During the second quarter of the 19th Century nearly 800 ¹ cobblestone structures were built in North America. Central and Western New York State comprise a high density area of these structures. In fact, 90% ¹ of all cobblestone buildings are within an 80 mile radius of Rochester, NY. Slightly over 100 ¹ cobblestone structures were constructed in Orleans County alone. Most of these were residences built by well-to-do farmers. However, there were two blacksmith shops, two churches, one barn, one Masonic Temple, one flour mill, one foundry, one academy, several smoke houses and 12 school houses. The blacksmith shops, one at Millville and one at Clarendon, no longer exist The flour mill at Eagle Harbor and the Hiram Curtis Foundry in Albion are also gone And I'm sorry to say that several of the schools have also met their doom.
One such school was known as the Loveland School House as depicted here in an 1887 photo showing two teachers and the pupils. It was located on Gaines Basin Road near the New York Central Railroad crossing in the Town of Albion. According to records of the district, ½ acre of land was purchased from Artemis Loveland in 1847 for a total cost of $62. The district then voted to raise $400 to build a cobblestone school which measured 28'x34'. The front was constructed of lake washed cobblestone which was probably hauled up from a Lake Ontario beach by ox cart. The sides and back were constructed of larger field stones procured locally, but also laid in horizontal rows. I might mention here that cobblestone buildings can either be field stone or lake-washed stone or a combination. Frequently however, the early structures of the 1830's are fieldstone while the later buildings of the 1840's and 1850's are lake stone.
By the time of the Civil War period, this mode of construction was no longer a fad. We must also remember that the industrial revolution made it impractical to spend time in such a tedious process of building. Until the last 25 years or so, we commonly took these unique structures for granted. It was indeed unfortunate that the Loveland School House was razed in the early 1940's before an appreciation for such building technique was observed.
Bethinking of Old Orleans, Architecture Destroyed, Loveland School House 1847 - c. 1942, by C. W. Lattin, Orleans County Historian, The Journal-Register, Medina, NY, 4/17/1986. Research courtesy of Karen Crandall.
¹ A "Distribution of Cobblestone Structures in New York State by Counties" illustration shows the distribution and numbers of cobblestone structures in the counties of New York State as of 10/20/2021. Non-cobblestone structures with cobblestone foundations are typically documented in the Cobblestone Info Base when found in contributed documentation and imagery to assure that total content is presented; however, due to the expected large number of these foundation only structures and the less important architectural significance, there are no plans to actively pursue documenting them.