My Central New York: Cobbled Cottages in the Greater Westcott Neighborhood

Syracuse, NY. 105 Kensington Road, built between 1908 and 1924. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018

Syracuse, NY. 1920 East Genesee Street, built between 1908 and 1924. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018.

Syracuse, NY. 1920 East Genesee Street, built between 1908 and 1924. View showing deep set back from street. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018.

Cobbled Cottages in the Greater Westcott Neighborhood
by Samuel D. Gruber

My colleague Bruce Harvey and I are getting to the end our work on the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Greater Westcott Neighborhood. It is very time-consuming describing nearly 2,000 properties (primarily houses and garages). These houses mostly fall into about six or so major types, but within each type are almost endless variations - some planned and others the result of changing tastes, materials and owners' budgets of the past century.

Even the providers of plans and full house building kits recognized new owners' desire to personalize their house - or at least to build it in some way distinctive from a neighbor's. Thus, most of the hundreds of (often quite similar) house models offered by Sears, Aladdin, Bennett Homes, Lewis Homes and other house suppliers and lumber companies almost always offered options for different window types, gable shapes, porch supports and especially siding. In the front of a Lewis Homes catalogue from 1924 it is clearly stated that "any Lewis Home can be prepared for Brick Venner or Stucco."

Lewis Home, Homes of Character catalog, 1924. Detail form inside front cover.

The promotion of the Bennett Home's Lancaster model - pictured below - tells buyers that:

Quiet but rich dignity is this home’s expression. The rustic stone chimney and broken ashlar porch are most attractive, though brick may be substituted without loss of beauty. The broad, low dormer and wide eaves lean a substantial appearance. The shingled exterior is in keeping with the design; but in case siding is preferred, harmony would not be destroyed. …for charm, outside and in, and for convenient roominess, the Lancaster is indeed most desirable.

"The Lancaster" House model from the Bennett Homes catalog, 1920s

Siding was mostly either clapboard or shingle in various combinations, but a smaller number of houses were built of traditional brick, or at least brick cladding, or stucco, or even rough stone and cobblestone. Its this last group - relatively rare in Syracuse - that we'll look at in this post.

Syracuse, NY. William G. Clark House, ca. 1845. this si one of three (?) early and mid-19th century cobblestone houses in Syracuse. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2012.

There is a long tradition of using rough stone and cobblestone in house construction - for structural work, not just veneer. Cobblestones were often used in Central New York construction in the 18th and early-19th century when they were an easily accessible (cheap) building material. They came ina portable size and did not need to be quarried. There are at least three examples of mid-19th century cobblestone houses surviving in Syracuse, including the William G. Clarke House at 1408 Spring Street on the Northside, built c. 1845. Another good example is on Old Stonehouse Road in Dewitt, just off Nottingham Road and there are many more in towns and villages in the region as is illustrated by Gertrude Peterich in Cobblestone Landmarks of New York State (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1978). This construction method, however, was mostly abandoned when cheap cut stone or brick was more readily available to builders

The cobblestone cottages in the Westcott area are NOT part of this tradition, which ended at least fifty years earlier. The inspiration for rustic stonework and cobblestone porches and chimneys came from elsewhere, the rustic vacation homes of the period and the Craftsman Movement.

In the late 19th-century cobblestone building was popular again as part of a rustic revival used especially for “camp” architecture – including palatial summer homes in the Adirondacks and elsewhere. But popularity also trickled into the vocabulary of “natural” elements and process championed by members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, including Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Movement as championed in his magazine The Craftsman, published in Syracuse, and as apparently practiced by a number of local architects. From the Craftsman Magazine and other sources the use of cobblestone quickly found its way to popular home catalogs.

In the Westcott neighborhood cobblestones are used for rustic effect in a small number of Craftsman-influenced bungalow and cottage type houses. Examples include 1920 East Genesee Street, 110 Kensington Place, 105 Kensington Road and 213 Westminster Place. Similar houses to these types were already published in The Craftsman by 1908. All of our Westcott examples were erected between 1908 and 1924, but at this stage we can't say exactly when. The type continued to be heavily marketed through the 1920s.

