Historic Preservation and Documentation Wednesday, Jun 13 2012 

Projects , acairfearann 14:25

Historic Preservation has two functions: to aid in preservation, which hopefully includes some form of sympathetic reuse, and to witness the removal of the past.  I am not especially keen on preservation that focuses solely on the enshrinement of building fixed in a moment in time.  There are a few, rare cases where this is desirable; however, most buildings are better kept in use.  If they cannot be used, the society in question probably cannot afford to maintain them.  Sometimes, mothballing a building is possible, thereby avoiding demolition or massive changes, with the idea that eventually a more sympathetic use can be found.  Mothballing, in fact, probably ought to be a more available option.*  But most buildings need to be used, while at the some time recording what has changed (if only so the next guy knows what did and didn’t work)

However, any modification usually means erasing something.  But it is also a point of opportunity.  This picture shows a minor point of combined destruction and discovery:

Taken during the remodelling of the kitchen eight! years ago, this shows the old south wall of the pre-1870’s farmhouse, before all the additions.  The old lathe is visible, over it is the new diamond wire mesh for the new plaster.  What is also visible is a shadow on the wall, actually a stain.  The diagonal line running from the center of the stove to the top of the photo is the old stairs, also present are the stair treads.  These stairs were removed in the 1870’s when the south end was expanded.  While it was known from the floorboards of the room above that stairs might have existed, there was no proof until this renovation project.   Putting in the new plaster simultaneously revealed and, probably, destroyed this stain.  The photo, therefore, becomes an invaluable source of information. 

Historic preservation in action.

*It is not due to the combination of security, regulatory, tax, and financial hurdles.  Tax and regulatory are huge, especially in locations where property tax exists.

 

‘Always there has been singing’ Friday, Jun 8 2012 

Historical Events acairfearann 12:57

Excerpt from ‘The Story of Our Esperanza’ by Lucy Creevey, 1959

“There is another picture in my mind. I have thought of it so often. Clara Louise Kellogg had come to New Hartford and she and her husband built a lovely house on a hill near the village. She was having a house-warming, and of course the Esperanza house-party was invited. And of all the vehicles in the barn, they chose to drive down in the two-wheeled ox-cart. Mr. Rood drove up to the mounting block with his immaculate team of oxen, Berry and Bright. The cart was painted a beautiful cerulean blue, and scrubbed to the last inch. A framework had been built from which dangled a dozen Japanese lanterns, ready to light their homeward way. The Esperanza people climbed in with much laughter. Mr. Rood flicked at the oxen, and they pushed into their yokes and swung off. I remember that the little brass knobs on the ends of their horns reflected a quick gleam of light from the setting sun. I watched it all spell-bound. The cart lumbered along with its unusual burden, and just as they disappeared over the brow of the hill I heard them swinging.”

This was probably in the late 1880’s, when Lucy was around ten years old.  Clara Louise Kellogg was one of New Hartford’s more notable residents.  The Kellogg’s were one of the oldest and largest families in town, Pine Meadow (one of the small villages) was originally Kelloggsville.  They had owned and farmed numerous tracts of land throughout the town, including a portions which would become parts of Esperanza and Yellow Mountain, and had also run several taverns and inns.  Clara was an opera singer, and one of the first American sopranos to earn acclaim in Europe.  No small feat.

Mr. Rood and his family ran the farm from the 1880’s into the early 1900’s.  The Rood children were schooled alongside the family in the summer, and there are a number of pictures of them together.

 

Compilation versus analysis Tuesday, Jun 5 2012 

Projects acairfearann 10:25

Information overload is a fairly common problem these days and history is no less prone to it than any either field.* If one does any amount of work in historic preservation, one quickly encounters a Byzantine series of standards and guidelines designed to ensure that the information will be preserved in perpetuity.  Reams upon reams of paper, both real and digital, are collected.  As something of a cynic, I have to wonder…does any of this ever actually get read and used?*  Or, are we dragons upon a hoard?

The thing is, data, by itself, isn’t very useful.  It is what we, by our study of the data, create that is useful.  This goes beyond collation, it goes beyond even analysis, straight to creation.  All the information in the world, neatly collated, organized, and fully searchable will not tell us the meaning of life.  It will tell us What it is, but not how we should, as humans and not computers, relate to it. 

Information overload, of course, is the difficulty with a place such as this.  It is a mountain of data, but lacks either narrative or analysis.  It also lacks the organization.  The trick is to work on the narrative/analysis at the same time as the organization…sigh.  I don’t know about creation, though, I am not a terribly creative individual.

*At least it isn’t the environmental sciences, where the amount of money spent studying a problem rather than, you know, Fixing the problem often appears to be out of balance.

