Joy of Christmas

tis one month after Christmas, and all through the town, the bustle of Christmas has finally calmed down.

I’m talking about the not-so-little town of Bethlehem, where even in the bleak midwinter the shops and restaurants on Main Street and the centerpiece of the sprawling Historic Bethlehem complex await off-season visitors.

Please note that the Colonial Industrial Quarter, Kemerer Museum, Moravian Museum and Burnside Plantation are snug in their long winter’s nap until they reopen in April. But the 1810 Goundie House on Main Street is a one-stop center to plan a future visit and sample the caliber of historic preservation and presentation the Historic Bethlehem Partnership offers visitors.

So, who was Goundie and why is his house a historic shrine?

He was actually Johann Sebastian Gundt, and he settled in Bethlehem in 1803 and assumed the esteemed position of the settlement’s Master Brewer. He met and married the widowed Cornelia Elisabeth Andreas and turned the struggling Moravian Church-owned brewery into a profitable venture.

The Gundt family occupied a new home on Main Street in 1810, and two years later Johann was granted permission to open his own beer brewery and brandy distillery along the Monocacy Creek behind the house. As business boomed and Bethlehem grew, Gundt entered public service, rising to mayor in 1827. About that same time, Gundt also became Goundie, his interpretation of the anglicized version of the name.

Until it became a borough in 1844, Bethlehem was basically a “company town” with that company being the Moravian Church. Thus, Johann Gundt/Goundie never actually owned his house until he purchased it on March 20, 1852. Two weeks later, he died.

The Goundie House is architecturally noteworthy in that it was likely the first Federal-style residence in town. It is believed that the builder may have been inspired by the first non-Germanic building in Bethlehem ironically the circa 1806 Central Moravian Church.

Although the classic exterior remains, few original interior architectural elements of the Goundie House survived years of uses after Cornelia Elisabeth’s death in 1853. After it fell out of family hands, it served as everything from a restaurant to a doctor’s office until the Historic Bethlehem Partnership acquired it in 1968.

After considerable research and restoration, the house was opened as a historic site and a wall was opened between the residence and an adjoining store room to create the Historic Bethlehem Welcome Center.

That old store room is now consumed by a small shop and information desk. The Goundie House is entered from that room.

A walk through the rooms of the Goundie House reveals the rather simple but comfortable lifestyle of a fairly affluent early-19th-century Moravian family. The few possessions of Goundie family members that could be retrieved are displayed there.

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