Stone and Mortar
Palladio in Virginia
Over the course of Memorial Day travel, the cobblestone museum in Albion, Orleans County, western New York came up. The granddaughter of a friend in New York worked there.
Having handled both Upstate New York cobblestone and Virginia greenstone, it is obvious how much more difficult a smooth, globular stone is as a wall material than the rectilinear shape and nice planar fracture of greenstone. Cobblestone tends to travel; greenstone will stay put and provide a flat surface to build upon.
They say the perfect stacked greenstone walls along Rt. 50 through Middleburg, were built during World War II by German POWs.
Hence, their technical perfection.
Proper stone masonry is still done locally by ahandful of professional stonemasons, many of whom are rapidly approaching retirement. However the high incidence of Colonial greenstone structures in need of repair guarantee these few a well-compensated living.
Historically, many of the original stone masons migrated from Pennsylvania south into Loudoun County, Virginia in Colonial times. The resemblance of greenstone residences in southwestern Pennsylvania and northern Virginia is striking.
A classic chimney in both elaborate and simple farm houses of the Colonial era in northern Virgina, demonstrates greenstone from the foundation to just above the roof peak, the upward to the chimney summit, brick.
Jim, the mason who rebuilt our ancient chimney, said there was still a lime kiln and outstanding original stacked stone wall off George St. in Lovettsville. It takes a serious renovationist and masonry aficionado to seek out the best local examples of original stone walls. Given the age and natural resources of the community, this area rivals Europe for the masonry tourist.
Likewise, mortar work is more art than science. It is not just how the stone is placed and stacked, but also how it is bound and finished.
It surprises some that all sand is not the same. Sand with microscopic sharp edges is prefereable to sea sand in which the sharp edges that facilitate binding, are shorn off in the abrasive grinding of surf.
This difference mimics on a microscopic level, the differences between glacially ground cobblestones left in the moranes of Upstate New York, long hillocks where melting glaciers dropped accumulated stone, and unglaciated sedimentary stone of the Virginia hills.
Of course, classic mortar is a blend of one part lime, to three parts sand and water. Consistency is important and the mortar must age before being used. Some masons add a little white Portland cement to brighten its appearance and add contrast to multicolored greenstone (actinolite schist) that ranges from brown to gray to light green to olive. About ten percent of natural field stones in this part of Virginia are bright white quartz.
Likewise, all lime is not the same. For masonry, hydrated lime is preferred, not the sort used to make agricultural soil more chemically basic.
***
The farm and spring house here were both constructed from what came from the local forests, streams and hillsides within oxcart distance of the construction site in an historical era before lumber and building supply yards offered optimized, prepackaged and increasingly synthetic building materials.
***
You need only read the opening chapters of Andrea Palladio (I Quattro Libri della Architettetura, 1570) on building materials, stone and timber, to realize where such preoccupations led, toward architecture and design. Palladian style architecture was brought to a high level of perfection in England and imported to the colonies in the 1730s.
I worked with Jim Pleshette and Harold Spaulding in Crown Point, New York, summer 1968 hauling fieldstone, and spoke at length with the premiere colonial restoration mason Alan Cochran 2023. Jim was not only a stone mason but an iron worker and farrier specializing in shoeing horses.
Appreciation proceeds from the eye, understanding through the hands.
You do not truly appreciate the construction of a building before laying your hands on stone brick and mortar, and becoming physically engaged with its structure.