| | | | 2007-04-23
Building Stone
Quarried Limestone Wall, Hill House Ell, Isle la Motte , Vermont
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From the introduction to a preservation plan for the Hill House Ell, Isle la Motte, Lake Champlain, Vermont (prepared by Glenn Bydwell, architect)
'What really stands out is the austere strength of the original composition its authoritative presence, and sureness of place and purpose. The structure seems to speak of a belief in a secure future. The western expansion that worked ruin on New England agriculture, and the rapidly industrializing world that would by pass the Champlain islands by, are unimagined threats. The Scottish masons reinforced, with the permanence of stone, a new landlord's claim to this piece of the rapidly filling landscape of a new world. The Hill House plantation was not a simple settler's homestead, it was a seat of local power and industry, and it was built by someone with means and ambition, someone from an established place in society reasserting this society and his place in it on a new frontier. Not only does the stonework carry a cultural message; the timber framing too is based on a model from the old world and the established prosperous and secure coastal colonies.
Hopes, dreams, personal histories and great investments of human energy often ring out from derelict buildings, overgrown fields, stone fences half buried and lost in the bush of second or third growth. And there is a truth in what stands before you when you walk around these buildings.' |
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