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PENNSYLWNIA.
LIBRARIES
MINEVILLE, NEW YORK: A CONCRETE INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE
IN THE HEART OF THE ADIRONDACK FORESTS
Ann-Isabel Friedman
A THESIS
in
The Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
Presented to the Faculties of the
University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE
1990
VA-O
\ Y,-4=Jex-<-^w~
Samuel Y. Harris, P.E., Adjunct Associate Professor,
Historic Preservation, Advisor
Join Milner, R.A., Adjunct Associate Professor,
Historic Preservation, Reader
{e Group Chairman
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT .
IV
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V1
CHAPTERS
I . INTRODUCTION 1
The Significance of Mineville's
Tailings Block Houses 1
A Technological Assessment of Tailings
Block 4
II. HISTORY OF MINEVILLE, MORIAH, NEW YORK 8
Iron Ore Mining and Settlement in Moriah,
1808-1876 8
Witherbee Sherman Company's Housing
Construction, 1870's-1918 14
Chronology of Decline of Witherbee Sherman
Company, and Iron Ore Mining in Moriah,
1924-1957 3 3
III. TAILINGS BLOCKHOUSES, 1903-1910 46
Survey and Description of Houses 4 6
Size, Location, and Number of Tailings
Block Houses in Study Group 49
Architectural Features and Landscape
Elements 52
IV. ANALYSIS OF TAILINGS BLOCK AS A BUILDING
MATERIAL 70
Material Properties of Concrete
Manufactured with Iron Ore Tailings
Aggregate: Compressive Strength,
Absorptive Properties 7 0
Contemporary Arguments for the Use of
Tailings Block 76
li
Brief History of Concrete Block;
Its Use in Domestic Construction;
Contemporary Applications 7 7
Is Tailings Block a Good Domestic
Building Material? 93
The Use of Tailings Block in the Heart
of the Adirondacks: The Selection of
Cement Block by Mining Management 96
V. Tailings Block Houses Today 105
A Survey of Houses in Study Group:
Typical Alterations 105
A Survey of Houses in Study Group:
Typical Condition (Exterior) , Including
Types of Deterioration and Causes 112
VI. Conclusion: Mineville Preservation 119
Recommendations for Future Maintenance
and Repair of Housing 119
Possible Sources of Funding for Housing
Preservation 125
Mineville Preserved: The Tailings Block
Houses as Monuments to the 19th Century
Industry which Caused the Development of
this Region 131
BIBLIOGRAPHY 134
APPENDIX
E.L. Conwell & Co. - Results of Compression
and Absorption Tests, Lab No. 461464 144
ILLUSTRATIONS 14 6
111
ABSTRACT
This study examines the history of a turn-of-the-century
company town, concentrating on the mining company's use of
cement block in the construction of workers' housing,
placing this use of block in the context of contemporary
concrete construction, and assessing the mining company's
use of iron ore tailings as aggregate in the manufacture of
concrete block. Within the complex of turn-of-the-century
company housing, a core area was selected, and the
twenty-five tailings block houses within this area surveyed
from the exterior. This survey provided clues about the
construction of the houses, while an assessment of the
design of each house provided a means of comparison between
Mineville's tailings block houses and other, contemporary
company housing developments. In order to evaluate the
material properties of the tailings block, laboratory tests
were conducted on samples of the material, and the results
were compared with those of tests conducted at the time of
manufacture. The study concludes with a brief description
of the present condition of the houses within the survey
group, and recommendations for the future repair and
preservation of tailings block houses.
A survey of contemporary trade literature, in both the
IV
concrete and iron and steel industries, constitute the
primary documents. In addition, oral interviews were
conducted, and local archives examined. Secondary sources
were consulted to provide background on the development of
the mining community and the history of the Witherbee-
Sherman Company.
