At the outset of Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab, I envisioned posting weekly summaries, highlighting the team’s accomplishments in 7-day installments. Noble vision. Ignoble follow through. Among the many overlooked episodes, one especially significant accomplishment stands out: building interior structure for the loft, bathroom, mechanical room, etc. So today, months after construction was completed, I offer you an icehouse framing flashback.
Much belated but nevertheless heartfelt thanks to Pam, Hroth, Matt, and Justin for transforming Tiho’s interior plans into the skeleton around and upon which the reimagined icehouse will take shape. It’s slightly surreal to reflect back from the finish phase. Mere months ago the rudiments were still taking shape. The internal volumes and flow were being defined. The former utility building purpose built to preserve ice cut from Lake Champlain was beginning to resemble the newly relevant work+play space now coming into focus. Adaptive reuse was perhaps no more clearly articulated than this interstitial moment when a voluminous interior was being reconfigured into distinct zones serving distinct functions. Hurrah!
Hyde Gate (aka Rosslyn) in Essex, New York (Illustration by Kate Boesser for All My Houses, By Sally Lesh)
Reinvention is woven intricately, inextricably into Rosslyn’s DNA. This home, this property, this history endure some two hundred years (and more) after W.D. Ross first built his home on the Champlain Valley’s fertile shore in no small part because of this legacy of renewal. It’s as if Rosslyn, in addition to historic buildings and generous grounds, is a nimble spirit distinguished by her imagination, her reimagination, a force that fuels her adaptability.
Every project is an opportunity to learn, to figure out problems and challenges, to invent and reinvent. — David Rockwell
Rosslyn is protean, evolving again and again, morphing and adapting, fulfilling diverse functions across two centuries. She is perhaps best defined by this tradition of perennial reinvention and renewal.
Sherwood Inn (Antique Postcard)
Reinventing Rosslyn
Although we knew virtually nothing about Rosslyn’s history when in 2006 we became her new homeowners, I have since discovered and learned to appreciate her long legacy of reinvention. This quality is in no small part responsible for her endurance and longevity, I suspect. Born a lakeside homestead for William Daniel Ross (aka W.D Ross), an Essex founding father, Rosslyn became the progenitor of Merchant Row followed in turn by Sunnyside and Greystone. Whether as residence, seasonal home, and vacation rental (see “Sally Lesh & Hyde Gate” and “Hyde Gate for Sale or Rent“) or for some decades as the Sherwood Inn (see “Vintage Sherwood Inn Advertisement” and “Sherwood Inn Brochure c. 1950s“). Rosslyn’s illustrious buildings and grounds have adapted again and again to the needs of her times and her owners.
Susan and my Rosslyn reinvention (2006-present) has sought to reawaken the property as a welcoming sanctuary — a healthy, holistic homestead; an oasis for family and friends; and a safe haven for our wild neighbors — that will endure and thrive for at least another two centuries. From an unwavering commitment to non-toxic, ecologically responsible renovation, construction, and designas well as our 100% organic and holistic gardening practices to our habitat preservation and rewilding initiatives, we have embraced Rosslyn’s intrinsic inclination for renewal.
Rosslyn & Reinvention (Photo: Geo Davis)
As we endeavor to bring closure to the icehouse rehabilitation project, the newest chapter in our ongoing reinvention of Rosslyn’s historic buildings, I find myself considering the property’s future. What might future homeowners deem optimal for Rosslyn? How will she continue to evolve and adapt as future generations tap into her spirit of reinvention?
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. — Margaret Drabble
I return today to a recurring theme, a preoccupation perhaps, that wends its way through my Rosslyn ruminations and my collections of photographs and artifacts. While the past lives on, the present riffs, repurposes, and reimagines the past. Adaptive reuse. Upcycling. Reinvention. Art.
Buckle up. Or pour yourself a cocktail…
The Past Lives On: NW Corner of Icehouse and Carriage Barn, September 21, 2021 (Photo: Geo Davis)
NW Corner of Icehouse
Before tripping too far into the wilds of my imagination, let’s root the present inquiry in something a little less abstract, a little more concrete. Like, for example, the northwest corner of the icehouse about a year and a half ago, September 21, 2021. That’s what you see in the photo above as well as those below.
