Rosslyn Dock House & Crystal Spring Farm, aka Hayward House (Photo via Todd Goff)
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from friend and Essex neighbor, Todd Goff with a download link to that spectacular photograph above portraying an early 1900s panorama of the Essex waterfront. Actually, the image above has been shrunk down from a 9″ wide original and web optimized to accelerate load time (and avoid breaking the internet!) The photo requires squinting to blaze through the blur, but I’ll include a couple of blown up details below to help you zoom in. I’m working with Photoshop to optimize a higher definition version of this unique northward glance from Begg’s Point across was once known as Blood’s Bay. In addition to the rare capture of Rosslyn’s dock house / boathouse and Crystal Spring Farm (aka Hayward House) — BOTH visible with virtually everything else obscured by trees — the close up offers a remarkably clear view of the dock house gangway and outer pier access.
Blood’s Bay Waterfront
Todd consistently unearths remarkable vintage and historic images of Essex. Any time a message arrives from him my heart skips a beat in anticipation of what new find he might be passing along. This unique Essex waterfront view that he sent to me and to Willie Wilcox, owner-restorer of Crystal Spring Farm, raised the bar considerably!
Here’s the gist from Todd’s January 23 and 28 messages.
I came across this 3×9” print today. Shows what was on the Rosslyn Redux image from a different angle and the Hayward House. It is actually a 400mb file with great details… It was in a box of things from Mom related to Essex. No details other than it appears like silver and black on the print vs black and white. Must be some kind of printing technique. I noticed the “arch bridge” railing frame to your dock was similar to one image you posted recently. I had not seen that detail before. Both show some monolithic black block near sandy point or Cross’. I have no idea what that was. It was neat to see the view of Willy’s/Hayward’s too. — Todd Goff
Thank. You. Todd. This is on your best finds yet!
Rosslyn Dock House
Here’s the image of the dock house with an “arch bridge” railing frame that Todd’s referring to. (Note that this building has been referred to as both a dock house and a boathouse, but the current images appear to emphasize its construction atop a pier projecting out into the lake, so for the sake of clarity I will use the term “dock house” exclusively in this post.)
Dock House with Coal Bin on Pier (Antique Postcard)
The section between the two piers (the western pier with dock house and the eastern pier with coal bin) are conjoined by what does indeed resemble a bridge or suspended gangway. Although it’s worth noting that the truss construction actually differs slightly in the two historic photographs. In the sepia image I published on January 19, 2023 in my “Historic Rehabilitation” post the not insignificant span between the two piers is supported with symmetrical bracing akin to inverted truss-like brackets or corbels. In Todd’s photograph the span appears to be supported with a more conventional “bowstring” truss, supplemented with a pair of vertical pilings underneath the bridge / gangway.
The closeup below better illustrates what I’m describing.
Rosslyn Dock House (Photo via Todd Goff)
In Todd’s photo it also appear that the gangway from shore to the dock house is suspended rather than the solid structure we inherited. Each new twist and turn makes me wonder, makes me dig deeper into our mushrooming collection of historic images. Slowly building a “time machine”… 😉
And ruminating on the pros and cons of how best to support the span in the outer gangway (especially given the challenges posed by winter ice and spring ice flows when the water lever is far higher), I found myself looking back at Old Stump bridge to see what sort of structural accommodations were used in that construction. And, as I drift from the suspended bridge in front of the dock house, I also note that Rosslyn’s bathhouse is very much visible just north of the dock house. Do you remember that?
Crystal Spring Farm
I share Todd’s intrigue with the open southerly view from Hayward House (aka Crystal Spring Farm) since that view is dramatically different today. In addition to the built environment changing, reforestation throughout this area of Essex has dramatically altered many of the historic images from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Here is a close up detail of Crystal Spring Farm.
Crystal Spring Farm, aka Hayward House (Photo via Todd Goff)
It’s notable what a handsome facade the property’s southern elevation affords, now concealed from the public viewshed. The perfectly cropped view of St. Joseph’s Church (see feature on Essex community blog) also stands in stark contrast to our contemporary waterfront, as does the notable block at right in this blowup. It appears to be a large bunker of some sort. I share Todd’s curiosity. Perhaps sharing this image will enable us to crowdsource this mystery?
Rosslyn boathouse at sunrise (Digital doodle: virtualDavis)
“Coffee? You don’t even drink coffee,” Susan said.
“I know. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But I’m walking through Rosslyn early in the morning with a steaming cup of coffee…”
I hadn’t drunk coffee since college, and I’d obviously never wandered around Rosslyn at the crack of dawn either. But I kept having this vision.
“It’s just barely sunrise. You’re still sleeping. I’m up, drifting from room-to-room, slowly, haltingly, studying the way the sunlight illuminates each room. And those green walls in the parlor? They vibrate in the morning light, like new maple leaves in the springtime.”
I described the shaft of sunlight stretching across the workshop floor. I described the calm, the quiet except for an occasional creaky floorboard. I described Tasha, our Labrador Retriever, padding along with me, anxious for breakfast.
“Tasha sighs and lies down each time I stop. And I stop a lot… to watch the morning unfolding, to watch the sunlight shimmering on the rippled lake, to watch the boathouse clapboards glowing yellow orange for a few minutes as the sun rises above the Green Mountains.”