California houses with cobblestone construction illustrated in the chapter "The Effective Use of Cobblestones as a Link Between House and Landscape," in Gustav Stickley, Craftsman Houses (2nd edition, 1909)

California House with cobblestone construction first published in The Craftsman (November 1907). Reprinted in Gustav Stickley, Craftsman Houses (2nd edition, 1909)

Syracuse, NY. 213 Westminster Place Built between 1908 and 1924. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018.

Syracuse, NY. 110 Kensington Place, built between 1908 and 1924. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2018.

Already by around 1902, impressive irregular stonework was used in the distinctive Arts and Crafts inspired house at 125 Concord Place, believed to be an early work by the distinguished designer Lamont Warner who lived briefly in Syracuse and worked for Stickley.

Syracuse, NY. 125 Concord Place, attributed to Lamont Warner, 1902. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2012.

Syracuse, NY. 125 Concord Place, attributed to Lamont Warner, 1902. Photo: Samuel Gruber 2006.

Stickley (or his editors) wrote in the compendium volume Craftsman Houses(2nd edition, 1909) a section on cobblestone construction titled "The Effective Use of Cobblestones as a Link Between House and Landscape":

We have never specially advocated the use of cobblestones in the building of Craftsman houses, for as a rule we have found that the best effects from a structural point of view can be obtained by using the split stones instead of the smaller round cobbles. Splitting the stone brings into prominence all the interesting colors that are to be found in field rubble and it is astonishing what a variety and richness of coloring is revealed when the stone is split apart so that the inner markings appear. Also a better structural line can be obtained when foundation and pillars are clearly defined instead of having somewhat the effect is very interesting. There is growing up in this country, especially on the Pacific Coast, a style of house that seems to come naturally into harmony with this sort of stone work, and there is no denying that when the big rough stones and cobbles are used with taste and discrimination, they not only give great interest to the construction, but serve to connect the building very closely with the surrounding landscape.

The fact that we have found the best examples of this natural use of boulders and cobbles in California seems to be due largely to the influence of Japanese architecture over the new building art that is developing so rapidly in the West. In these buildings the use of stone in this form is as inevitable in its fitness as the grouping of rocks in a Japanese garden, for on the one hand the construction of the house itself is usually of a character that permits such a use of stone without danger of incongruity, and on the other hand the stone is usually employed in way that brings the entire building into the closest relationship with its environment.

The cobblestones used for the houses of this kind are of varying sizes. To give the best effect they should be neither too small nor too large. Stones ranging from two and one half inches in diameter for the minimum size to six or seven inches in diameter for the maximum size are found to be most generally suitable. Such stones, which belong of course to this limestone variety, and are irregularly rounded, can usually be obtained without trouble in almost any locality where there are any stones at all, picked up from rocky pasture lane or a dry creek bottom. The tendency of builders is to select the whitest stones and the most nearly round that are obtainable.

This, however, applies only to the regular cobblestone construction as we know it in the East. In California the designers are much more daring, for they are fond of using large mossy boulders in connection with both brick and cobbles. The effect of this is singularly interesting both in color and form for the warm purplish brown of the brick contrasts delightfully with the varying tones of the boulders covered with moss and lichen, and the soft natural grays and browns of the more or less primitive wood construction that is almost invariably used in connection with cobbles gives the general effect of a structure that has almost grown up out of the ground, so perfectly does it sink into the landscape around it.

Stickley and the Craftsman Magazine were especially attracted to the work of the California architects Greene and Greene and the creative use they made of boulders and cobbles, especially in their chimney and fireplace construction. The cobblestone and freestone chimneys that we see in the Westcott houses are but modest reflections of the massive works in Pasadena, but still they are quite attractive and effective.

Bungalow and cottage-style houses with cobblestone porch were popularized in the catalogs and magazines.Already in 1903 Sears offered an ornate - but affordable - cottage with rustic stonework in its catalogue. The Sears house still draws on the more ornate combinations of late 19th-century camp architecture, with rustic adaptations drawn from the traditional traditions of hunting lodges and ski chalets.

The bungalow-style house with cobblestone porch was popularized in the catalogs and magazines. Three different models using cobblestone were illustrated in Bennett’s Small House Catalog of 1920.but it was The Lancaster that is closest to the Craftsman ideal and to Westcott examples.