*I always remember a comment that would enrage most archeologists: ‘if the only thing left of a civilization is some smashed pottery, perhaps it wasn’t all that interesting of a civilization.’ 

 

 

Those were the days… Sunday, Jun 3 2012 

Esperanza and Historical Events acairfearann 15:39

A statement that makes us in the PC, 21st century distinctly uncomfortable, but I will not digress nor apologize for the dead. 

In any event, those were the days!  Whilst looking through the first guestbook, an admittedly over the top summer day at Esperanza in the summer of 1878.*

Order of the Day

Reveille by Lucy on a horn – 6 AM

Traveller’s Breakfast – 6:30 AM

“All aboard that’s g’wine!” – 7 AM

Lazybones’ Breakfast – 8:30 AM

Walk to Minnietrost by ‘Cherubini’  (the children, for summer lessons) – 9 AM

Gin and tansy for the ‘Widow Goldsmith’ (Julie P. Smith) – 10:30 AM

Mint Juleps, omnes, specially for Mrs. Capt. Jim Smith – 11 AM

Lunch – 12 PM

St John XX:1-3 – 1 PM

Dinner with Claret and olives – 3 PM

Travellers return, reception for G.W. Ellsworth – 6 PM

Currant Ice by the ‘Queenly Carlotta’ – 9 PM

Twenty Questions – 9 PM to 12 AM

Night Cap – 12 AM

Break Down dance by G.W. and wife – 12.15 AM

*Appearances or Carpe Diem? Neither Julie’s writing nor Morris’ busines were going well, but they had a wonderful summer, which counts perhaps for more?

 

Concerning architectural styles Thursday, May 24 2012 

Esperanza , acairfearann 09:51

I’ve been somewhat focused on plants recently, tending to ignore what all those plants surround: namely, the house.  This will be a quick introduction to what should be many, many posts.

To an architectural historian the house presents a bit of a puzzle.  Like every other classification scheme dreamed by man, architectural styles promptly sprout exceptions to fly away on, Esperanza is one of those exceptions.  In North America, the vast majority of houses are built in one go, or, when there are additions, they either remain as smaller, distinct parts or are built to match.  In Europe, where building sites have been occupied for much longer, rambling houses with wings for each century occur more frequently; and not infrequently these wings are as large as the original, or larger.  Consequently, dealing with multiple styles in one building is more common than in North America.  Generally, North American historians* try to place a house in one style: Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Federal, Mission, Dutch, 2nd Empire, etc.  Sometimes these categories are suspiciously large, usually amended by the word ‘vernacular’ or ‘folk’; and some styles, such as Queen Anne or the wonderfully accurately named Victorian Eclectic style, are by their own nature more flexible. 

Esperanza succeeds in being both European and American.  By European standards it is, of course, young and quickly built: 1790*-1893.  By American standards it rambled, with no less than five major additions and modifications.  We have the center section: built in 1790-1810 as a bog-standard New England colonial farmhouse; then comes a nearly complete remodel and expansion circa 1830 in the Greek Revival style which adds a kitchen extension*; then in the 1870’s doubling the house’s size with the south wing by re-using an old post and beam barn that is disguised as Victorian; at the same time, the original house’s facade gets reworked with a late Victorian eclectic style porch and associated room; finally, the entire facade is re-worked and the house again doubles in size as the 1893 north ell is created in an early expression of the Shingle Style.  While modifications continue to occur after this, they are largely cosmetic repairs and not reworkings.

Perhaps the most ephemeral of the lot is the Victorian, 1870’s, facade additions as they were superficial and removed in 1893; though the porch room with its round, stained glass window, remains one of the house’s most recognizable features.  However, it is no longer part of a Victorian porch.

Ironically, the house is classified on the tax card as Queen Anne, while the National Register of Historic Places classifies it as Shingle Style.  But it really doesn’t quite fit that either; because if you look at it hard enough, there is that rock-solid colonial/Greek Revival…

* It is less the historian’s fault and more the form’s fault: if the thrice-blessed, computer generated form only allows one to check off a single style…the tyranny of the form!

*1790 or 1810? It depends on who you talk to and whose evidence you believe. 

*It is possible that there was a fire, but it didn’t burn to the ground.

*Think gingerbread.