“I was imagining the boathouse too,” Susan said. “Not like today, but like it was ours, like we lived at Rosslyn. I was thinking, the boathouse’s just begging for a hammock. Don’t you think? A big, two-person hammock in the open-air part, under the roof. Can you imagine lying in a hammock in the evening, listening to the waves?” Susan paused, lost in the idea. “And think of the dinner parties,” she continued. “A table set for four. White linens and candles and sheer curtains billowing in the breeze…”
Swapping December for January signals that we’re four months into Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation which, in turn, means that I’m four months overdue for a look at (or perhaps the first of several looks at) my love of barns. Truth be told, I’m a bit of a barnophile. And, given my weakness for wabi-sabi, I’m especially keen on bygone barns.
Backcountry Bygone Barns (Source: Geo Davis)
By “bygone barns” I’m conjuring an entire class of rural farm and utility buildings belonging to an earlier time. Think of a barn vernacular with classic lines, practical design, form following function, wearing age and even obsolescence with pride,… I’m even smitten with buildings so dilapidated that they’ve been reduced to their skeletal essence by the forces of nature. Sunlight, moonlight, weather, wildlife, and vegetation permeate these carcasses. The sparse assembly of materials — beaten by the elements for more years than anyone alive can definitively claim to know — endure erect, monumental, lavishly adorned with forgotten functions and the patina of passing time.
My romantic heart and my wabi-sabi aesthetic cling conspiratorially to the possibility of resuscitating, reimagining, and repurposing. Meanwhile the rights of rewilding attempt to discipline my disposition; I ache for the victory of natural forces over human will, the return of these materials to the earth. This tension between between revitalizing and rewilding winds my wonder and perpetuates my desire.
Backcountry Barns Haiku
Time torn, weatherworn
byways by backcountry barns.
Watercolor skies.
(Source: Backcountry Barns)
It’s not uncommon for me to interrupt a bike ride in sight of a bygone barn, ostensibly to make a photograph (which I do), but often I’m still standing ten minutes, fifteen minutes later, still observing, often lost in a sort of contemplative gaze.
[Bygone] barn architecture, especially minimalist barns, patinated with weather and time, speaks to something practically primordial in me. My earliest hope when looking for North Country properties was to convert an old barn into a home. I looked at lots of backcountry barns, but I never made a match. (Source: Backcountry Barns)
Inevitably this lead us to farms, mostly no longer actively being farmed, vestiges of an early time, and earlier lifestyle.
I began looking at forgotten farms, bygone barns, meandering stone walls hemming in overgrown fields… (Source: Leaping & Untethering)
Sagging Bygone Barn (Photo: Geo Davis)
It was a romantic errand that exposed Susan and me to many fascinating properties.
Susan… shared my dream of an old farmhouse surrounded by open meadows with views and sunlight. She liked barns and was even receptive to my occasional flights of fancy about converting an old barn into a home. (Source: The Hunt for a Perfect House)
But the bygone barns in my mind and those we visited were failing to align.
Although a farm on the lake (especially an old barn that could be reimagined as a home) was proving an impossible ambition, our imaginations were piqued on several occasions…
A handsome slate roofed barn, still square after a century or more standing at the crest of an immense field just south of Westport, beguiled me for a while. I imagined a lofty open plan; exposed, rough hewn beams; magnificent views in all directions. But the seller was unable or unwilling to subdivide the field and barn from a much larger farm which included additional fields, an immense dairy barn, various other building for hay and equipment storage, a “pond” for storing cow manure and a large square farmhouse with cupola. And in the end it was a relief to Susan, because, after all, this magnificent barn did not stand on the shores of Lake Champlain. (Source: The Hunt for a Perfect House)
Gradually our search evolved. And shifted.
Some day I still hope to explore the barn vernacular, perhaps in a modern and somewhat interpretive way. (Source: Backcountry Barns)
I wrote that last sentence about a year and a half ago. And, while it’s still 100% accurate, I’m also allowing this curious quest to inspire the icehouse rehab which is, after all, a bygone barn, albeit a diminutive one, purpose built for storing ice. Watching the building get stripped back to its oldest and boldest elements, honoring the legacy of a functionally perfect building that has outlived its functional utility, searching for the simplest and purest path forward, restraining the instinct to disguise the building’s age, and summoning the bygone barn’s story from the dusty darkness. It would not be absurd to compare this last four month’s endeavor to a protracted meditation.
In reworking my notes for this post — notes is too vague; perhaps field notes is closer, or travelogue — I come across a hastily jotted note.
Renovation or Story?!? (Photo: Geo Davis)
I’d written the question to myself as if posed by another, perhaps one of the many capable collaborators on this project. I don’t recall when or why I wrote this, nor am I certain why this seemingly frustrated inquiry was posed in this way. It’s as if I imagined Pam or Hroth or someone else, exasperated, almost pleading to simplify the journey, our journey, to focus fully (and exclusively) on rehabilitation of this bygone barn.
What’s more important, the renovation or your damned story?!?
I’m only about halfway through these notes, but this feels like the right place to pause. I’ll continue this reflection tomorrow, but for now I’ll prime the contemplative pump with an intriguing short film by Matt McFarling called “Bygone Barns” that the inimitable Katie Shepard discovered while helping me sort my jumbled thoughts.
Yesterday I meditated a minute on bygone barns. Ancient farm buildings. Tempered by time, tempted by gravity, and sowbacked beneath the burdens of generations, these rugged utility structures retain (and sometimes gain) a minimalist elegance long after design and construction and use fade into history. My meditation was meandering and inconclusive. In part this was due to the wandering wonder these timeworn buildings inspire in me. And in part it was because my observations are still evolving and inconclusive. I’m not a barn expert, an agricultural architecture preservationist, or even a particularly astute student of barns and farms. But I am a barnophile.
a person with a fondness for structures used to house livestock, grain, etc.
an admirer and/or collector of agricultural outbuildings
Aside from the hubris I’ve just exercised in birthing this barnophile definition, I’m generally inclined to a humbler and less presumptuous relationship with the mostly agrarian artifacts we categorize as barns.
