STONE HOUSES

Stone houses are the most permanent landmarks in our cultural history. They are a dwindling set of reminders of our colonial past; but many are hidden in rural settings among newer buildings or tucked away on former farms.

The original 1½ -story stone houses in Saugerties were built in a rural Dutch style of architecture, usually with gathered fieldstone or limestone, or bluestone quarried either on the property or nearby.

Ulster County, and particularly Saugerties, is very rich in bluestone, a typically bluish-gray densely compressed sandstone from about 360 -385 million years ago. Around the 1830’s, Saugerties became a major supplier of bluestone to the nation. Bluestone was in demand for sidewalks, curbstones, tombstones, as well as formal and rough walls and fences.  When shaped into blocks, it was used in foundations, building walls, steps, lintels, window pediments, and doorway and windowsills. Terms such as randomly laid, dressed and adorned are associated with stone houses.   

Early stone houses consisted typically of one room with a broad-breasted stone fireplace with an internal chimney, a cellar, a loft and a gabled roof. All family living and business happened in this one room.  The center of life was the hearth. Furniture was sparse and moved about to accommodate a succession of functions: food preparation, eating, meeting of guests, doing business, sleeping, etc. Of comfort, there was little.

As settlers outgrew the one-room house, they built more living space. The original one-room house remained as a wing attached to or incorporated into the new house. Often the addition simply duplicated the original house, the two sections existing side by side, with a new entrance of double Dutch doors giving access to the entire house. The new entrance hallway was now flanked on one side by the old one-room house and on the other by the new wing, usually internally partitioned into two rooms. A two-foot thick hallway wall is always evidence of the position of the original house. Sometimes, the new wing was built 2 stories high, leaving the original wing to become a kitchen and the attic workrooms for carpentry and weaving.  Frequently an adjacent structure was added as a summer kitchen, built separately, to avoid overheating the main house during warm weather.