File:Henry H. Hand House, Porter, New York - 20221001.jpg

English: The Henry H. Hand House, 2169 Lockport Road at Dickersonville Road, Porter, New York, October 2022. It's not known precisely when this handsome house was built: the Resource Evaluation filed with the State Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation gives a date of "c. 1860", at which time the land was indeed lived on by its original owner: pioneer farmer Henry Harrison Hand (1823-1879). However, a Niagara Falls Gazette article profiling his daughter Helen (1864-1945), who at the age of 76 still lived there with her husband Jay P. Sanger (1860-1953), noted that she was born "in a smaller house on the site of the present ornate structure". Its Italianate architectural style strongly suggests a date of construction in the late 1860s or early 1870s. Note the interplay of the gable-and-wing massing typical of American vernacular rural architecture of the era with high-style decorative elements such as the elegant molded hoods framing the arched windows, the paired dowel-like brackets undergirding the eaves of the roof, and the portico wherein the trend of ornate woodwork is continued.