[As an unabashed barnophile with a] weakness for wabi-sabi, I’m especially keen on bygone barns.
By “bygone barns” I’m conjuring an entire class of rural farm and utility buildings belonging to an earlier time. Classic lines, practical design, form following function, wearing age and even obsolescence with pride,… I’m even smitten with buildings so dilapidated that they’ve been reduced to their skeletal essence by the forces of nature. Sunlight, moonlight, weather, wildlife, and vegetation permeate these carcasses. The sparse assembly of materials — beaten by the elements for more years than anyone alive can definitively claim to know — endure erect, monumental, lavishly adorned with forgotten functions and the patina of passing time. (Source: Bygone Barns)
Barn Vernacular (Source: Geo Davis)
But why do forgotten farm buildings enchant me? What reason lurks beneath the tidy text, what foundation for my unusual fascination with these vestiges of a simpler, more local, perhaps even a slower time? Katie Shepard, so very rarely off target, suggests this childhood reminiscence might play into my barn-centric attraction.
My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres in Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later.
Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)
As usual, Katie is right. Woven into the earliest tapestries of my childhood are fond associations with barns. This was undoubtedly further reinforced during our years at Homeport given the inordinate amount of time that my brother, sister and I occupied ourselves in the mysterious old barn complete with ballroom and servant’s quarters long since adapted to other uses. And in my grade school years my siblings and I memorized Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” to recite as a birthday gift for my father. I wish I could take credit for this creative gift giving tradition, but it was my mother, Melissa Davis, who gently guided the three of us each winter to select a poem that would appeal to my father, and then to memorize it during our daily 45-60 minute commute to school each morning and and each evening. Three days after Christmas, on my father’s birthday, we would recite the poem together, and (with one notable exception that’s better reserved for another day) my father enjoyed the gift, leaning back, sometimes closing his eyes, and listening attentively. I think “Fern Hill” may have been the best received, and it became a go-to for family recitation over the years, hypnotically weaving itself into the ethos of our childhood the way a prayer might.
Boundaries of a Barnophile
There comes a time to focus the “philos”, or at least to try and narrow or delineate the subject of interest.
I’ve talked around my fascination with barns, barn architecture, barn construction, and barn aesthetics… But I haven’t outlined the tenets for my enduring intrigue, nor have I articulated exactly what I mean when I refer to a barn vernacular. It’s time to draft at least a preliminary look at my love of barns. […]
In the vernacular vocabulary of quintessentially North American architecture, the barn endures as a practical yet proud icon of rural living. […]
Although my fascination with barn vernacular isn’t limited to Yankee barns, it is my most consistent and encompassing vision.(Source: Toward a Barn Vernacular)
In other words, I’m inclined toward classic geometry, roofs steep enough to shed water and snow (with a particular fondness for 9:12 pitch), and unembellished details. And I will always favor bygone barns to new construction. The quality of workmanship and materials stands out, but so too does the story stretching across decades, even centuries.
I consider aging utility buildings — barns, boathouses, icehouses, sugarshacks, etc. — to be at least as intriguing as old houses. More sometimes. So many relics, unselfconscious, candid. Less penchant for concealing, fewer makeovers, more concurrently present years and lives. Sometimes it’s the old, banged up subjects and objects that look the best. Thank goodness for that! (Source: Horse Stall Haiku)
And what of other barn-like buildings, rural utility buildings designed and constructed after the same manner?
School Bus Stop Ahead (Photo: virtualDavis)
They appeal to me as well. In fact, the agricultural DNA isn’t essential to me at all. I suppose I’m somewhat “barn androgynous”, equally smitten with similarly origined buildings even if they’ve never seen a horse, cow, chicken, pig, or hay bale.
That said, it’s worth acknowledging that the architecture of New England barns, Yankee barns, and even — drifting a little further southeast — tobacco barns are especially appealing to me. And if it’s fair to assume that my affinity is at least partly nostalgia-driven, then it’s probably worth adding another influence the those sited above. Four year of boarding school in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts definitely instilled in me an appreciation for early colonial building, and there were a couple of barns that still loom proud in my memory.
Beyond Boundaries
Although I wish I could gather these strings and call it caput, I must further complicate the boundaries I’ve endeavored to delineate above.
While there’s something alluring about the volume and the efficiency of barns, the unpretentious posture with no attempt to conceal functions or mechanism, scale isn’t essential. The small corn crib above, for example, intoxicates my imagination nearly as much as the grand barn at the top of this post.
Baked into my identity as a barnophile, into this somewhat esoteric aesthetic and philosophical appetite, is a tendency to stretch my definition of barns to include other similar outbuildings.
While Rosslyn didn’t fit squarely into the vision of an old farm or a collection of dilapidated barns that I originally was hunting for, this stately home does have three remarkable outbuildings, all three of which lured me as much as the house. In fact, well before we completed our top-to-bottom rehabilitation of the home, we tackled the icehouse, boathouse, and carriage barn. All of them were on the brink. Actually much of the house was as well. But just as we committed to salvaging the home, returning it to its former grandeur, we likewise undertook laborious, challenging efforts to salve the icehouse, boathouse, and carriage barn. All buildings were dilapidated, but the icehouse and boathouse were both succumbing to the omnipresent challenges of weather and neglect.
