The Stone School House, Hoosick, NY

September 16, 2014

The Stone School House on the corner of NY Rte 22 and 7 at Stewarts' in Hoosick is a landmark: we all recognize. It was a real school from 1842 until 1917. While the name refers to its grey stone walls, the roof is what I notice: how the ends curve out over the walls at the eaves.

Eaves are useful. They make shade in summer. They deflect the wind in winter. They shed snow and water away from the walls and foundation, helping to keep the structure dry. Most eaves are simply extensions of the roof. They don’t usually swoop out.

This is a simple one room school house with only a cast iron stove for heat. Why the fancy eaves?

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The school was built in a time when there were no electric fixtures to switch on for light on winter afternoons or cloudy days. Sunlight was essential so the windows on both sides were big. Set high on the walls they let light flood over the students onto their work. Because they were near the top of the walls the lintel above the windows did not need to hold up many rows of stone. This is good: stone is heavy. To see the problem look at the wood lintel over the school house door that faces Stewarts: it has bent under the weight of the stone above it.

The windows were in the right location, but eaves at the ordinary angle would have shaded the windows and blocked the light. The curve set the eaves above the windows, letting in the light, while allowing the eaves to work, sending rain, snow, and ice away, providing shade and wind protection, and - an extra bonus! - giving the school a welcoming air.

The school was built in 1842 by John Grant, an Irish stone mason, hired by Sarah Bleeker Tibbits. She wanted a school for the children of her tenant farmers. The Tibbets lived in Troy. Their summer place, their ‘country seat’, included what is today the Hoosac School and the Tibbits State Park. Sarah’s husband, George M. Tibbits, helped establish the Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping Co. in Hoosick Falls. 

The quilt poster hung between the windows is a Hoosick wide project. Colorful oversized quilt blocks are all over town, well placed to surprise and delight.

Two notes on previous columns:

First:  Jim Dunigan corrected the history of the property transfers at 353 Elm Street, Bennington. His mother, Hazel Dunigan, was the wife of William Gokey, who built the house, not his daughter as I had written.  Mr. Gokey died within the first year of their marriage. Hazel inherited the house and later married Raymond Dunigan. Her son remembers playing in the house as a small child. He told me his mother was a dietitian at the hospital and ran a tea room called the White Elephant in the old stone blacksmith shop on South St. which is now the Welcome Center. 

Second: More about the supervisor housing on Rte 346 in North Pownal: Charles Kokoras was the builder. He emigrated from Greece as a child with his family. As the oldest son he went to work at 16 in Peabody, MA. When Michael Flynn bought the N. Pownal mill, he sent Charles to the factory to turn it into a tannery.

Kokoras became the maintenance supervisor at the tannery. He used the tannery maintenance crew to build the supervisors’ houses. Later on he built the first North Pownal fire house and over the years served as fire chief, constable, tax collector, and selectman for Pownal.    

My informant, who wished not to be named, told me Charles Kokoras liked revising the plans of the houses as he built them. His daughter lived in the one on the east end.

The italicized notes are additions to the original column. I also rewrote some sentence structure.