I’ve titled this post, “The Past Lives On”, and if you’ve been with me for any time at all you’re well aware that Rosslyn, the property around which this multimodal inquiry circumnavigates like a drunken sailor, is rooted in the past. And the present. Starting out in the early 1800’s and spanning almost exactly two centuries.
I’ve pilfered the title from the quotation above, ostensibly the perspective of Virginia Woolf filtered through the mind of Margaret Drabble. The broader context for Drabble’s perspective is landscape. Let’s look a little further.
The past lives on in art and memory, but it is not static: it shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards. The landscape also changes, but far more slowly; it is a living link between what we were and what we have become. This is one of the reasons why we feel such a profound and apparently disproportionate anguish when a loved landscape is altered out of recognition; we lose not only a place, but ourselves, a continuity between the shifting phases of our life. — Margaret Drabble, A Writer’s Britain: Landscape in Literature, Thames & Hudson, 1987 (Source: Ken Taylor, “Landscape: Memory and Identity”)
In the photo above I’ve recorded the exterior of the icehouse and adjoining lawn as it has looked since approximately the 1950s which is when we understand that a clay tennis court was built behind the icehouse and carriage barn for the pleasure of Sherwood Inn guests.
Actually, I’m slightly oversimplifying the contours of history. Given what I understand, the clay court was installed for Sherwood Inn patrons, but at some point in the decades since, the court was abandoned. Or at least *mostly* abandoned. The +/-10′ tall wooden posts for an enclosure along the northern end of the court remained until we removed them early in our rehabilitation. And one of the two steel tennis net posts will at long last be removed in about a week when Bob Kaleita returns to tune up the site for hardscaping and landscaping. But a long time ago the clay surface was abandoned and a perfectly flat lawn replaced it. We’ve enjoyed using it as a croquet, bocce, and volleyball court for years.
If you look at the bottom right of the photograph at the top of this post you can see that there’s a topographical bulge in the lawn, sort of a grassy hummock that is crowding the building(s). In the photo below you can again see how the ground is higher than the framing on both buildings.
The Past Lives On: NW Corner of Icehouse and Carriage Barn, September 21, 2021 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Not an ideal situation when organics (lawn, landscaping, etc.) crowd wooden buildings. Unfortunately the tennis court was built above the sills of both buildings, and inauspiciously close. Moisture, snow, and ice buid-up over the decades compromised the structures of both buildings because of this miscalculation.
Today, both buildings have had their framing rehabilitated, and their structural integrity is better than ever. In addition, significant site work last autumn (remember “The art of Dirt Work“?) and again next week is restoring the ground level adjacent to the icehouse and carriage barn to more closely resemble what it likely looked like in the 1800s when both buildings were originally sited and constructed.
A landscape altered. A landscape restored.
A memory recreated with the art of landscaping. The past made present. And yet, not. The new grade has been reimagined as an outdoor recreation and entertaining area not likely resembling the environs a couple hundred years ago. And so it is that the past “shifts and changes as the present throws its shadow backwards”…
The Past Lives On: NW Corner of Icehouse, September 21, 2021 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Present Shadowed Past
What if innocence, in a sense, is less unbiased naïveté than wonder-wander, curiosity, and experiment? Or kneading gray clay dug behind the barn, behind the garden, before the forest (but barely before) after summer rain forty years ago. Stiff and cold at first, loosening with touch, oozing through cupped palms and playful fingers, shapes suggest themselves. Contours and textures echo yesterdays unrecorded and likely forgotten but re-emergent, confections conjured of sodded clay, and curiosity.
The Past Lives On
Indeed, something endures, but rarely should we be confident that we are knowing the past as it was. As it once was. We are informed and perhaps sometimes misinformed by our perspective sometime subsequent to the archival echo we fixate upon. And yet, perhaps allowing for reimagination, adaptive reuse, and even ahistoric reinvention, drawing upon the artifacts and memories we inherit but investing them with whimsy and wonder is one of the best ways of rehabilitating the past. Art from artifacts…
Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)
Searching for poetry, questing for questions that need no answers to matter and guide and enrich.
This might be my epitaph. Some day. But not yet. I hope.
Today, the vernal equinox, I awoke at 4:00 AM, eager to start cooking a wild boar roast I had thawed. Actually it wasn’t the roast that caffeinated me prior to my first cuppa MUD\WTR, that zero-to-sixtied my green gray matter within seconds.