I’ve posted plenty in the past about Rosslyn’s boathouse, the lakeside folly that beckoned to us from the beginning. For a whimsical mind like my own, smitten with boating adventures — real and imagined — becoming irreversibly enchanted with our small dock house protruding out into Lake Champlain was pretty much inevitable. Although its mission has always been tied to watery locomotion, it is for all practical purposes a sort of barn. A diminutive lakeside barn purpose-built for boating. A utility outbuilding conceived and specifically confected to serve the Kestrel just over a century and a quarter ago.
And Rosslyn’s icehouse, occupying much of my attention these last few months as we cartwheel through an ambitious rehabilitation and adaptive reuse project, is likewise a barn. We often refer to the carriage barn and icehouse, standing as they do side-by-side, as “the barns”. As a utility building designed to complement the architecture of the carriage barn and home, it was nevertheless first and foremost a utility building constructed to support the residents with year round cooling at a time when refrigeration did not yet exist. It was an ice barn!
And so you see perhaps the elasticity of my identity as a barnophile. A barn might not immediately appear to be a barn. But the rudiments, the purpose, and likely the longevity have profited from the heritage of barn building. And this, my friends strikes me as the right place to wrap up. If this this post was intended as a more intimate look at the romance of bygone barns, those that have endured a looong time and even those no longer viable, then I’ve covered my bases. And too, I’ve revisited my original hope of locating an old barn to convert into a home, a hope that has not altogether faded away.
In fact, Susan and I have been for a few years brainstorming a barn-inspired for the future, our future, that just might begin to emerge in the years ahead. Stay tuned…
A parting glimpse of the boathouse blurred beyond veil of soggy snowflakes. Southwestern sirens are calling me away — by ferry, airplane and rental jalopy — so I leave the homestead in the able care of my bride and my dog for a few days. I’m willing deep drifts of powdery snow upon my return!
By the way, if “snow falling on cedar…” rings a bell, there’s a reason why: an amazing novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson. Read it. You won’t regret it. But don’t waste too much time trying to decipher the similarity between the title I used for this snapshot and Guterson’s. No hidden meaning. Just a descriptive reference to Rosslyn’s boathouse roof which received a new shingle roof a couple of summers ago.
Revisiting my mid-March boathouse illustration as a black and white watercolor. Aaahhh… the magic of digital! (Source: Geo Davis)
Back on March 28, 2022 I shared a whimsical boathouse illustration including some of my creation process. At the time I conceived of the exercise as a way to exercise my rudimentary watercolor abilities while enticing the universe to hasten the spring-to-summer transition. Verdict is out on whether or not my efforts wooed the universe. But the practice was a pleasure, and I’m resolving to make time for more watercolor illustrations this autumn and winter.
You can click the back/forward arrows in the original Instagram post below to see some of the pre-finished phases.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbqit9bOz6P/
B&W vs. Color Boathouse Illustration
So why revisit this potently pigmented image with achromatic ambitions?
I’ve been experimenting for about a decade with black and white as a visual storytelling medium (carpemidlife.com and @carpemidlife). It’s part of a larger project stretching my comfort with creative risk — in poetry, essay, and storytelling and in photographs, collage, illustration, mixed media mashups, and even a little bit of video — as a way to repurpose midlife malaise into midlife motivation. One of the early decisions I made for focusing and structuring the project was restricting all image-making (and writing, for that matter) to black and white. We live in an era of magnificent digital imaging, stunning verisimilitude, oversaturated colors, and a panoply of intelligent filters, algorithms, etc. to augment reality.
Make no mistake. I’m profoundly grateful to experience these magnificent modern advances in image making, but I find myself missing the granularity and character of the analog world. I explore this more at Carpe Midlife if provoked your curiosity. If not, I’ll return to the present context.
So often in our sweet sixteen years as the stewards of Rosslyn, I’m drawn to the juxtaposition of old and new. In many respects rehabilitating Rosslyn and making our life here has blurred past, present, and future. History is alive. And similarly much of our quotidian existence is timeless. There’s a whimsical simultaneity of lives and times that infiltrates our lakeside lifestyle. And rather than resist it, I often find it enriching, even entertaining. And so I’ve come to playfully experiment, sometimes renovating that which is vintage or antique. Others times I accelerate aging. Or agelessness. And sometimes these shifts in perspective yield surprising, often refreshing new experiences.
I was curious to see what might happen by repurposing a colorful new illustration as a colorless facsimile. Stripping away the cheerful colors, what remains? Is it an anemic phantom image? Does the emphasis change? The feeling?
In my opinion there’s a world of difference between what I notice visually and what I feel internally in response to the black and white boathouse illustration at the top of this page and the color-soaked original below. What do you think?
Original boathouse illustration watercolored cheerfully in hopes of hastening grey spring into technicolor summer! (Source: Geo Davis)
From Boathouse-lust to Wonder-lust
If you’re a longtime reader and you’re detecting a subtle shift in some of these recent blog and social media posts, you’re not wrong. You’re perceptive.
There is a shift underway. Like so many whose views and lifestyles have evolved over the last couple of years — pandemic year and post-pandemic year (if we’re bold enough to assume the latter) — Susan and I have new stories to share about Rosslyn. We’re navigating a liminal space that is still unfurling it’s mysteries for us. As we find our way, I’ll share the experience. With a little luck, we will share the experience.
But for now, I just want to acknowledge that this period of introspection and reflection and significant transition for us is undoubtedly woven into posts like this one. Sometimes familiarity and comfort are exactly what we need. And sometimes wondering and wandering away from the familiar and the comfortable can be just as important.
Architect (and high school classmate) Ed Pais visits Rosslyn’s boathouse to help me troubleshoot post-flood remediation.
