Erwin Raisz' Landforms of the United States

Erwin Raisz was a notable cartographer best known for his physiographic maps of landforms. This map is useful for the generalized section at the bottom illustrating the topographical relief across the land.

Cobblestone Landmarks of New York

In the preceding post I introduced the York State Book Cobblestone Landmarks of New York State and mentioned that finding the book in a used bookstore was the occasion of learning about this mildly exotic architectural form largely particular to New York State. This post primarily serves to share the introduction to the book which gives a thorough overview of the form and how it came into being as well as some other notes. Here it is:

THE STONES AND THE STYLE  Our upstate cobblestone landmarks are works of art created by pioneer craftsmen in the middle of the nineteenth century. Using an Ice Age residue of glacially rounded native stones, those craftsmen of the 1830s and 1840s perfected a form of folk art that was without precedent in America. For approximately thirty years they created a variety of decorative walls on hundreds of buildings. Today their creations are unique among all those structures erected in the Great Lakes region before the Industrial Revolution rendered such craftsmanship economically obsolete.             The evolution of the humble cobblestone began 325-475 million years ago. During the Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian periods of the Paleozoic Era all of the Great Lakes region west of the present Hudson Valley was a great shallow salt sea filled with the living creatures whose remains, falling to the bottom, gradually formed layers of limestone deposits. Erosion of the young Appalachian Mountains, a more ancient land mass to the east of this salty sea, washed down additional layers of sand and clay, depositing these in thicknesses of thousands of feet. Under enormous pressure, these various layers of sediment became limestone, dolomite, sandstone and shale. Finally, some 250 million years ago, as the salty, sediment-filled sea dried up and the land mass emerged, new rivers began to cut into and expose our regional sedimentary bedrock. The forces of erosion, pressure, and time that produced this foundation were eventually to form the cobbles that later were wrought from this same bedrock.             In the last million years or so the Ice Age redesigned our landscape. Great juggernaut masses of ice ground loose stones on top of the bedrock surface into a generous supply of cobblestones, smoothing the bedrock surface as well. Advancing slowly down from Labrador, these glaciers and ice sheets picked up rock rubble and carried it south. Thus, in addition to polishing and redistributing the loose fragments of local sedimentary sandstone and limestone, the ice mass brought with it a small number of harder Canadian metamorphic stones, such as gneiss and quartzite, which were tumbled and crushed along the way. These stones were eventually left on the land when the ice melted. Geologists call this glacial deposit of rocky debris over the bedrock layer the till sheet or drift mantle. The layman knows it as topsoil or subsoil.             There are two types of till or drift deposits: ice-laid and water-laid. Stones from an ice-laid deposit are roughly rounded fragments of many sizes and kinds of rock. These are what have come to be called field cobbles; perhaps more properly they should be called glaciated cobbles. The glaciated cobbles are found predominantly in the drumlin areas of central and western New York, between Rochester and Syracuse. In contrast, stones from water-laid deposits have had their sharp edges rounded and their surfaces smoothed. These are the stones that were released from the ice and then subjected to additional tumbling action in glacial-born waters of streams and lakes. These water-rounded cobbles are found predominantly in the moraine areas of central and western New York. Lake Ontario’s preset shoreline for the most part is lined with water-rounded stones, and here wave action continues the process of cobblestone polishing. Thus, through the advent of natural forces a natural building material was deposited and shaped in central and western New York.             Following the American Revolution, settlers began to push, and be pushed, westward into new lands in central and western New York. Initially, surviving and conquering the forested land were their immediate concerns. Forests had to be cleared to provide farm lands on which food crops might be planted. The houses they built first on their new land were usually log, or hand-hewn frame cabins, although virgin hardwood forests of maple, beech, and oak did not surrender easily to the farmers axe. To the first generation of farmers the axe, broadaxe, froe, saw, and other woodworking tools were no less important then the plow. With these tools the farmer began many years of forest removal and with them put up his rude log or frame cabin in the forest clearing. Sawmills, gristmills, and other water-powered mills were rapidly constructed wherever streams could be dammed. Locally milled lumber was a necessary luxury when increasing numbers of farm buildings were needed for a completely self-sufficient farm economy.             The farmer’s remaining woodlots of uncleared land supplied fuel and free construction materials for the growing farm complex. With a broadaxe, felled trees were squared into massive beams and then pegged together to form the skeletons of barns, animal shelters, stables, carriage, wood sheds, granaries, and other farm buildings. Split logs and fieldstones became fences. Lumber for walls and floors was cut at the closest sawmill. Hand-split wooden shingles made excellent roofs and siding. As the necessities of life were secured, larger frame houses replaced the log cabins to accommodate growing families. Between 1800 and 1820 brickyards, stone quarries, lime kilns, and glass factories appeared in every corner of the state to offer farmers and townsfolk alike a choice between wood, brick, or stone construction.             