 

Of hand tools Saturday, May 19 2012 

Uncategorized , acairfearann 20:11

and the use thereof.  It was a genuine pleasure to cut the oat-grass, a cover crop for some perennial grass, on the dam.  Mostly because I chose to grab the grass scythe and do it, in less time than it would have taken to fuel the string-trimmer*, get it to start**, and then shatter the quiet of a beautiful afternoon.  A correctly sharpened and adjusted scythe makes very quick work of mature oat grass, laying it down in a neat windrow, too neat for this purpose as I had to go back and scatter it lest it smother the other grass.  It does less well on the native North American bunch grasses, but then scythes and the oat/hay grasses of Europe evolved together.  No doubt for thousands of years farmers encouraged the grasses that not only grew well but that cut well to the rhythm of a scythe swung about three inches above ground level, row upon row.

The scythe in question, or the snathe of it, was made by Derby and Ball in Waterbury, Vermont; once one of the largest manufacturers of scythes in the world.  The razor-sharp blade is a triumph of metallurgy, precisely curved in both profiles, and astonishingly hard for such a thin piece of metal.

*The joys of ethanol, I always run the tank empty before storing anything with a little, fussy engine.  How much money and energy do you suppose ethanol has cost in engine repairs/refits?

** fussy little, pull-start engine with ethanol in the spark plugs and a very finicky choke.  Actually, it starts very well.  But still…

 

Contemplations of a bibliophile Friday, May 18 2012 

Uncategorized , acairfearann 16:57

Personal libraries tell the keen observer a great deal about someone.*  Esperanza’s library, of course, covering multiple generations and households is a bit harder to decipher than a single person’s collection.  One of the interesting things is the opportunity to examine the very early pieces of the library.  I was just down looking at Henry Norton’s set of Harper’s Personal Library, published 1834-1840.  This set of fairly cheaply bound, but not poorly bound…shall we say solid middle class?…volumes displays a daunting level of erudition.  Included are histories of Ireland, Italy, Palestine, India under the British Empire, Napoleon, Cromwell, Peter the Great, the Crusades, Great Women (2 vol.s) the Jews, Arabia and Islam (2 vols.) the Bible (3 vols.), general histories of Britain and/or the world and/or the classical world, etc.; scientific descriptions of Africa, the Polar regions, South America, global explorations, Isaac Newton, astronomy, general science, fine art and sculpture; Samuel Johnson’s writings (2 vols.); the list goes on.  All clearly read.

Harper’s probably published a great many of those series.  It is the sort of thing a person wanted to have on their shelves, even if the cynic suggests the books were not always read.  A generation, or two, ago, the same was true of the Encylopedia Britannica.  Is there anything comparable today? Or at least anything comparable that is aimed at the general populace?  Oxford’s series and Penguin’s come closest, but they are hardly something the GP tends to collect to display their learning and refinement.  Does our society want to display learning anymore?

*An interesting gap that e-publishing is creating.

 

May 12th, 1879 Monday, May 14 2012 

Historical Events acairfearann 14:18

An unusual letter, in terms of survival, from Fred Davis (husband of Lucy Smith, Julie’s youngest daughter) to William Webster Ellsworth (husband of Helen Yale Smith, Julie’s third daughter).  Fred was writing from New Orleans, where he worked in Morris’ firm as a junior partner.

“It is with feelings of awe and reverence that I, at last, take my pen in hand to address you in regard to the episode, as A. Ward humorously terms it, which has lately occurred in the house of Ellsworth.

Taking life as it exists, it really is not so incomprehensible after all, for such things are wont to happen in all well regulated families, but it causeth me to smile, at time when I am not awestruck to think that the boy I used to bull doze and champion by turns is really the father of a blushing daughter. Yet such I learn is the fact, and just here I doff my hat, and tender you my formal and most sincere congratulations….

….Mrss. Smith and Yale went up to the latters plantation last Saturday in company with a box of champagne and a hundred lbs of ice. As they did not return this morning I conclude the ice has not all melted yet.

I am glad to hear that Helen is getting along so nicely. When you go home, to Esperanza, give her my love, and if she allows you the honor, Kiss the baby for her uncle.”

The baby in question was Lucy Morris Ellsworth.

 

127 years ago Wednesday, May 9 2012 

Esperanza acairfearann 17:29

there was a boy…

Actually, there were any number of boys in 1885.  One knows that quite well.  Still, there is something almost tangible about looking at a pencil line recording that boy’s height on a convenient wall.  One of the more poignant touches in Esperanza is the growth chart on a corner post in one of the upstairs rooms.  It was used between c.1885-1950.  And somehow, people become so much more real when one can run a finger across a pencil line that marked their height when they were five or six or ten.  Most of the people on that chart are long, long gone (not all! :)).  Yet…they were young once; someone, perhaps a doting grandmother?, had them stand there, ‘Stand up straight now!’ and carefully drew a line in heavy pencil. And time bends into stillness.

 

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