Edward Pais was a classmate of mine at Deerfield Academy from 1986 to 1990, and he now practices architecture in Burlington, Vermont. Despite being out of touch for more than two decades we recently reconnected via Facebook. Ed joined the Rosslyn Redux Facebook page and he’s offered ongoing feedback about our boathouse during the Lake Champlain flooding. Recently he offered to come over and take a look. Needless to say, I eagerly accepted his offer.
We started out with a delicious lunch at Essex Provisions overlooking the still flooded marinas, then headed back to Rosslyn to take a look at the boathouse.
Ed’s reaction was encouraging, and despite pushing him into engineering territory a couple of times, I mostly listened and took mental notes. He reminded me that he’s an architect and not an engineer, but repeatedly expressed his confidence in the work of Engineering Ventures in Burlington. Paul Hobbs who handled most of the structural engineering for the boathouse renovation repeatedly impressed with his keen mind, so Ed’s confidence was not misplaced. That said, I do intend to follow up with Hobbs and/or Jeffords Steel to ascertain whether or not the beams which support the suspended pier were fabricated out of COR-TEN or a similar weather resistant steel.
Ed’s recommendation to quickly and aggressively treat the mold situation was highlighted in a follow-up message after his visit. He suggested that we should remove the baseboards to inspect for mold. He linked me to helpful information “Cleaning Mold on Wood” that confirms that we’ve been remediating the post-flood mold situation appropriately.
The molds seen on lumber are largely a collection of fungal spores on the surface of the wood. Wet wiping and scrubbing the lumber will remove the mold. But simply wiping the wood can release spores into the surrounding air. A better approach is to gently spray or wet down the mold prior to removal.
There are a number of products on the market, ranging from common bleach to commercial mildewcides, which are promoted for cleaning mold from wood. However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests using a mild detergent and water for most mold clean up. The EPA recommends wet vacuuming the area, wiping or scrubbing the mold with detergent and water and, after drying, vacuuming with a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuum.
Huge thanks, Ed, for taking the time to coach me through the latest challenge! I really appreciate it.
After De’s departure my parents joined us for dinner. They’ve just returned to the Adirondacks from Chicago for the summer, so grilling and dining al fresco seemed like the perfect way to launch their summer. While showing my mother the recovering boathouse, I asked if she remembered Ed Pais from Deerfield. She did! She recounted a story that I’d never known. My brother, two years younger than I, had come to Deerfield for his admissions interview. Although he already knew his way around because he had visited me frequently, he decided to take the admissions office campus tour anyway. His tour guide was Ed Pais! When we got back to the house I asked my father if he remembered Ed Pais, and he immediately told me the same story! Ed, must have made quite an impression…
Rosslyn’s boathouse was flooded and severely damaged in 1983. (Source: Dianne Lansing)
You may have noticed that my blog posts are sporadic. Sometimes a post almost writes itself, exploding into the blogosphere as if channeled from the universe itself. Other times lengthy lapses betray my distracted dithering. Today’s soggy sentiments fall into the latter category.
Nevertheless, it’s a shame that more than two years have come and gone since Essex neighbor and friend Dianne Lansing sent me that sorrowful photograph of our boathouse succumbing to Lake Champlain‘s bullying. Shame on me!
Here are a few excerpts from my exchange with Dianne during the 2015 winter/spring.
Dianne Lansing: All those mallards are hoping you will turn on your bubbler as the ice is closing in on them and they really don’t want to leave. I was surprised to find them in my yard under the oak tree eating acorns a couple of afternoons. Never knew that could be part of their diet…
Geo Davis: What a wonderful (and horrifying) photograph of Rosslyn’s boathouse! Thank you for digging it up and passing it along. Did you take the photograph? Do you recollect the back story? Normal spring flooding? Is this what prompted George McNutly’s mid-1980s boathouse rebuild (when LCT’s crane barge, Miss Piggy) assisted?
Dianne Lansing: Glad you liked the photo… I don’t know if I took the photo or David [Dianne’s husband, David Lansing] did. Probably me but I don’t remember any of it. Don’t recall seeing the boat house in such disrepair. I’m pretty sure, however, that it was ‘normal’ spring flooding as I don’t recall any other event that would have caused the roof to collapse. I’m glad you have restored it to its former glory…
Geo Davis: Thank you! A wonderful gift and ominous warning to always act as responsible stewards of that quirky little building. I’ll credit both of you, and we’ll let posterity sort it out.
While it pains me to see Rosslyn boathouse underwater (and collapsing!), it’s a reminder that we’ve made some headway over the last eleven years. There’s never any guarantee, and I’m well aware that flooding could bring the pretty boathouse to her knees once again. But I’m optimistic. After all, it beats worrying!
Thanks again, Dianne, for this bittersweet illustration of Rosslyn boathouse’s wet-dry-wet-dry heritage. Fingers crossed that we won’t repeat history any time soon.
Florence Sherwood, Phil Keuhlen, and Chuck Sherwood at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
One of the great joys in owning Rosslyn these last 15 years (hard to believe it’s been a decade and a half since we purchased our Essex home from Elizabeth and George McNulty!) has been discovering the memorabilia of those who’ve come before us. So many Rosslyn memories, stories, and artifacts. Today I’d like to introduce you to the Keuhlen family who vacationed at the Sherwood Inn in August 1951.
Almost three years ago I was contacted by Phillip Keuhlen via the Rosslyn Redux page on Facebook. The impetus for his outreach was contextualizing photographs from a family vacation in Essex many decades ago. I was immeasurably grateful for the opportunity to peer into Rosslyn’s past when the property was operated as the Sherwood Inn. As happens remarkably often in this quirky existence, Phil and I uncovered a handful of additional life overlaps, the sharing of which has evolved into a penpal friendship of sorts.