If the human brain were a computer, it would be the greenest computer on Earth.
You with me? Caveat emptor: it’s going to be that kind of post!
It wasn’t anticipation of the pulled wild boar that I enjoyed for lunch (and soon will enjoy for dinner) that prevented me from falling back asleep. (I love variety, but if it ain’t broke… And if you’ve cooked 5.4lbs of wild boar shoulder, then share, eat, share, eat, share,…)
It was one of those light-switch-on awakenings. Sound asleep one moment, wide awake the next. 100% alert, cylinders thumping away, and focus dialed in. Monday morning’s are often like that for me. And with an ambitious punch list for the icehouse rehab, I needed to hit the ground running. Or jumpstart the week by roasting a wild boar shoulder?
Both.
But, after talking through exterior trim and clapboard siding with two contractors, explaining how to prune watersprouts (aka “growth shoots) out of our mature American Linden to another contractor, and various other midmorning miscellanea, I headed into the carriage barn for some, ahem, research.
I’m still sorting through architectural salvage and surplus building materials, endeavoring to make final decisions for the icehouse. Woulda-coulda-shoulda tackled this many months ago, and I tried, but the process continues to evolve. In some cases, it’s continues to elude me. So my endeavor continues.
Today I ruled out a couple of ideas I’ve been developing, visions for upcycling deconstructed cabinetry from Sherwood Inn days. The visions have faded, but all is not lost. In the shadowy space they’ve left behind, I stumbled upon something else.
A poem.
Searching for Poetry Amidst Architectural Salvage (Photo: Geo Davis)
Searching for Poetry
Wabi-sabi wandering,
wabi-sabi wondering —
reimagining relics,
architectural salvage,
weather worn detritus,
offcuts, rusty remainders,
time textured tatters,
pre-mosaic fragments,
and dust mote mirages —
so much pulling apart,
so much pushing aside,
searching for poetry.
Today I concluded that the vision I’d been pursuing — a vision of upcycling deconstructed cabinetry and paneling from the Sherwood Inn’s colonial taproom — had been little more than mirage. However as this mirage vanished, I happened upon a glimmer of clarity, fleeting but encouraging, around an even bigger mystery that I’ve been chasing. Also mirage-like, also elusive, also a problem that persistence might hopefully tame, also a quest for questions that illuminate and instruct even when their answers evanesce.
This glimmer of clarity (try to imagine a spark that just might benefit from attention, a flickering flame that invites kindling with promises of a roaring bonfire) materialized briefly where moments before a mirage had danced and vanished. And what did I see? Companionship. Kinship. Similarity. Affinity. Between poetry and architectural rehabilitation and adaptive reuse. A glimmer and gone. I exaggerate, but the picture is at once protean, subtle, and elusive.
Nevertheless, I will continue to strive, risk, and experiment. I will continue essaying to illustrate the intimate overlap between poetry and construction — especially between composing lyric essay and adaptive reuse of existing buildings and building materials — until my wandering and wondering renders an oasis. Or admits a mirage.
Rendering for Icehouse Rehabilitation: East Elevation Gable Window (Source: Tiho Dimitrov)
I mentioned recently that framing for the expansive gable window in the west elevation of Rosslyn’s icehouse was completed, and the change was monumental. Now we’re on hold, anticipating the big reveal in a few months when the new windows arrive and the sheathing can be trimmed. For now that facade is concealed behind a plane of green ZIP paneling, effectively shrouding the dramatic transformation until springtime. Anticipation, I tell my dog, is have the pleasure…
Today, however, I’m able to update you on Hroth‘s gable window framing for the *east elevation*. Hurrah! As you can see in Tiho‘s rendering above, the openings on the lake-facing facade will remain virtually unchanged except for a shift from opaque (solid wood openings) to transparent (glass window and door). But the the east elevation gable window will be integrated into a whimsical Essex sunburst motif that echoes the same detail on the third story, west elevation gable end of the main house. I will focus on this detail separately once we’ve made a little more progress.
In short, we’ve endeavored to maintain the public view shed much as it has appeared in recent decades albeit with a reimagined sunburst embellishment that weaves the icehouse together with the main house, the gates, and multiple additional sunburst motifs throughout Essex and the Champlain Valley.