When the study was initiated, the Witherbee-Mineville
community, and particularly the tailings block houses
themselves, were suffering from the results of twenty-five
years of economic depression, neglect, and obscurity. More
recently, industrial archaeologists have initiated a study
of the mining history of the region; the county, with
assistance from the state, has conducted a survey of the
historic resources of the town of Moriah, including the
tailings block houses; and several real estate development
schemes have been proposed for this hilly lakefront
community. It is hoped that both this scholarly attention
and the projected economic development will help this
struggling community survive into its second century and
beyond.
ACKNOWLE DGMENTS
My Introduction to Mineville
In August of 1978, exactly ten years before I began to
research the history of Mineville' s tailings block houses,
I met Marcy Vaughn Porter: my personal ambassador, mentor,
and guide to the joys of Moriah, motherhood, and
"old-timey" music. Perhaps our meeting under the masonry
arches of one of Cornell's gothic arcades was auspicious:
eight years later we would continue our friendship as
working colleagues, actually making a living by inspecting
the masonry of academic buildings. Marcy grew up in Port
Henry, and with her parents, Peggy and Charlie Porter,
introduced me to the mining history of the area. Peggy,
with a vast archive of early photographs of Moriah, and an
equally vast network of friends and acquaintances within
the community — local historians, librarians, former miners,
Mineville residents — made many phone calls and personal
introductions, without which I would never have had an
opportunity to meet and interview former miners and
residents of the tailings block houses. Charlie served as
host and expert fishing guide, helping to keep my husband
busy fishing while I spent days in the Essex County
VI
archives, or photographing the tailings block houses.
The Porters introduced us to Julia Hammond, who provided
fantastic breakfasts and a comfortable bed, conveniently
located near Mineville, between Port Henry and
Elizabethtown. Pat Farrell, Bob Brennan, the Grays and the
Martins, all provided invaluable information about
Mineville's history and the tailings block houses. Pat
Farrell provided an introduction to Joe Java, who supplied
me with samples of tailings block. Jim Kinley and Mary
Bell at the Essex County Historical Society were extremely
helpful, allowing me free use of the museum copy stand as I
pored over their map and photograph archives, and
introducing me to Bill Johnston, director of the Essex
County Planning Office. Bill generously shared with me the
draft manuscript of the August 1989 Reconnaissance Level
Survey of Historic Resources in the Town of Moriah, New
York.
Thank you to Sam Harris and John Milner for being the first
ever advisor and reader-by-correspondence, to Seth, Inge,
and Davi-Linda for giving me occasional pushes, and to
Gladys for keeping Sophie happy and healthy and out of the
study.
VII
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
The Significance of Mineville's Tailings Block Houses
The tailings block housing of Mineville and its sister
village of Witherbee, built between 1903 and 1910 by the
Witherbee-Sherman company, were a unique development in the
design history of company housing. Built to house both
miners and the mine's mid-level managers, the tailings
block houses were built in a variety of sizes and shapes,
ranging from block-like multifamily tenements to
single-family, gambrel-roofed cottages. The houses were
distinguished primarily by their construction material: a
concrete block made using the by-product of iron ore
extraction as the aggregate. The use of this recently
developed building technology, hollow concrete block, in
the Adirondacks, where wood-frame construction naturally
predominated, is a phenomenon worthy of study. In the
study which follows, we will examine this choice of
tailings block over wood, by comparing Mineville's tailings
block houses to contemporary company housing developments.
Although concrete block was manufactured for several
decades prior to the construction of Mineville's tailings
block houses, its appropriate use in domestic vs.
industrial construction was the subject of fierce debate.
Contemporary trade literature often published letters to
the editor from architects and concrete manufacturers,
criticizing or promoting the use of concrete block in
domestic construction. Poor quality control in the
manufacture of block was seen as the major stumbling block
to its acceptance as an appropriate domestic building
material. Aesthetics were also a concern, and many
articles were devoted to methods of improving the
appearance of concrete block.