I asked Phil recently to remind me how we had initially connected.
As for how we came to be in correspondence, it started with a group of photos sent to me from my Mom’s estate, and thinking I might provide some context for my children if they were ever of interest to them.
The breadcrumbs lined up thus:
Internet search on “Sherwood Inn”… much too broad… you would be surprised at the number!
From there to a link to your Rosslyn Redux website
Finally to initial contact via messenger after following link to your FB page…
Digital breadcrumbs for a fortuitous connection across an historic and geographic divide. Oh, brave new world!
Tantalizing Time Capsules
What is it about time capsules, especially serendipitous time capsules? Is it the wink of familiarity across decades, despite initial dissimilarities? Is there just something intrinsically compelling about time-hazed mirrors and patinated backstories? Something irresistibly intriguing about glimpsing earlier iterations of our realities?
I can’t answer these questions, but I suspect that there’s something universal in the fascination I experience when permitted to time travel backward into Rosslyn’s history. My earnest hunch, squinting eyes, and furrowed brow – perhaps the subtle conceits of an amateur sleuth – and my fluttering pulse are familiar and welcome as I study the black and white images shared by a man who lives on the other side of the country, a man I’ve never actually met in person, a man who has generously shared a nostalgic cache of personal artifacts that just happen to illuminate Rosslyn’s blurry past, a sneak peek into an earlier chapter of the property we’ve been revitalizing for years.
In that first photograph above Phil Keuhlen as a youngster is flanked by his proud parents. They’re kneeling in front of a porch that adorned Rosslyn’s East facade for many years. At first the brick home as we know it today isn’t recognizable to me. And then it is. A flash of familiarity. The entrance door sidelights with those delicate, curved mullions are unmistakable.
Florence Sherwood, Phil Keuhlen, and Chuck Sherwood at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
They are better visible in the photograph above as well, however the center transom light (over the door) appears to have been altered at some point.
Adding to my good fortune, Phil has filled in details that his family photographs leave out.
Here are the Sherwood Inn photos I promised… All were taken in August 1951. We lived in Bloomfield, NJ at the time. The little guy in the photos is me at 2 weeks shy of my 2nd birthday. Wish I could offer more background, but both of my folks have passed and the first of my siblings had not joined us yet, so there is no one else left to ask. My only recollection of that vacation is a vague memory of falling backwards and getting briefly stuck between a bench and a bulkhead on a ferry trip across Lake Champlain! Look closely at the one whose file title includes “Note Sign” and you will see a sign for Sherwood Inn in the background. It says there were cabins available… not sure if that is news to you. There is also one that is very blurry… that I included because it shows that there used to be an extension well beyond your boathouse. The names of Florence & Chuck Sherwood, staff member Jean and guest/daughter(?) Judy are all retrieved from my Mom’s contemporaneous inscriptions on the back of the photos.
There’s plenty to muse and chuckle over in Phil’s message, but two threads especially strike me.
Let’s start with Phil’s mother’s “contemporaneous inscriptions on the back of the photos”. The photographs are opulent time capsules in and of themselves. They instantly offer a potent visual connection across the decades, an accessible and inviting bridge between now and then. The presence of Phil, his parents, and several others in the photographs contributes to the allure. These are not mere architectural artifacts. They are intimate snapshots of love and laughter and memories-in-the-making in the very same yard, beach, buildings where we love and laugh and make memories seventy years later. There’s a relevance and resonance that functions like a time machine, embracing two disconnected slivers of time so that they overlap for a moment.
And that is just a reaction to the time tarnished images. The inscriptions that Phil refers to remind me of the messages memorialized on the back sides of vintage postcards I collect.
Although I remain somewhat conflicted whether or not it’s appropriate to share the messages from vintage and antique postcards, I tend toward a quasi-archeological justification (unless the content is obviously sensitive or inappropriate). (Source: Sherwood Inn Landing on Lake Champlain – Rosslyn Redux)
From time to time these words illuminate the image. Time capsules in and of themselves, these quickly scrawled artifacts can enrich and amplify the value of the photographs. This is certainly the case with the notes recorded by Phil’s mother.
I’m especially intrigued to see mention of Florence and Chuck Sherwood. Although I’ve been fortunate in amassing many artifacts from the days that Rosslyn served as the Sherwood Inn, I’m thin on information about this couple. And the staff member smiling in the photos below, who is she? Might she be identifiable? Is she perhaps still a member of our Essex community?
Phil Keuhlen with Jean (staff) at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
Jean, Sherwood Inn staff, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
And Phil’s young companion, Judy, will she remain a mystery? Or perhaps a dash of crowd research will help us to identify her as well.
Phil Keuhlen and Judy at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
Phil Keuhlen and Judy at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
What gratitude I feel to Phil (and to Phil’s mother) for recording and sharing these moments. And yet, I can’t help but repeat thoughts from an earlier post about a vintage photograph.
This faded photograph kindles nostalgia and wonder, revealing a glimpse into the history of Rosslyn… while dangling further mysteries to compell me deeper into the narrative of our home. Kindred sleuths are welcome! (Source: Rosslyn Boathouse, circa 1907 – Rosslyn Redux)
Phil Keuhlen at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
As for the second thread I’d like to revisit, Phil mentions the Sherwood Inn sign in the photograph above.
It says there were cabins available… not sure if that is news to you.
While the presence of cabins or cottages at the Sherwood Inn is known to us, this is a reminder that we’ve never managed to locate any record (photograph, title, etc.) that precisely captures the locations or looks of these cabins. I’d like to. I’m hoping that somebody may have snapped a photograph once upon a time.
