Cobblestone Quest: Road Tours of New York's Historic Buildings

Cobblestone Buildings:

In the United States cobblestones, left behind by glaciers and rounded by Lake Ontario wave action, were used by early pioneers to build homes and many other buildings. From 1825 until the Civil War (1860) over 700 cobblestone buildings were built within a 65-mile radius of Rochester, New York.

Imagine moving slowly by wagon, over roads that are mere ruts of mud, to build a custom log home in a remote wilderness. This is precisely what the early pioneers to upstate New York did. When they arrived on their plot of land, often purchased from the Phelps & Gorham Land Tract or Holland Land Company, they had to clear the trees from the dense forest to create fields for farming.

Then they discovered the fields were full of fist-sized stones (or cobblestones), evidence that glaciers scoured this land before the forests grew. Those pesky rocks had to be moved out of the way and as they plowed, the cobbles seemed to multiply. It was hard work, but the land was productive and the pioneers were able to grow enough produce to feed their large families.

Then the Erie Canal opened in 1825, creating a way to get their produce to larger markets. The farming business flourished, enough so that they began to think about building a better home for their hardworking wives and 10+ children. Why not put those pesky cobblestones to use and build a dandy home – they were by golly, lying about free in the fields, just waiting to be gathered. And, the pioneers were not strangers to hard labor.

This is how many of the cobblestone buildings in western New York came into existence. They were built between 1825 and 1860, before the Civil War. Each was a work of folk art; each unique. A few of the masons who built houses in upstate New York, migrated farther west and built a spattering of cobblestone buildings in the mid-west. But, by far, the bulk that were ever built, are in upstate New York, south of Lake Ontario.

How many cobblestones does it take to build a house anyway? Cobblestone homeowner Margaret Deans actually counted. She estimates it took 14,402 cobblestones to build her circa-1862 farmhouse. Now that’s a lot of stone picking! The same method was used to build churches, schools, mills, barns, stores, shops, factories, carriage houses, garden houses, gate and toll houses, smokehouses, pumphouses, hophouses, privies, stables, turniphouses, piggeries, decorative walls along roadways, and even cemetery markers and cemetery receiving vaults. Today, many of the cobblestone buildings are standing and still in use, a testament to their fine craftsmanship.

Learn more from “Cobblestone Quest – Road Tours of NY’s Historic Buildings,” www.footprintpress.com.