Envisioning the icehouse rehab from within, the photo below helps orient the new window as it will be experienced from the loft (still not framed) and, to a lesser degree, the main room. Morning light will illuminate the interior, offering a restrained prelude to the magnificent afternoon lighting that will bath the icehouse as the sun sets into the Adirondack foothills.
Icehouse Interior, East elevation gable window (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
The closeup below captures Hroth at the end of a long day of carriage barn carpentry looking a more than a little bit ready for some heat and a more comfortable perch. But it also captures the just completed window framing below the header, perfectly echoing the slope of the icehouse roof.
Another closeup, gets a little closer to imagining the perspective when standing on the future loft floor.
Icehouse Interior, East elevation gable window (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
Framing East Gable Window
Shortly this aperture will be concealed behind insulated paneling much like the west elevation, but for a fleeting moment longer we can appreciate the natural light entering through the east elevation gable window framing, and we can try to imagine the daybreak view of Lake Champlain, warm sunlight illuminating the north elevation of the main house as it rises up into the summer sky.
A new perspective is emerging as Hroth frames my future office window (from the icehouse loft). Looking east (actually southeast in this photo), this will be my morning view. Panning to the left 10 to 15° the view will be filtered through the enormous American Linden (basswood) tree and across the upper lawn, through the ancient ginkgo tree and across the front lawn to Lake Champlain. (Source: Loft Office View)
Holes in walls. Such rudimentary changes to a building envelope. And yet such profound transformation!
By strategically introducing apertures and maximizing transparency in this small structure we’re endeavoring to dilate the living experience beyond the finite building envelope, to challenge the confines of walls and roof, and when possible and esthetically judicious, to improve porosity with abundant new fenestration, dynamic interior-exterior interplay, subtle but impactful landscaping changes (including a new deck) that will work in concert to amplify the breathability of the interior and temptingly invite insiders outside. (Source: Gable End Window in West Elevation)
The photo below hints at the future porosity of the this space. Imagine the window near bottom right once it is glass.
Icehouse Interior, East elevation gable window (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
Of course, framing in the balcony and eventually adding blisters will shift add interesting layers, shadows, textures, and other nuances to the transparency looking east from within. Perhaps an interior rendering or two will help imagine forward…
Phew. With Rosslyn’s icehouse insulation installation complete we can collectively exhale, confident and warm. Today I’d like to offer huge holiday shoutout to Kevin and Joe from Adirondack Spray Foam for wrapping up 2022 with the winter-proof armor we need to keep the icehouse project going fullbore over the coming months. Bravo!
Installing Spray Foam in Icehouse Ceiling (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Those were my thoughts a couple of weeks ago when we started installing spray foam insulation. If phase one was a relief, completion is resoundingly reassuring, like a bear hug from the universe. Things are going to be alright. Winter will huff and puff, maybe even blast us with blizzards and deep freezes. But we’re cocooned snuggly inside a protective force field.
Installing Spray Foam in Icehouse Ceiling (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
And combine the insurance of a thoroughly spray foamed building with the just completed ZIP System insulated sheathing swaddling is from the outside in? Aaahhh… It’s warming to just think about it. Ongoing rehab can continue afoot despite the taunts of our Adirondack Coast winter.
Installing Spray Foam in Icehouse Ceiling (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
As I’ve explained previously, we installed 1-1/2” structural insulated panels on the exterior which provides R-6. The 3” of spray foam inside the walls adds another R-21, and there’s a bonus between the two synthetic insulation barriers. When the size house was built in the late 1800s, they filled the interior 2 x 6 walls with wood shavings for insulation. Although we removed all of that in 2006 while remediating rot, the exterior of the framing was sheathed in two laters of T&G separated by about an inch baffled with shredded newsprint enveloped in tarpaper. So these walls should now do a remarkable job of keeping winter cold out, and summer cool in.
What about the roof?
Adirondack Spray Foam installed 7” on insulation between the rafters which will amount to an R-49 thermal barrier sandwiched between the ceiling and the roof.
