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A Small Honor
I have mentioned before that I am blessed to live in the house my grandparents designed and built. Last week, the Robin Hill Manor was inducted into the Medina Sandstone Hall of Fame. That’s us, right center.
Medina Sandstone is a remarkable building material with some excellent qualities. It has been used all over the world. Needless to say, I’m very pleased to see my folks’ work get into the historical record. In the late 1940s, they cleaned up four or five closed quarries to get the stone to build the house, and my uncle George did all the stonework. It took them quite a while to build the house; it was finished the year I was born, 1952. I still can’t believe that I am living here. Better yet, my daughter Valerie and her husband Keenan live here too, so it will carry on for another generation.
It’s quite a kick to have our house listed among all the cathedrals and big buildings.
Published in General
Building rock is fascinating. Around here it’s mostly different varieties of limestone. I was talking to a guy from the local rock yard and he could tell me (from looking) where the rock on our 1950’s home came from – to the detail of the ranch from which it was quarried.
That is so cool! And what a beautiful building! Congratulations.
Hang on a sec. I need to grab my jaw off the floor over there and use it to scoop my brains back into my skull.
I recommend making this NOT PUBLIC.
Okay. I’ll bite. Why? Because it will become a tourist attraction?
Because it directly ties a person’s real name, home address, and conservative writings. This information can no doubt be had through other means, but no sense making it easy and indisputable.
Just my .02
Well, yeah. But I’ve already got a traceable presence through my hobby business, my audiobooks, and the Robin Hill Foundation public information. I am aware of the risk. That’s why this is on Ricochet, which is as close to a safe space as there is online.
I’m conservative, all right; slightly to the right of Attilla the Hun. But my few posts about politics are nowhere near the quality and quantity of others here. The Swamp already has a file on me from my days of having a Top Secret clearance, which means China has the file too. They know I’m a gun nut, still an active NRA Instructor. I have a NY State Pistol Permit which lists all the handguns I own, and I belong to NY organizations that ran 2A cases up to the Supreme Court. I raise all the right warnings. Nothing I can’t deal with.
Absolutely. I had a chance to narrate a book on geology but someone else got to it first, dang it. The geochemistry of tectonic plates and the Moon rocks is fascinating. There’s some good stuff about tectonics and glaciers in the book I just finished, “These Trees Tell a Story.”
Medina Sandstone was discovered before the Erie Canal was being built, but the workers on the Canal found a lot more of it, and stuck around to quarry it. It was such a great structural stone that it was extensively quarried for a lot of years. There’s some interesting background on the Sandstone HOF web site. The-Story-of-Medina-Sandstone.pdf (sandstonesociety.org) The Stone Everlasting
Arrest this man!! ;-)
Congrats Douglas! That’s a very attractive house with a nice yard.
Congratulations, and thanks for sharing. Really cool.
Have you thought about getting the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places? It’s kind of a pain; I am working on our house now, and keep stalling because the writing is, of necessity, very dry. But it would be cool to have that bronze plaque by the front door, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have to do a lot of research to do so.
That’s “Named Estate” nice.
I’ve done some research on it, but I think it might impose some limitations. We’re going to have to replace this roof at some point, and there’s no way we can afford another cedar shake roof even if it was available. I’m looking at options that don’t change the appearance of the house, but they won’t be cedar shakes.
There are no restrictions on what you can do to a house once it is on the Register. You can even tear it down. It’s just fun. People think you get tax benefits or can’t do anything, but that’s generally not true. Replacing the cedar roof with asphalt shingles would just be something you would explain in the application. I think the key fact of the building materials and the story behind the Medina Sandstone construction and contribution to local history would be enough. The applicable criteria would be,
I don’t think replacing a cedar shake roof with architectural shingles would detract significance from the Medina Sandstone. I think the fact that the house is now part of the hall of fame indicates a significant contribution to the history of the area.
You can find synthetic faux cedar shakes if building codes or financial reality prevent you from using cedar shakes. I can tell the difference, but they fake ones look pretty good.
I don’t know how it is in New York, but in Kansas the State Historical Preservation Office is super helpful at giving ideas for preservation if you are on the National Register. When I ran a museum with two sites on the National Register, I could just call them and ask for advice, which saved me from some blunders because I knew what to ask contractors. And Kansas gives grants to locations on the National Register. There are some real benefits to being on the National Register.
You have to submit your property first to your State historic society/governmental entity first.
I found the following in a recent publication from the NPS:
A new roof will not obscure the stonework and there are now companies that manufacture composite shingles that look just like cedar. I’m certain that those would be more than an asphalt roof, but there are options.
My husband was raised in an old cut limestone house, with 18″ thick walls. He was told the stone came from the farm on which the house stands.He can show me where the quarry was. Originally built as a story and a half, with a cellar, there was an outside stairway, because TWO families lived in each level. Each level was divided into two rooms—kitchen/dining/living in one, bedroom in the other. a stone addition was built later, which became the kitchen/living/ dining room. Wood stoves were used for heat. Later, a very narrow, steep stairs was built inside, and the four original rooms became bedrooms. An enclose wood porch was built on the north, and became the kitchen. The stone dining/kitchen room became the dining room. An enclosed wood porch was built about the time the wood kitchen was built, it was used as a pantry, off-season storage, place to store furniture “too good to throw away, I don’t want cousin Bessie to get it, but I never liked it”. This porch is 4′ off the ground, so lots of stuff was ‘squirreled away’ in it. The other porch had a hand-dug rainwater cistern under part of it. As close to running water as they could get in those days. The root cellar still has the steps that went inside the house. A concrete floor was poured at some point, but is badly broken and buckled now. My husband says seeing a scorpion was not unusual. He’d wake in the winter to frost on his quilt. A floor furnace ‘heated’ the house when I met him. His bedroom was the north one — upstairs.
Doug, congratulations on finding yourself in your absolutely beautiful family home. I have always been fascinated by the geology of the fieldstone popping up out of the ground near the 1000 Island crossing in NY. You are on the far side of the lake but I imagine it’s pretty much the same.
Thankee sir. The Niagara escarpment has much to recommend it. Apples and grapes, thanks to the glacier; good harvest this year. The fall colors are peaking. Next April we’re right in the path of the eclipse, and our lawns are booked solid (not that we charge).