In central and western New York settling the land proceeded slowly, due mainly to the scarcity of natural transportation routes. Waterways were the simplest mode of transportation, and west of the Mohawk River there was scarcely anything of this sort. In 1817, following an unsuccessful attempt to have the federal government build an artificial waterway to the West, New York State started the project on its own. Derisively called Clinton’s Ditch by its opponents (in honor of the governor and principal proponent), the Erie Canal began to thread its way westward to Lake Erie. The canal required construction workers with various skills, among them masons to quarry and lay stone for canal locks and aqueducts. To build these the remnant of the prehistoric sea – limestone – was quarried for stone blocks. Quarried limestone was also crushed and burned to produce lime for the mortar with which these blocks were laid. The canal provided the first opportunity for subsistence farmers to become cash crop farmers, for their crops could now be carried back east to established centers of population. In 1825 the canal was finally connected with Lake Erie, linking the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via waterways across New York State. From New England more Yankee farmers came with the marketing of their wheat, flour, and other cash crops on the Atlantic seaboard.             The newly prosperous farmers were now able to build houses reflecting this prosperity and their confidence in the future. Building materials in those days usually came from the immediate area, and only in rare instances were they transported great distances, as is common now. Central and western New York had, in addition to timber and clay for bricks, all the stones, gravel and sand left by the glaciers of long ago. Sometime after 1825 the first cobblestone building was constructed in upstate New York, probably in Wayne or Monroe Country, and the cobblestone era was begun. We do not know which building was the first, where it was, or who the mason was. In the years to come virtually every type of building was constructed in this regional mode, incorporating within them the most popular architectural styles of the early nineteenth century. The majority of cobblestone buildings are in the Greek Revival style, which appeared in western New York about 1835. Those constructed before this date are in the Federal style. Gothic revival and Italianate style cobblestone buildings are relatively few. Cobblestone Landmarks of NY State             While most of the cobblestone structures built were farmhouses, since most upstate New Yorkers were farmers, cobblestone structures were built in villages and cities also, including a business block in Batavia, a reaper manufacturing building in Perry, a warehouse in Palmyra, and an agricultural equipment factory in Macedon, all razed years ago.              In all more than 700 cobblestone buildings were built in the counties to the south of Lake Ontario. Most are concentrated on the Lake Ontario Plain and among the Finger Lakes, but some isolated examples were built as far south as Bath, Elmira, and Cortland. Wayne County exceeds all others with over 180 documented buildings. Monroe, Orleans, and Ontario Counties each record about 100 buildings. There is even a cobblestone house in Colorado, built by a Monroe County man who went west after the Civil War. Octagonal house, Madison Cty, Rt. 20 (from the book) The same house today (photo mine)             Following the frontier, New Yorkers soon carried the craft west to new farms and villages in southern Ontario, Canada, southern Michigan, and beyond Lake Michigan as far as Beloit, Wisconsin. Chester Clark of Marion, NY, whose 1838 letters to the Genesee Farmer and Gardener’s Journal provide us with an early document of the art, and his brothers introduced cobblestone masonry in 1844 to Beloit, where they built the Smith-Gaston house and several more prior to 1863. Levi Boughton learned the cobblestone craft in Monroe County and took it to Paris, Ontario, Canada, in 1838. There twelve houses and churches were built.             Thus on both sides of the Illinois-Wisconsin border the second largest group of American cobblestone buildings appeared in the 1840s and 1850s. In fact, much of the best cobblestone work in Wisconsin and southern Michigan is located in or near places with transplanted New York names such as Rochester, Geneva, Troy, Farmington, Palmyra, Genesee and Walworth.             A much less significant number of cobblestone structures is found scattered in a thin line eastward through the Mohawk Valley to Guilderland in Albany County, and Bennington and Brattleboro, Vermont. Eight hundred and fifty miles and almost as many cobblestone buildings separate Brattleboro from Beloit, but the dates clearly indicate that the idea moved west and east from its origin in upstate New York. From Shelgren, Lattin & Frasch’s Cobblestone Landmarks of New York State. Coolidge House, Bouckville, Rt. 20 (from the book)   Above photos (mine) of Coolidge House, Bouckville, NY Rt. 20 today a charming inn and beautiful ground floor bar. For anyone interested in visiting New York's cobblestone houses Cobblestone Quest: Road Tours of New York's Historic Buildings by Rich and Sue Freeman © 2005 Footprint Press organizes extant structures in 17 loop tours within the counties between Buffalo and Syracuse. The book elaborates on the history and diagrams details of the architectural style over a dozen or so pages. Reproductions are pretty low grade but it is a good resource for visiting the buildings.