Installing Spray Foam in Icehouse Ceiling (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
A decade and a half ago we wrestled with the best way to balance insulate Rosslyn. Ultimately, we concluded that our historic rehabilitation needed to balance heritage and environmental responsibility. Although we also use recycled denim insulation and mineral wool when appropriate, we’ve come to trust the energy efficiency of spray foam.
Insulation Installation Complete in Time for Winter
And then it was done. With our insulation installation complete, we can rest a little easier. January will inevitably plunge us into all manner of meteorological challenges, but we’re now in a much better position to power forward.
Insulation Installation Completed by Adirondack Spray Foam (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Although blue green doesn’t exactly *look* warm, the icehouse now can be warmed with a space heater. We’ll see if reality meets expectation this week.
Insulation Installation Completed by Adirondack Spray Foam (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
In addition to wall-to-wall insulation these last two photos capture the post cleanup tidiness. It’s the perfect tabula rasa to start framing this week.
Spray Foam Insulation Mashup
Let’s curtain call this post with an almost meditative mashup of the last lap of spray foam installation.
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…
My fixer-upper forays with Bruce Ware and other local realtors evolved when Susan joined the search. She 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.
But our notions of size and simplicity were less aligned. And Susan was particularly keen on finding a Lake Champlain waterfront property. “What’s the point of having a place that’s not on the lake?” she asked repeatedly as if the answer were self evident.
The odds of finding an old farm on Lake Champlain (bygone barns “In Old Champlain“) were slim enough, but the prospect of finding a simple, inexpensive property on the lake was totally implausible unless we shifted our thinking toward seasonal camps. South of Westport and north of Essex there were many small properties tucked along the lakeshore that Bruce insisted on showing us despite repeatedly explaining that they were not what we had in mind.
We also looked at inland farms and interesting old homes in small towns and hamlets, “Just so you can see what’s out there…”
We enjoyed looking and brainstorming, but we were growing frustrated with the increasingly diffuse range of properties we were seeing. We had lost our focus.
Bruce was trying to show us all of the options available which in equal turns dilated and frustrated our search. But there was an even more fundamental problem: Susan and my interests were not perfectly aligned.
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 by totally dissimilar and totally unlikely properties.
An old “Great Camps” style summer house in Westport overlooking Lake Champlain’s Northwest Bay intrigued me until I realized that this pedigreed manse adjoined — indeed partially overlooked — the town’s sewage treatment plant.
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.
And then there was Rosslyn, a Merchant-Ivory film set for The Great Gatsby’s Adirondack prequel. A century earlier. Located on the lake in Essex, it included a boathouse I’d loved since I was a child, a carriage barn, an ice house, and plenty of stone walls. But there were no fields and too many buildings. And the house was too big. And too run down. Way too run down. And the price tag was beyond unrealistic.
During our first visit Susan and I had both known immediately, instinctively, conclusively that Rosslyn was not for us. Purchasing this once stately but now desperately dilapidated property was a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.
The expense alone. There was no conceivable short term return on investment. None.
And the amount of time it’d take to understand all of the property’s problems, let alone begin to fix them, to build her back to her former glory? It was incomprehensible.
But money, scope, logistics, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Long deferred maintenance, decades overdue; a gutted rear wing with failing floors suspended from cables that stretched through the middle of rooms; crumbling foundations; faulty electric, plumbing and heating; a boathouse that was one ice flow away from a watery grave; an ice house with corn cribbing walls and a collapsed roof. The current owner had dedicated the better part of four decades of his life, four decades — full time — to renovating Rosslyn and yet it was disintegrating around him.
Buying Rosslyn was totally incompatible with our means, our lives and our plans. And yet Rosslyn seduced us. Susan and I visited and then, months later, revisited the property, each time musing about its potential despite knowing that we shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t ever own it.
Our increasingly unfocused search — Susan and my notions of the perfect fixer-upper diverging and converging unpredictably — must have vexed Bruce despite his perennial good humor and patience. Though we did periodically visit additional properties when Bruce called with new listings that he thought might appeal to us, our enthusiasm for discovering the perfect spot gradually waned. And our enthusiasm for Rosslyn, for brainstorming and daydreaming and scheming some way to transport this once stately property into our new home, gained momentum.