Although much space in trade journals was devoted to the
aesthetics of concrete block, enlisting architects as
promoters of the material, the more fundamental concern of
the trade journals was clear: to push concrete as an
accessible building product, one which required little in
the way of specialized knowledge or equipment to
manufacture or to use. The journals appealed to the high
and low end of the real estate markets at once: simple
industrial buildings and small workers' cottages of
concrete were highlighted with the same frequency as
churches or large suburban homes. Within this spectrum,
the tailings block houses of Mineville rank somewhere in
the middle. As our survey and description of twenty-five
of the tailings block houses will show, the builders of
Mineville's tailings block houses made conscious attempts
to vary the appearance of the tailings block, even in the
humblest of multifamily tenements. The block was
manufactured on-site, at the separator shaft which was the
source of aggregate, by workers with no previous experience
in the manufacture of concrete products. The houses were
constructed by workmen of varying expertise in masonry
construction, and as our examination of the present
condition of the houses will show, by builders
experimenting with the material to achieve decorative
effects, with varying levels of success.
The tailings block houses are significant as a monument to
a developing building technology. Their construction: for
the most part without steel reinforcement, employing
experimental decorative techniques, expresses the ultimate
in vernacular concrete block construction for the period
1903-1910. Aesthetically, the tailings block houses
compare quite favorably with other workers' housing
illustrated in Concrete-Cement Age between 1912 and 1914,
the first years for which an index is available. In the
realm of contemporary company-supplied workers' housing,
Mineville's tailings block houses also compare favorably
with other workers' housing, but particularly well when
compared with concrete company housing. Just after the
construction of the tailings block houses, in 1912, a
"concrete city" was constructed by the Delaware, Lackawanna
and Western Railroad company at Nanticoke, Pennsylvania,
a small town located in the center of Luzerne County, ten
miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre on the Susquehanna River.
This company town of poured concrete houses, built to house
coal miners and their families, was touted in both building
and industrial trade journals as a prototype of the modern
company town.1 With its spare, undecorated, unfinished
exteriors and interiors — praised for the ease with which
they could be flushed out with hoses to fumigate the houses
between occupants — the Nanticoke development makes the
tailings block houses, particularly the detached homes of
similar size, appear warm and luxurious by comparison.
A Technological Assessment of Tailings Block
The use of iron ore tailings as aggregate is the one
feature which distinguishes the block houses of Mineville
from contemporary block construction. The use of
aggregates other than gravel or crushed stone and sand is
mentioned in contemporary trade journals, but it is never
made clear that the choice of aggregate is dictated by
availability. For the Lackawanna houses, coal cinders were
mixed with sand to create the concrete mixture. The
cinders were criticized for producing concrete of poor
compressive strength, necessitating the use of more cement,
but its ready availability presumably outweighed the
additional cement costs in the case of the Lackawanna
housing.
Blast furnace slag, employed by railroads and roofers
during this period as ballast, was another material readily
available to the allied iron, steel and railroad
industries. The slag was praised for producing concrete of
light weight and superior compressive strength. Iron
ore tailings, also a by-product of the iron and steel
industry, likewise produced concrete of superior strength;
a 1:5 mixture of cement : tailings block was praised as at
least equal to coarse sand, being equal in compressive
strength to a 1:3 mixture of cement: fine sand. Unlike
slag, however, the use of tailings increased the weight,
and therefore the labor cost, of concrete construction.
Ultimately, the engineering assessment of a particular
aggregate was much less important than its low-cost
availability. The iron ore tailings were absolutely free
to the mining company, requiring no special loading or
transportation to the site of block manufacture. The fact
that the tailings, already crushed and graded as part of
the ore extraction process, cost nothing to the mining
company offset any additional labor cost due to the weight
of the resultant block.
