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Cobblestone Houses
Mar. 9th, 2007 11:03 pmI have wanted to do a post about one of my favorite interests for a long time. Six weeks ago I promised to show photos of some cobblestone houses. This week I finally got out to take some digital photos of a few of the local examples. Cobblestone buildings are found almost exclusively in New York state. If you draw a line from Albany to Buffalo, 95% of all the cobblestone buildings would be found within 50 miles of that line. There are about 15 or so spread around the northern midwest, about 10 or 12 in the greater Toronto area of Canada, 3 or 4 in Vermont, and one in Colorado, but all the others are in Upstate New York. The earliest houses date from around 1820, and the last ones were built in the 1890s. They were most popular in the 1840s and 1850s. At one time there were well over a thousand buildings built using cobblestones, now only about 700 survive. I have done my best to catalogue and photograph all of the surviving buildings that I could. So far I have covered the area from New York's Fingerlakes, east to Vermont. Eventually I want to catalogue and photograph all of the cobblestone buildings that survive.
After the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, there were hundreds of masons out of work across Upstate New York. Many of them found work building houses and farms in the booming local economy fueled by the newly opened canal. Some of them had come here from England, and a few of them probably brought the tradition of cobblestone construction with them. There are a few houses in southern England built in the late 18th century that use the same technique that is found in New York State.
Cobblestones were gathered from farm fields or from the shore of Lake Ontario, sorted by size, and laid up in courses of lime mortar, sometimes in patterns. The cobblestones only form the outside face of the wall. The rest of the wall is built with stone and mortar. Outside corners are formed with stone blocks called quoins, and doors and windows often have cut stone lintels and sills.
This is a side wall of the Cobblestone Hotel in Liverpool, NY, just north of Syracuse. It was built using small size field cobbles. The horizontal mortar joints are raised to form a shallow V shape. ( 10 more photos )
After the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, there were hundreds of masons out of work across Upstate New York. Many of them found work building houses and farms in the booming local economy fueled by the newly opened canal. Some of them had come here from England, and a few of them probably brought the tradition of cobblestone construction with them. There are a few houses in southern England built in the late 18th century that use the same technique that is found in New York State.
Cobblestones were gathered from farm fields or from the shore of Lake Ontario, sorted by size, and laid up in courses of lime mortar, sometimes in patterns. The cobblestones only form the outside face of the wall. The rest of the wall is built with stone and mortar. Outside corners are formed with stone blocks called quoins, and doors and windows often have cut stone lintels and sills.
This is a side wall of the Cobblestone Hotel in Liverpool, NY, just north of Syracuse. It was built using small size field cobbles. The horizontal mortar joints are raised to form a shallow V shape. ( 10 more photos )