Selections from Syracuse University Press and York State Books

In spite of the fact that The Waterwall’s posts have been predominantly book-centric it has always been the intention of this site to present interests ranging across art, history, literature, travel and other cultural miscellany both in general and sometimes with special focus on those topics as they relate to my home state. That these all too infrequent entries so far have not progressed in an Empire State way much meets redress here in the form of some notes regarding a series of books published by Syracuse University Press including one that points the way to a presentation of one of this state’s most unique architectural legacies. And redress in the form of some personal New York recollections I associate with these books.

Syracuse University Press, founded in 1943, is a university press that is part of Syracuse University. The areas of focus for the Press include Middle East Studies, Native American Studies, Peace and Conflict

Resolution, Irish Studies and Jewish Studies, among others.^[1] The Press has an international reputation in Irish Studies and Middle East Studies.^[2] It is a member of the Association of American University Presses.              (Wikipedia)

Syracuse University Press also publishes, under its imprint York State Books, topical material related to New York State. My own internet searches for details of the imprint’s history and works have produced nothing constructive. At present I’m engaged in correspondence with the Press to learn more. The little I am able to report on is based on books I’ve acquired from various used bookstores. 

It’s probable that the material handled by York State Books was formerly the purview of Syracuse University Press proper before diversifying into the broader range described above however at the moment that’s mainly a hunch.

In the early 2000’s traveling from western New York to Cape Cod my timetable permitted journeying on back roads through the Adirondacks, my first real glimpse of the region. in the town of Speculator I was lucky to overnight in a Lake Pleasant cabin where among the comforts of its simple rooms were assorted books on the renowned park. I delved into Adirondack Country by William Chapman White.

The 1985 publication of Adirondack Country by York Sate Books reprinted for the first time in paperback the author’s biography of the Adirondack Preserve originally published by Duell, Sloan & Pearce in 1954, a year before White’s death at age 52. As late as 1967 when Knopf issued the first reprint of the title it had secured a reputation for unmatched depth of study, as is attested to by noted Adirondack region scholar and water use crusader Paul F. Jamieson, who is quoted in the introduction to that edition – “the most comprehensive book on the region since [Alfred l.] Donaldson’s History.” 