Rosslyn Boathouse
As I’ve mentioned time and again since I began sharing this story over a decade ago, it was Rosslyn’s boathouse with which I was initially smitten. It’s my first and enduring passion when it comes to this property. So, needless to say, Phil’s mother’s photographs of the boathouse are especially captivating for me.
Keuhlen Family at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
Although salvaging and rehabilitating this architectural folly was an epic project, it’s immensely satisfying to see that there are so few differences between today’s pier, dock house, and gangway (to shore) and their earlier iteration in the photograph. Preserving this +/-125 year old Essex monument is a perennial challenge. Engineering and construction location hurdles for “a boathouse that was one ice flow away from a watery grave” were not insignificant. And then there was the ahistoric flooding. Not the 1983 flood which took place more than two decades prior to our ownership. The 2011 flood, on the other hand, visited weeks upon weeks of high water upon us immediately after we had completed the boathouse’s lengthy renovation.
The second Keuhlen family photo of Rosslyn’s boathouse was taken when the photographer turned slightly more eastward, away from the beach and toward Vermont.
There is also one that is very blurry… that I included because it shows that there used to be an extension well beyond your boathouse.
Phil’s note touches on one of the notable differences with Rosslyn’s 21st century boathouse. Although a portion of the cantilevered section at the end of the boathouse remains, the extensive pier that continued eastward through the 1990s is no longer extant. Ruins of the old stone and timber crib dock remain however, and they’re visible at low water (usually August to September or October). An ice flow approximately a decade prior to our purchase effectively erased what at one time more than doubled the pier’s extension into Lake Champlain. A studious eye can spy the original pier (and the coal bunker built atop it) in these posts: “Kestrel 1892 Steam Yacht in Essex” and “Rosslyn Boathouse, circa 1907“.
Phil Keuhlen at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
Toward a Poetics of Place
I mentioned at the opening to this post that Phil and I have discovered several uncanny life coincidences. While some (i.e. New Mexico parallels) aren’t germane in this blog post, others are. It turns out that Phil and my wife, Susan, grew up — albeit a generation apart — within walking distance from one another. And his family was similarly drawn to old home rehabilitation.
Funny how small the world can be, huh? My folks restored an old Victorian house in Glen Ridge, the little town between Montclair & Bloomfield… When they took possession, there was a (leaky) slate roof, a well in the attached shed, a coal fired boiler, an earthen floor in the basement, some remnants of lead piping and gas lighting. I learned a lot watching and helping with that rolling renovation… largely an early lesson in blowing cost and schedule. I used to joke with my parents that I would have been a genius if I hadn’t ingested all the dust from sanding and scraping lead based paint in that house as a youngster! […] My folks lived in that old home from 1954 until they moved to Colorado in 1970, and subsequent owners have been generous in allowing my family occasional walks down memory lane there. It sounds like Rosslyn has the same attraction of fond associations for many in Essex. I explored your site some more and found the link to the article in OHJ. Your restoration is simply stunning.
I want to close by telling you how much I have enjoyed your blog. I lived in Saratoga Springs in ’72-’73 and enjoyed exploring up your way every chance I got (ok… when not casting on the Battenkill or Ausable). You write evocatively about a special part of this beautiful country and the history that is integral to a sense of place and community.
I too want to close by telling Phil Keuhlen how much I have enjoyed these photographs and our communications, conversations sometimes rooted in a shared experience of the Sherwood Inn / Rosslyn and other times meandering far afield. It has brought me immense satisfaction journeying into this 1951 time capsule through the memories and artifacts of a stranger-turned-friend. And I am humbled once again with the proof that a sense of place and community is the heart and soul of Rosslyn Redux. I have approached this topic tangentially for years, wondering and wandering toward a better understanding of what defines our Rosslyn experience; what bound us so passionately to this property from our first encounter; and what after all are home, home-ness, homing?
In the early days of this blog I suspected our inside-out rehabilitation story might offer something useful — even practical — to others pursuing similar adventures. Perhaps this is still sometimes the case. But I’ve mostly migrated from prescriptive to curious. Wonder has long since eclipsed practical. Still coalescing is what I’ve come to see as a poetics of place.
With that somewhat nebulous prognostication, I close this pre-Thanksgiving post with heartfelt appreciation to Phil and his late mother. Your gift of memory and family artifacts are now woven inextricably into the Rosslyn narrative. Given the overalled youngster’s self assurance in this final photograph below, it seems almost inevitable that his grown up self would reach across the country and across the years to reconnect with a place that endures in memory. A place that endures as our home. An auspicious connection for sure! Thank you.
Father and son, Al Keuhlen (r) and Phil Keuhlen (l), at the Sherwood Inn, August 1951 (Source: Phil Keuhlen)
Rosslyn Boathouse, Circa 1907 (Source: vintage postcard with note)
It’s time travel Tuesday! Gazing through the time-hazed patina of this vintage postcard I’m unable to resist the seductive pull of bygone days. Whoosh!
I tumble backward through a sepia wormhole, settling into the first decade of the 20th century. It’s 1907 according to the postal stamp on the rear of this postcard.
Back of Rosslyn Boathouse Postcard
Eleven decades ago a man rowed a boat past Rosslyn’s boathouse, from north to south, through waves larger than ripples and smaller than white caps. It was a sunny day in mid-to-late summer, judging by the shoreline water level. A photographer, hooded beneath a dark cloth focusing hood, leans over behind his wooden tripod, adjusting pleated leather bellows, focus, framing. And just as the rower slumps slightly, pausing to catch his breath, the shutter clicks and the moment is captured.
Perhaps this is the photographer who memorialized Rosslyn boathouse more than a century ago?
