Stone Barn

Old Stone Studio // c.1820

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One of the most significant buildings in the coastal town of Marion, Massachusetts, is this stone structure, which is said to have had its beginnings as a storage warehouse. Located on Spring Street north of the main village, this building was constructed as early as 1820 as a salt works storage facility, and is an extremely rare surviving storage facility associated with the early 19th century salt industry in town. While many storage facilities we know today are void of architecture and soul, this building looks like it was plucked from the French countryside, thanks to a late 19th century renovation by one of the most prestigious architects in the United States. The salt industry in Massachusetts began on Cape Cod during the Revolution. Salt was a vital necessity for the preservation and curing of fish and meat for sale in this country and overseas. According to local lore, the Old Stone Studio was originally “a place for the conversion of sea water into salt.” Around the Civil War, the building was being used for petroleum processing facility, where kerosene, which had supplanted whale oil as a fuel for home and street lamps, was made and stored. The old stone structure had fallen into disrepair by the 1880s, that was until New York magazine editor, Richard Watson Gilder bought and restored it as a studio for his wife, artist Helena de Kay Gilder. At this point, Marion had become a premier summer colony with large waterfront estates and recreational facilities built for the wealthy in Boston and New York to spend the warmer months. Gilder hired his friend, Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White, to update the warehouse into a studio, adding the multi-light windows, decorative ironwork, and interior details, including the massive stone fireplace with a nine-foot mantle. The fireplace provided a stunning backdrop for guests, including President Grover Cleveland and First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland, who summered in town. Ms. Gilder even painted the First Lady in the studio, and hosted her on occasions. The Old Stone Studio is now a private residence with addition off the rear.

Pettee Stone Barn // 1839

Buildings of New England3 Comments

This historic stone barn in Newton’s Upper Falls village is representative of the ingenuity and resourcefulness of this once thriving nineteenth century mill village. Known as the Pettee Stone Barn, the structure dates to 1839 when Otis Pettee (1795-1853), who managed an iron foundry and machine-works for cotton machinery, built this structure as a warehouse. The barn was said to have been used additionally as a location for raising silkworms by Pettee’s company. After the business closed, the handsome barn was used later in the 19th and early 20th century as a carriage and horse barn for a shipping company and today, is rented to local businesses. Architecturally, the barn is significant for its use of fieldstone walls with door and window surrounds of cut stone and brick. A monitor roof runs the length of the gable ridge and illuminates the interior spaces. The Stone Barn remains remarkably preserved today and is a landmark in the community. 

Frederic Bronson Barn // c.1895

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Not many buildings in Greenfield Hill, Fairfield, Connecticut showcase the neighborhood’s transition from farming community to affluent suburb quite as well as this stone barn turned house on Hillside Road. The stone barn was constructed around c.1895 for Frederic Bronson Jr. (1851-1900) a prominent New York attorney and treasurer of the New York Life and Trust Company which was founded by his grandfather, Isaac Bronson. In about 1892, Frederic demolished his ancestral home and hired architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a new country estate for his family. The house was called Verna and is also located in Fairfield. Today Verna is known best as the Fairfield County Day School. As with many wealthy men of the Gilded Age, Frederic wanted his rural retreat to also work as a gentleman’s farm, where he could have staff farm and tend to livestock on the expansive rolling hills bounded by historic stone walls. He appears to have had this barn built for his livestock shortly after the main house, Verna was completed nearby. Bronson died in 1900 and some of the property was later sold off. This property was acquired by a Charles Stillman in 1941 and it is likely him that converted the barn into a charming residence.

Tudor Barn // c.1845

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Built in the 1840’s as a carriage barn, and once attached to a nearby mansion now gone, this barn sits near the eastern shores of Spot Pond, a major feature in the Middlesex Fells Reservation, just north of Boston. The barn sits in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and was a part of Frederic Tudor’s rural estate out in the “country”. Frederic Tudor is best known as Boston’s “Ice King”, he was the founder of the Tudor Ice Company and a pioneer of the international ice trade in the early 19th century. He made a fortune shipping ice cut from New England ponds to ports in the Caribbean, Europe, and as far away as India and Hong Kong. After the turn of the 20th century, many of the buildings surrounding Spot Pond were razed as to secure the watershed, protecting the surrounding town’s drinking water. Frederic Tudors large estate was razed, but the barn survived. Years of deferred maintenance and lack of preservation by the late 1990’s made the old barn threatened with demolition. This was exacerbated by a fire damaging the roof and in 2003, a wall collapsed. Local preservationists rallied together to acquire funding (both private and public grants) to restore the building. It remains a highlight on the walks around Spot Pond and Middlesex Fells Reservation, and is a visual link to the earlier days in what was once remote “Boston”.