Icehouse v2.0: Looking east toward future loft inside the icehouse while fine tuning remodel proposal for the Town of Essex Planning Board. (Source: Geo Davis)
At long last it’s time to move forward with Rosslyn’s icehouse v2.0 which I’ve been alluding to for a couple of months (including in the July 2 Instagram photo of icehouse interior above.) If this is your first sneak peek inside the icehouse, rest assured that the project is still percolating. When the sweet siren songs of reimagination, rehabilitation, and repurposing merge into a mellifluous melody, I’ve learned to slow down and listen…
In the weeks and months ahead I’ll share with you the reason(s) and vision for this project as well as the cast of characters and the plan. I’m hoping to take you inside this rehabilitation project, joining the team who will transform a 19th century utility building (purpose built to store ice and preserve food) into a 21st century utility building (repurposed as a flexible studio, office, meeting, and entertaining space.) Although the icehouse won’t become the “game room” we once imagined, it will share some overlaps with that early vision.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start in our early days at Rosslyn.
Icehouse v1.0
In 2006/7 during rehabilitation of our home, we began renovating Rosslyn’s circa 1889 icehouse (existing outbuilding located north of existing carriage barn). Top priority was structural stabilization including remediating a collapsing roof and “corn cribbing” of north and south walls by removing most windows to improve structural integrity and simplify reframing and drawing walls back together with cables. The existing stone foundation was repaired and repointed, and roof was rebuilt from within with rough hewn hemlock beams that we had milled locally complement the existing structure. A standing seam steel roof was installed to match our home and carriage barn, and the existing mechanicals were upgraded in conjunction with the other buildings. New electrical supply and subpanel, water supply, propane gas, and septic system were installed and inspected in 2006/7.
And then, the icehouse rehab stalled. Indefinitely.
We mothballed the project, deferring the next phase indefinitely until circumstances warranted moving forward. (Source: Demolition Dedux)
Until recently, circumstances distracted us, and time whistled past without returning to the question of whether or not (and how and when and why) to tackle the conversion of this unique outbuilding.
But the spring of 2020, coronavirus quarantining at Rosslyn, Susan and I spent many afternoons and evenings next to a fire pit just northwest of the icehouse enjoying the sunsets. We’d never really done this before. And it got us thinking…
Reimagination, Repurposing, Rehabilitation
I recount this curious time in other posts, but for now I’ll simply acknowledge that the early weeks and months of the pandemic allowed for a long overdue pause, an extended period of introspection. We were profoundly grateful to be able to quarantine at Rosslyn. It was truly an oasis in many respects. And this time of sequestration and slowing down and introspection opened up lots of interesting conversations.
Long story short, we began to reimagine the icehouse rehab as a slightly different sort of conversion than we’d originally imagined. For one thing, the western views in the afternoon through early evening were spectacular and distinct from one we associate with the property. We became slightly obsessed. And so we pondered ideas for some outside living space, a fire pit, a deck, maybe even a hot tub?
What if we repurposed this outbuilding to meet several of the needs not present in our home? What if the work-from-home model meant embracing the notion of a highly effective dedicated workspace but that could also double as an outdoor, socially distanced socializing hub?
As we courted the siren song our imaginations ran wild. And two years later we’re finally ready to focus the vision and get started.
Icehouse v2.0
We are at last planning to complete the rehabilitation of the ice house, adapting it from a workshop and storage space to a studio office and workshop. Minimalist open plan but integrating a full bath including shower (and possibly a hot tub on exterior deck) creates a threefold benefit: on-site restroom for workspace; a post-swim and soak restroom for visiting friends; and a restroom and wash area for gardening, etc.
Paramount in our plan is repurposing and recycling. We’re hoping to utilize sixteen years of architectural salvage, building materials, and on-property milled lumber to complete this project. I’ll try to document some of the materials we’ll be repurposing soon. And there will be some modern, non-repurposed accommodations as well including modern, energy efficient wood windows and doors that match the historic windows of the barn, foam insulation, and high efficiency mechanicals.
And because the eastern façade of this historic icehouse is visible from the road/sidewalk, we propose minimal alteration to this public viewshed. I’ll be posting some images soon.
Some progress is pretty. Framing new window aprtures, for example. And some progress is practical. Installing helical piers, for example. Insulation installation is *indisputably* in this second category. And yet, aaahhh… What a relief to have the first phase of insulation complete!
