The basement, which may have been dug in the 1880s. has walls of rubblestone. Its floor retains an embedded brick circle where some early heating source once stood. for in the floor above the circle was a grate. The gabled frame barn (photos 6,7) is approximately three -and -a - half stories high and contains two - levels. The upper level has- two'rows of tall, narrow arched louvered openings on the east - .(see photo 2) and -north sides only: -it -is entered on the north up a reinforced earthen bank (the concrete abutment was surely added later) through tall double doors (photo 6). The large open space looks much the same as when.it was used to store hay. The upper level is cantilevered over the lower on the south (photo 7). forming a shelter where, no doubt, oubt, there once.were animal pens. The lower level has windows'on all but the north side (owing to the bank), which are . four -light sashes -with peaked surrounds. Inside (photo 8) there Are several wooden stanchions and stalls. with hand-hewn uptight beams, and areas set apart with work benches and spaces for specific farm tasks. Some of the ceiling joists appear simply to be trees with bark still remaining, scarcely hewn at all.