Albumen print of a photographer with Conley Folding Camera circa 1900. (Source: Antique and Classic Cameras)
There’s so much to admire in this photograph-turned-postcard. Rosslyn boathouse stands plumb, level, and proud. Probably almost two decades had elapsed since her construction, but she looks like an unrumpled debutante. In fact, aside from the pier, coal bin, and gangway, Rosslyn boathouse looks almost identical today. Remarkable for a structure perched in the flood zone, ice flow zone, etc.
I’m also fond of the sailboat drifting just south of Rosslyn boathouse. Raised a sailor, one my greatest joys in recent years has been owning and sailing a 31′ sloop named Errant that spends the summer moored just slightly north of its forebear recorded in this photo.
Although the pier and the massive coal bin in front of the boathouse are no longer there, they offer a nod to Samuel Keyser‘s stately ship, the Kestrel, for many summers associated with Rosslyn boathouse.
Kestrel at Rosslyn boathouse in Essex, NY
Other intriguing details in this 1907 photo postcard of Rosslyn boathouse include the large white sign mounted on the shore north of the boathouse (what important message adorned this billboard?); the presence of a bathhouse upslope and north of the boathouse (today known as the Green Frog and located on Whallons Bay); and the slightly smudged marginalia referring to a small white skiff pulled ashore slightly south of the boathouse (what is the back story?).
This faded photograph kindles nostalgia and wonder, revealing a glimpse into the history of Rosslyn boathouse while dangling further mysteries to compell me deeper into the narrative of our home. Kindred sleuths are welcome!
My day was made when part-time Essex resident Kelly Youngs-Schmitt shared these fun photographs on Facebook.
Kelly’s a relatively new acquaintance (although her Essex connection is far deeper, longer and more historically significant than my own.) But the Facebook-powered social web and the curiously compelling Essex DNA have brought us together. She participates in the Essex on Lake Champlain community blog, and she generously shares the stories and artifacts from her family’s Essex past.
Essex DNA
That curiously compelling Essex DNA is in no small part responsible for our decision to relocate here. It’s an elusive topic, one that surfaces and then almost as quickly vanishes again throughout this blog. Like Champ, the Lake Champlain monster, who so many have experienced, but few can clearly and concisely explain or even prove… Essex exerts a quasi-mystical pull on many of us. I suppose the closest analogy would be a large, loosely knit family or a college or prep school that becomes woven into your fibers in a way that you can never quite grasp. You meet a cousin or a fellow alum for the first time and instantly you are drawn to one another, despite only the most nominal connection.
Kelly Youngs-Schmitt and James W. Schmitt (Photo: Kelly Youngs-Schmitt)
No, these analogies falter. Because living in Essex, even for a few short weeks at a time, forges far deeper, far more relevant connections. Human connections. Civic connections. Architectural, cultural and historic connections. Environmental connections too, for so much of Essex’s magnetism is derived from its geographically perfect location between Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. Access to nature and outdoor recreation, year-round, often elicits the “playground” analogy to the annoyance of some. Certainly far more than play happens in these sacred waters, valleys, hills and mountains. But it’s true that this environment is a proverbial fountain of youth. It invites childhood energy and dreams and playfulness, so in a sense it is a metaphorical playground.
But I’m wandering far from my starting point which was Kelly’s photographs shown here.
October Wind & Canada Geese
Despite the on-again-off-again Indian Summer that we’ve enjoyed this autumn, there have been some bracing days, many like the one captured in these photos. Picture perfect. Bluebird skies and sunshine. But crisp. And windy. That “selfie” in the canoe captures what I’m describing. Kelly’s husband, James W. Schmitt, is pretty well bundled up!
You can practically hear the Canada Geese clamoring across the sky or settling onto the lake for a deserved rest. This time of year vast flocks of Canada Geese ply the skyways from early morning late into the night. It’s the soundtrack of Essex autumn. And Essex spring. And while no Canada Geese are visible in Kelly’s photos, I know they are there. Honking.
There’s something else that’s not visible in the photos: summer sunshine. In addition to Canada Geese, Technicolor fall foliage, and the Gingko shedding its leaves suddenly, dramatically, another autumn highlight is the changing light. During midsummer these photographs would have been bathed in a considerably stronger, more orange hued light. But as autumn advances, even the brightest daylight shifts toward buttery yellow hues and flatter light. This is particularly apparent in the photograph of Rosslyn and the boathouse. They appear to be off-white. And while some credit for this may be due the camera or phone, the reality is simply that the paint colors appear fainter, less pigmented in the autumn light, even in the early morning when the sun rises up out of Vermont’s Green Mountains displaying its most colorful rays of the day.
Hmmm… A meandering, ruminating post if there ever was one. Time to wrap up!
According to this USGS data for Lake Champlain we’re making history. To be more precise, Lake Champlain’s water levels are making history. That red line at the top of the graph is the historic high water mark set during spring flooding on April 27, 1993. And, as you can see, the blue “actual” recordings have already flickered above the red line a couple of times, though — as I understand it — these figures are not official. Yet. Not sure why. Nor when we’ll know the official water level, but I can assure you that Rosslyn boathouse is now swamped. And the lake is virtually windless and flat… Imagine what this afternoon will look like if/when the wind climbs into the high teens as forecast!
Fortunately there’s less debris floating around the boathouse today. I’m worried that heavy wave action combined with a large floating log or two acting as a battering ram against the boathouse superstructure could be devastating. We’ve witnessed the damage already when the water level was 18″ lower. I’ll head down when the rain abates to take some more images of the drowning boathouse to share with you. Until then, please send dry, windless vibes Essex-way. Thanks!