The choice of iron ore tailings was more an economic one
than a choice dictated by the technical advantages of
tailings over more conventional aggregate. However, the
increased strength and weight of the tailings block over
conventional block has had one unforeseen, and ironic,
result. The tailings block houses of Mineville have proved
almost invincible to demolition, or even alteration. Built
as housing for miners at a time when the iron ore was
already half exhausted, the tailings block houses of
Mineville have long outlived the mines themselves.
CHAPTER NOTES
"A City of Poured Houses: Model Dwellings for
Wage Earners," Scientific American Supplement No. 1895
(April 27, 1912), 260; Frederick Squires, "Progressive
Architectural Construction," Architecture and Building 4 6
(June 1914) , 233-5.
2W.A. Aiken, "Slag as an Aggregate in Concrete,"
Railway Review (August 15, 1914) , 199-200, publication of
paper read before the 17th annual meeting of the American
Society for Testing Materials, Atlantic City, N.J., June
30-July 3, 1913.
30swald C. Hering, Concrete and Stucco Houses:
The use of plastic materials in the building of country and
suburban houses in a manner to insure the qualities of
fitness, durability and beauty, (New York: McBride, Nast
and Company, 1912), 15.
CHAPTER II: HISTORY OF MINEVILLE, MORIAH, NEW YORK
Iron Ore Mining and Settlement in Moriah. 1808-1876
Mineville is what one would expect: a mining village.
Today, Mineville and the nearby village of Witherbee are
referred to collectively by local residents as
Witherbee-Mineville. These company towns are a monument to
the mining industry which dominated this region from the
mid-19th century through World War II. The mining
companies responsible for the construction of these
communities, the Witherbee Sherman Corporation and the Port
Henry Iron Ore Company, failed and dissolved in the
1930's. Their successor, Republic Steel, pulled out of
these communities, beginning in 1957. These companies left
behind only their namesakes — the two small hamlets of
company-built houses — and a 14 million ton mountain of
tailings. No industry has stepped in to replace the once
dominant mining companies. The communities struggle on,
nestled in a valley, in the shadow of the "tailings pile,"
as it is known.
Mineville is part of the township of Moriah, on the eastern
edge of Essex County, in the center of the Adirondack
region. The population center of Moriah, Port Henry,
8
fronts Lake Champlain, but Mineville is located about four
miles inland. The road connecting Mineville to Port Henry
is called Plank Road, after the road surface laid by the
mining companies to aid in transporting ore to the harbor.
The company-built housing of Mineville is located just off
the Plank Road (See Fig. 1) .
Moriah was incorporated in February 1808, carved out of
townships to the north and south. Iron ore had been
discovered in the area in the mid-18th century, and in
1810, Deacon Sanford, an early Moriah settler commissioned
a survey which began to identify the geological wealth of
the region. This survey numbered various ore beds,
labeling the iron-rich land in the vicinity of Mineville
Lot Nos. 21, 23, 24 and 25, which would evolve into: "Ore
Bed No. 21," etc. Through 1820, because fewer than a half
dozen families had arrived, the area that would become
Mineville remained largely forested. Other communities of
Moriah were cleared and farmed earlier, however, with the
overall population of Moriah growing to 1000 by 1820. The
lumbering and potash-producing businesses that had cleared
Moriah east of Mineville then expanded, clearing the hilly
area of present-day Mineville by about 1830. The first
attempts at mining the ore were not made until 1824. The
first "mercantile business" was established in Moriah in
1810; previously, settlers were reguired to travel as far
as Albany or across Lake Champlain to Vermont for
provisions. Between 1820 and 1830, the population of
Moriah tripled, reflecting both the established lumbering
and early mining activity.
