Hard Farm Homestead
historic house in Vermont, United States
The Hard Farm Homestead, also known as the Zera Hard House, is a historic farm complex on River Road in Manchester, Vermont. Consisting of an early 19th-century Cape, an 1840s Greek Revival house, and a number of 19th-century outbuildings, it represents a rare surviving assemblage of farm buildings in the town. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.
Description and history
The Hard Farm Homestead is located in southern Manchester, its buildings on either side of River Road, just north of Muddy Lane. The main house is set on the east side of the street, overlooking the Battenkill River. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, with a prominent two-story Greek Revival temple portico facing the street. Across the street stand a 1+1⁄2-story Cape style house, along with a barn, corn crib, shed, and chicken coop, all dating to the 19th century. A 20th-century garage stands adjacent to the main house. The construction method of the main house is an unusual form of plank construction, in which planking is laid horizontally (rather than vertically as in typical plank frame construction), with layers randomly overlapping and joined by spikes.
The oldest building of the complex is the Cape, which was, according to Hard family records, built by Quakers named Soper about 1806.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hard Farm Homestead” as historic house in Vermont, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25004906. Authority coordinates are 43.130, -73.082. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1988 and 1806.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hard Farm Homestead” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.