Owners Can't Find Masons for Repairs
Occupants of the 125-year-old cobblestone houses along the historic Ridge Rad from Lewiston to Rochester are running into difficulties. They are unable to find present-day masons who can make repairs or alterations. Arch Merrill of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle referred to the obvious reason for this, when, in his recently published book, "The Ridge", he said: They (the original masons) guarded their formula jealously; Some of them even refused to let anyone watch them at work, and when they died the secret of cobblestone masonry died with them.
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The Ridge Road and adjacent highways in the Lake Ontario country of Niagara, Orleans and Monroe counties, abounds with these homes of unusual stone architecture. According to Merrill, there are more of these on the Ridge Road than on any other highway in America. He concludes that the buildings served as models for the few in nearby Canada, in Michigan and Ohio, and around Albany. This style of architecture, Merrill wrote, flourished from about 1825 to the Civil War And where could the stones be gathered more easily than in the bed of the glacial Lake Iroquois, between the Ridge and Lake Ontario. The settlers, men, women and children, collected these painstakingly. Sometimes three years were spent in obtaining enough for a house. At first they picked up field stones of varying sizes, hit and miss. Later the builders laid them in more even rows and finally, the work became an art, only lake-washed stones of every shape NS color were used. The stones were graded as to size by passing through an iron ring or through holes cut in a board. Sometime there were bees, when a whole community would join in this pastime. Most of the cobblestone masons came to this region with the building of the Erie Canal. It is apparent that many of the houses are the work of one builder. Such a man was John Wetherill, who came to Gaines in the early days, built many cobblestone places along the Ridge, and is said to have originated the herringbone pattern, in which only long, flat stones were employed. He also is credited with many of the distinctive, classic entrances that grace the old homes.
Took Years to Build
The builders would board in a neighborhood and work on two ore more jobs at one time, lacing a row at one building and, while it was drying, proceed to the next one. Sometimes it took from two to three years to build a new cobblestone house. Nor was this type of structure and building materials confined to homes. Schools, churches, barns, sheds and smoke houses, many of them still standing, were included. So well did these builders build a century and more ago that most of their work still stands today as durable, sturdy structures. Repairs have become necessary only in parts of the buildings exposed to undue strain or weather conditions, and most of the remodeling attempted has been to modernize them.