By 1822, a blast furnace had been built in Port Henry,
processing ore from several nearby beds into pig iron,
which was sent to Troy for manufacture. In 1827, this
furnace was converted to a stove works, but in 18 3 6 the
blast furnace was revived. Three years later, the furnace
was purchased by Horace Gray of Boston, who formed the Port
Henry Iron Ore Co. in 184 0. Gray had leased or purchased
rights to ore from the Cheever mine, located north of Port
Henry on Lake Champlain. The Cheever mine predated the
Mineville beds, reportedly providing Benedict Arnold with
iron for cladding Revolutionary War ships. Gray built a
second furnace in 1847, producing a total of about ten tons
of iron per day. Gray's enterprise failed the same year,
and his company changed hands several more times until it
was acquired by Witherbee, Sherman & Co. (with others) in
about 1883. 3
Meanwhile, it was not until 1846 that miners at Bed No. 21
reached the "body of ore," thirty feet underground.4 A
modest quantity of ore, about one thousand tons, was mined
between 1846 and 1853. In 1853, the American Mineral
10
Company built a processing plant in the area of Mineville,
to separate phosphates, or apatite, from the ore. The
American Mineral Company planned to export the resulting
mineral to England. An 1858 map of Essex County
indicates the American Mineral Company, along with their
three separators (See Fig. 2) . This map also outlines the
area of Mineville, but designates only individual
structures and their owners, indicating that the name
"Mineville" was not yet in use. The American Mineral
Company did not long survive their appearance on the 1858
map. After significant investment, the company's use of a
"crude magnetic separator" failed to extract phosphates
pure enough to be sold as fertilizer. In the early 1860's,
mining operations were assumed by the Port Henry Iron Ore
Company.
Between 1820 and 1860, various ore beds in the vicinity of
Mineville changed hands approximately every ten years, with
investors consolidating holdings. Along with the Port
Henry Iron Ore Company, Witherbee, Sherman & Co. emerged as
major shareholders in Ore Bed 21. The two companies shared
board members in common, creating a dynasty which would
dominate the development of Moriah for the next sixty
years. Writing a history of Essex County iron mining in
1906, Frank S. Witherbee called the period 1860-1870 the
"height of iron mining in the County."7 Actually, growth
11
of this mining community peaked in 1880, when Essex County
was the second-ranking iron producing region in the
country, and the Sanford Bed at Mineville was the fifth
most productive iron ore mine in the United States. Also
in 1880, the region ranked first in the nation in the
production of bloom iron, the soft iron used to make
wrought iron, producing 84 per cent of the national output
of this commodity. According to census data, Moriah's
population reached its apex in 1880 at 7,379.8
Ironically, 1880 also marked the beginning of the end for
Adirondack iron production. Valerie Rosenquist, in "The
Iron Ore Eaters," explains that "bloom iron demand shrank
nationally as Andrew Carnegie and his followers rapidly and
consistently developed ways to use lower quality ore to
make higher quality steel."9 Slow to adopt this new
technology, the Witherbee Sherman Company continued to
transport their high-quality ore to Albany or Pittsburgh
steel manufacturers, and were thus more susceptible to
market fluctuations and competing steel corporations with
more integrated operations.10 After the 1880 peak,
Moriah's population, along with its iron production,
declined gradually, numbering 5,124 in 1980. 11
Although Witherbee does not mention it, the rapid growth of
Mineville in the 1860's and 1870's was no doubt due in part
12
to the industrial demands of the Civil War. Railroad
development during the same period sustained this boom in
iron production. A county atlas of 187 6 indicates that the
population of Essex County doubled between 1860 and 1875,
from a population of 3,466 to one of 7,898, about 1000 of
whom are listed as employed by the county's six mining
companies. * A large proportion of these workers, 250 to
300 in 1869, were employed in or around Mineville, on Ore
Bed 21 and the adjacent beds, No. 2 3 and No. 24. Winslow
C. Watson, author of an 1869 county history, commented on
the "quiet, discipline, and regularity" of the mine
workers, concluding: "It is said that laborers prefer a
situation in these mines to toiling on a farm or in
lumbering occupation." It is ironic that these
cheerful workers had not yet had the benefit of company
housing.