The crawlspace beneath the main floor is now isolated from what will become the first floor by a whole lot of insulation. If you look closely in the photo above you’ll see small furring strips installed at the bottom of the floor joist. We installed 2″ rigid foam insulation board on top of these and then sprayed in XXX of closed cell foam insulation.
Because this is an historic rehabilitation project, preserving the original stone foundation was critical. Successfully pinning the new foundation to the old (ensuring structural integrity for new construction) prevented us from isolating the thermal bridge (old stone foundation plus new concrete foundation and slap). So we framed in a gap around the entire perimeter of the building that allowed us to create a spray foam insulation barrier, minimizing the transfer of cold exterior temperatures during the wintertime. We also foamed the entire curb inside the crawlspace, to further isolate the thermal bridge and reduce interior and exterior temperature exchange. The photo above shows the framing gap around the perimeter, filled with foam insulation.
After Insulation Installation…
Once the spray foam insulation installation was complete, it was time for a subloor.
Supi guided this important step forward so that we can set up staging to frame the west and east gable end windows.
Icehouse Subfloor Installation Almost Complete (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
In this final photo you can see the last narrow strips of subfloor are about to be installed. Not bad for a day’s work!
Insulation Installation and Subfloor Mashup
Haven’t done an exceptionally thoughtful writeup with this post, so perhaps remixing into a begin-to-end recap of the first phase insulation installation and subfloor installation will fill in some gaps. Hope so!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cl_Sk_Gg7Xo/
Thanks to Kevin’s spray foam insulation team and everyone else who helped us to reach this next significant milestone. Just imagine once the walls and roof are insulation and the ZIP System panels are installed around the interior exterior envelope. Might start to warm up a little…
Rendering for Icehouse Rehabilitation, West Elevation with Gable End Window (Source: Tiho Dimitrov)
Bar none, the west elevation of Rosslyn’s icehouse is undergoing the most consequential transformation of all four facades. From clapboard, clapboard, clapboard (except for the second story access door) and minimalist-but-classic barn vernacular architecture, to a veritable wall of glass at ground level and a picturesque gable end window above, the metamorphosis is a sweeping reimagination of an environment often disregarded (perhaps simply overlooked) en route to the vegetable gardens, orchard, back meadows, etc.
To be 100% unequivocal, this understated facade was incredibly pleasing to the eye long before the icehouse rehab was launched.
Icehouse, West Elevation (Photo: Geo Davis)
Even in the dead of winter, when Rosslyn’s lawns and gardens swaddled in snow, this facade is captivating.
Icehouse, West Elevation (Photo: Geo Davis)
And when viewed as a 2-part barn duo with the carriage barn — after all, the impression from most vantage points on Rosslyn’s front property is of both barns’ collective architectural massing — the relationship of scale and perfect classical proportions makes is mesmerizing.
Icehouse and Carriage Barn, from Northwest (Photo: Geo Davis)
I don’t pretend that we’re making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but I’m at once optimistic and increasingly confident that our vision, nurtured into a plan by Tiho Dimitrov (architect) with structural oversight of Thomas Weber (engineer), will by late springtime have added a worthy new dimension to this timeless sanctuary.
Framing West Gable End Window
This afternoon’s icehouse rehab update needs few words to convey the impact of Hroth’s progress, framing in the gable end window that will open up breathtaking sunset views from within and will reflect those same spellbinding riots of color onto the large expanses of glass.
Icehouse Gable End Window, West Elevation, Exterior View (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
By strategically introducing apertures and maximizing transparency in this small structure we’re endeavoring to dilate the living experience beyond the finite building envelope, to challenge the confines of walls and roof, and when possible and esthetically judicious, to improve porosity with abundant new fenestration, dynamic interior-exterior interplay, subtle but impactful landscaping changes (including a new deck) that will work in concert to amplify the breathability of the interior and temptingly invite insiders outside.
Icehouse Gable End Window, West Elevation, Interior View (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
If you missed the previous west elevation progress report which captured the lower section when it was opened (closed with weatherproofing in the photo above), then it may be a little difficult to imagine the impact of this interior view when BOTH the 1st story glass AND the gable end window are installed. For now you can allow your mind to synthesize the photographs, but within months we’ll be able to show you the new views from the icehouse out to the orchard and beyond.
