WEEKLY INFORMAL CHALLENGE 122: "Landmark Architecture"

Auburn and Rochester Railroad Pumphouse, Fishers, NY

This cobblestone pumphouse was built in 1845 for the Auburn and Rochester Railroad.
It housed a waterwheel which worked pumps to provide water for wood burning locomotives.
This pumphouse is the second oldest railroad building in existence in the United States!

Cobblestone architecture in the United States is peculiar to western New York. During a mere
35-year span in the middle of the 19th century, approximately 700 cobblestone structures were
erected within a 65-mile radius of Rochester, New York, and no where else. The walls of
cobblestone buildings were built of small stones, known as cobbles, which were formed from
larger rocks broken by glaciers and ground smooth as they were carried below the moving ice.
The cobbles were carefully laid in horizontal courses, with the stones projecting beyond the
mortar joints, and square cut red or gray stone quoins at the exterior corners.

It is likely that cobblestone buildings such as this pumphouse were built by masons,
many of them from England, how came to the area to build the locks and aqueducts of
the Erie Canal. This building is about 15 feet square and a story and a half high.
The walls are built of fieldstones of different sizes, shapes and colors, laid three
courses to each qouin height.



The practice of building quoins or large squared stones into the external corners of masonry
walls is very old. Often, the body of the walls was build of small stones or brick, and the
quoins were used to strengthen the corners and stabilize the appearance of the mass.
Early in the cobblestone era the sizes of the quoins became established at approximately 12" high,
18" long and from 4" to 6" thick. Possibly this standardization came about by the establishment
of local stone quarries.

The use of flat convex "V"-shaped horizontal and vertical joints make the cobblestones project
slightly from the wall. In sunlight each rounded stone will have a highlighted and shaded area
and will also cast a shadow.