The 1876 Atlas is the first published map to use the name
Mineville. This Mineville map shows two active mines at
the center of town, several stores to the west, a church, a
school, and a hotel. In addition, the map indicates
approximately seventy individual buildings or lots,
including both homes and mining structures (See Fig.'s 3
and 4) . The Atlas includes illustrations of important
homes and institutions, including a Roman Catholic church,
St. Peter and St. Paul, located in Mineville (See Fig. 5).
13
Also illustrated in the Atlas is the residence of J.G.
Witherbee, not located near his mines, but situated on the
more genteel lakefront lots of Port Henry, the commercial
center of Moriah. The Atlas also depicts a commercial
building, located in the center of Port Henry (See Fig.
6) . This large commercial block, Lee House, was no doubt
built by John A. Lee, an early partner of George Sherman
and S.H. and J.G. Witherbee, whose mining firm was formed
in 1851. In 1862, the Witherbees bought Lee's interest in
the firm, creating Witherbee, Sherman & Co. Unlike Lee's
prosperous brick commercial block in Port Henry, the
Mineville buildings illustrated in the Atlas, including the
simple Gothic church and the nearby Italianate rectory and
barn, are of wood. This wood church, built in 1870 in a
simple style more typical of 1840 than 1870, was abandoned
as mining operations shifted, and a new brick church was
built to replace it in the northeast corner of Mineville,
at the intersection of the Plank Road and Bartlett Pond
Road.
Witherbee Sherman Company's Housing Construction,
1870's-1918
As Mineville grew, stores, hotels, churches and schools
were built to service the mining community. A general
14
store was established by G.T. Treadway in 1866. Treadway
apparently purchased the store from the Port Henry Iron Ore
Company; various mine owners had operated some kind of
store, from the inception of mining operations at Ore Bed
No. 21. From 1866 onwards, however, the mine owners were
no longer involved in selling merchandise to their
employees. A second privately operated store, Alan &
Sherman, established a branch of their Port Henry store in
Mineville in 1880. A third store, owned by Charles A.
Butler, was also established in the 1880's, selling tinware
and other home furnishings. Additional independent
establishments included Empire House, a hotel, built by
Dennis Hayes in 1873, and Cusal's House, another 1873
hotel, fronting "Union Square."14 The 1876 atlas
indicated a third hotel proprietor, J. Keough.
It is possible that one or more of these hotels served as
boarding houses for some of the three hundred miners who
arrived during the boom period of the 1860 's-70 's ; perhaps
for the mine's managers. Certainly, the rapid increase of
Mineville 's population during this period strained existing
housing resources. The mining company responded with its
first housing for workers in the 1870 's. This housing was
built near present-day Mineville, particularly on "Tracy
Hill." Houses were of wood frame construction. This
housing is not distinguished from other structures in the
15
1876 Atlas, so it is difficult to offer detail about
appearance, size, or occupancy. One contemporary observer
of Mineville offers this insight into its appearance:
The churches, houses, and public buildings are built
anywhere and everywhere, back to back, sides to
fronts, at all angles to the roads or streets, and
with the carelessness of structures temporary. The
experience of a decade [1875-1885] has shown the
villagers that at any moment it may become necessary
to seek a living elsewhere, which has bred a
consequent disregard of solidity, comfort, and
neatness. There is a griminess and roughness over
the whole place, and not even the gorgeous summers
of the mountain can hide them. 15
These wooden houses would eventually be replaced, beginning
with a mining expansion in the early 1890's, just before
the 1893 Depression, and in the interim, were allowed to
decay. Only eight of approximately thirty workers' houses
built by the Port Henry Iron Ore Company c. 1865-70 survive;
all of wood-frame construction and significantly altered,
located on Broad Street, Curtis and Maple Avenues. Twenty
more two-story, clapboard, two-family houses survive, built
by the Port Henry Iron Ore Company c.1870 to the northwest
of the Mineville houses, in the area which would become
Witherbee. Approximately thirty examples of earlier,
modest, vernacular wood-frame workers' housing, built
privately in Mineville c. 1845-65 survive. These include
one and one-half story single-family homes and two-story
boarding houses, located in the residential area on and
16
just to the west of the Plank Road, between Broad Street or
Hospital Road to the north and Joyce Road to the South.16
By 1880, Mineville supported three churches: two of wood; a
Presbyterian church, built on the Plank Road in 1875, and
originally Congregational; Emmanuel Mission, an Episcopal
Church, built in 1879; and the Roman Catholic Church, Sts.