In researching the original publisher of Adirondack Country I learned it belonged to a larger roster of Country books Duell, Sloan & Pearce and released in a series called American Folkways edited by Erskine Caldwell. American Folkways is representative of postwar regional series that comprised a national self -portrait according to Oak Knoll Press, publishers of Series Americana by Carol Fitzgerald who is profiled in an earlier post for her groundbreaking work with the Rivers of America series. That York State Books in no way points to Adirondack Country’s origins in American Folkways is, I presume, an indication that as late 1985 when they reprinted it, there was not yet recognition that various regional series constituted a so called national self-portrait series as Fitzgerald’s thesis asserts. I would think that detail would add to Adirondack Country’s pedigree. In any event, it is commendable that York State Books brought Adirondack Country and the intimate profile it offers out of obscurity.

Syracuse University Press has also reprinted the slim volume Just About Everything in the Adirondacks, forty-seven of White’s journalistic pieces for the New York Times and New York Herald Tribune first published by the Adirondack Historical Association in 1960. The reprint couples the columns with notable landscape paintings of the region.

Landmarks of Rochester and Monroe County: A Guide to Neighborhoods and Villages © 1974 and Cobblestone Landmarks of New York State © 1978 both belong to an intriguing series of books published by SUP we might nickname “Landmarks” books. Both were happy discoveries in stores trading in “previously owned” books, the earlier title being the second such event, its identical square format suggesting the two might be parts of a series; follow-up correspondence with SUP confirmed they were. According to the publisher the series originally included: Landmarks of Rochester and Monroe Co.; Cobblestone Landmarks of New York; Landmarks of Otsego Cty; Landmarks of Oswego Cty; and Syracuse Landmarks all in cloth and paper editions. Only the Syracuse title is still in print.

These fabulous, straightforward studies of notable architecture in the western counties of the state feature introductory essays followed by black and white reproductions usually one per building occupying the greater proportion of the page along with addresses of locations (which makes it possible to track the buildings down as I have done in a couple of instances). The essays succeed in conveying a deep passion and respect for the architectural treasures they present along with a demurely urgent call to preserve these structures against the sweeping ravages of urban renewal.

Of particular note is Cobblestone Landmarks of New York State. Prior to discovering this book I was unaware of the architectural form but it has since remained a top personal interest among the treasures of New York State which I’ll expand on following this post.

Lastly, Growing Up In Cooper Country was another delightful discovery in the aisles of one of the best used bookstores I have ever visited which warrants a quick plug. The Book Barn in Niantic, CT is treat with few equals for those who love to prowl used bookstores. It comprises three locations. The main store, a quarter mile out of “downtown” on the main street itself comprises an old barn, some outbuildings and stalls situated on an old farm. Each structure on the welcoming and highly appealing grounds is dedicated to different genres. You can easily spend a day browsing and not have covered everything. Of course it’s replete with all the idiosyncracies of such places: cats; antiques; abundant placards of quotes and other literary signage; I think they had tea breads or some sort of country baked goods. The personnel are very friendly as they manage brisk business. The other two locations are in town around the corner from each other. One handles children’s books and the other quality paperbacks. Junk quotient is low; “finds” quotient high.

Growing Up In Cooper Country: Boyhood Recollections of the New York Frontier © 1965 by Syracuse University Press presents “extensive boyhood reminiscences from the out-of-print autobiographies of two men who grew up in the Cooper Country in the frontier period.” Contemporaries and local to each other the two subjects did not know each other. One, Beardsley became a lawyer and member of the state legislature while the other, Wright, was a clergyman, reformer, suffragist and abolitionist, thus their writings reflect totally different points of view as they record memorable descriptions of similar events such as bear hunts, clearing forests, building log houses, bees and dances, witches and Indians, etc.

 
The book's handsome jacket illustration itself sports a classic 1960s graphic sensibility. The back cover lists other titles under the heading The York State Scene – so we see a preceding nomenclature of the later imprint and an early, very handsome stylization of SUP's trademark glyph.

As suggested through the titles presented here, Syracuse University Press offers, to those interested, deeper layers of New York history. It would be a welcome feature of the press if their public presence included more on their history and archives.