Peter and Paul, which was the brick predecessor to an
earlier church of 1870. Although its population demanded
three churches, the Presbyterian church had to share its
minister with a Port Henry congregation, while the
Episcopal and Roman Catholic congregations were subsidiary
to Port Henry parishes. This lack of full time pastors
might indicate either a lack of funds or a lack of trained
ministers willing to brave Adirondack winters, but was
primarily a result of the secondary status Mineville held
in relation to the neighboring hamlets. Despite the fact
that Mineville 's population exceeded that of Port Henry
from the 1820 's through the 1870 's, the poverty of the
mineworkers, dependent for employment on the volatile iron
market, precluded its establishment as a separate
parish. 1
By 1892, the "permanent" population of Witherbee and
Mineville had grown large enough to support a new public
school. A public school had been established twenty-five
17
years earlier in the more residential and mercantile
population center of Port Henry, while small district
schools were also run from the 1860 's at the Cheever Mine,
at Lots 21 and 24 in Mineville, and other locations,
established within a total of fifteen "districts"
throughout Moriah. The school established in 1892 and
chartered a year later was part of an effort on the part of
the district school boards — dominated by Witherbees and
Shermans — to centralize, eliminating some of the scattered
district schools to increase efficiency.
The Mineville and Witherbee Union School was chartered in
1893. Eventually, the Witherbee Sherman Company would
build a ten-room, concrete building to house the school.
Initially, classes were held in an existing meeting
hall. The establishment of a public school in
Mineville coincided with the second expansion period in
mining operations. During this period just before the
Depression of the 1890' s, the company recruited immigrant
laborers, Italian and Eastern European, many of whom
arrived in Mineville with their families. In addition to
the new school, new housing was needed to meet the needs of
this immigrant population.
Just preceding the arrival of new immigrants in the 1890 's
was the failure of the Cheever community, the mining
18
operation located just north of Port Henry which had seen
activity since Revolutionary War days. From the 184 O's
onwards, Cheever, which was owned and operated
independently of the Witherbee-Sherman interest, provided a
home and source of employment for hundreds of Irish
immigrants. When Oliver Presbrey, owner of the Cheever
mines in the 1880's and 1890's, failed in his efforts to
interest either Witherbee Sherman or other regional iron
mining companies to enter into partnership with him, in
order to provide distribution contracts and capital
investment, he was forced to shut down operations
completely. Skilled, second generation Irish miners, along
with second generation Irish merchants who provided
services to the Cheever community, were forced to abandon a
ghost town of sixty tenements, ten years before the 1893
Depression. Many of the miners would become managers for
Witherbee Sherman, and occupy the some of the nicest of the
company housing which would be built in the first decade of
the 20th century. A few of the merchants would establish
branches of their Port Henry stores in the rapidly
expanding residential community of Mineville, providing
goods to the new waves of Italian and Eastern European
immigrants.
In 1896, the Witherbee Sherman Company issued a "Report on
Facilities," containing an inventory of company-owned
19
buildings. In addition to those buildings directly
involved in mining operations, the facilities included a
barn, a warehouse, a sawmill and a carpenter's shop, all of
red brick, with metal roofs. Over the next twenty years,
company carpenters would be employed in the construction of
worker's housing, in addition to their work on the mill
buildings housing mining machinery.
As a result of the 1893 Depression, the population of
Moriah dropped sharply between 1890 and 1900: from 6,787 to
4,447. When the mines curtailed production, not only
miners, but tradesmen and other secondary producers were
forced to leave the area to look for work. However,
production was again expanding by the late 1890 's, and by
1910, Moriah 's population had climbed back to at
6,754.21 Apparently anticipating a period of sustained
growth following the 1893 Depression, the Witherbee Sherman
Company had constructed tenements to house 84 workers by
1898. These tenements were all of wood, and most were
double tenements, with four or five rooms for each family.
The Port Henry Iron Ore Company, by now just a
stock-holding entity of the Witherbee Sherman Company,
"owned" additional tenements.
In 1900, the Witherbee-Sherman Company underwent
reorganization, as the Lackawanna Steel Company acquired
20
the Sherman interest, along with the now bankrupt Cheever
mines.22 Between 1900 and 1910, as mining operations
again expanded, profits from ore sales were channeled into
the construction of new housing for immigrant workers. By
1914, company housing had grown to 238 tenements, housing
six hundred working men and their families. Writing about
Mineville housing in 1915, chief engineer S. Lefevre
described the company as "in the same position as the old
woman who lived in the shoe." Those workers with families
had then over a thousand children, five hundred of school
age, necessitating an additional classroom and teacher, on
average, each year.
In 1905, a tenement was constructed to house 60 Italian
immigrants, all male employees of the mine. The company
followed a practice of segregating workers by race and
nationality. Lefevre describes this practice
matter-of-factly in his 1915 article:
Houses have gone up a few at a time wherever a clear
space could be found and the slopes were not too
steep. This has its advantages, as it separates the
dwellings into various groups, which makes it
possible to segregate the different nationalities;
thus we have an an American quarter, an Italian, and
a Polish-Slavish-Hungarian district. 24
In part, the mining company is recreating a contemporary
urban pattern of ethnic neighborhoods, where immigrants of
like backgrounds dwell in their own small communities. In
21
addition, immigrant families living together performed a
recruitment function for the mine:
Each family is a recruiting center, for when more
men are wanted, they write their friends to come and
get work and board with them. 25
What is not mentioned in Lefevre's article is that
Witherbee-Sherman actually set up a padrone system, paying
a family of Italian immigrants who had arrived in the
1890 's to recruit Italian labor in New York City.
Eventually, this system, which elevated earlier immigrants
over newer ones, contributed to the labor unrest which
resulted in strikes in 1913. 26 By then, the padrone
system had become widespread graft, practiced and abused by
members of all immigrant groups, with petty bosses
reguiring payoffs before granting new jobs, or threatening
2 7
to fire workers unless a certain payment was received.
Whether they were recruited through the padrone system, or
arrived in Mineville by their own means, it is
understandable that single male immigrants would prefer to
board with friends and family than to live in the five
large boarding houses, each accommodating fifty men.
Families living in two or four family tenements, with three
or four bedrooms, took in as many as five or six boarders.
This meant that workers boarding with families were
actually more crowded than those in the three story,
22
thirty-bedroom boarding houses. Families with boarders
must have compensated for this by offering better food, a
less institutional atmosphere, and perhaps, lower rent. At
the time Lefevre was writing, 1914, the large boarding
houses were rented by the mining company for $2 5/month to
two families, who in turn operated the boarding house and
collected rent for their services. Renters of each unit of
the four-family tenements, in contrast, were charged
$5.50/month.28
It is probable that the immigrant mine workers arrived
unskilled, and therefore were restricted to the more
laborious, lower paying jobs. This may explain why the
multiple family dwellings were reserved for foreign
workers, while single family houses, with front lawns and
gardens, were the domain of "American families." Rental
rates were calculated based on number of rooms per house,
with single-family houses renting for $8 or $9/month in
1914, or about one and a half times the cost of the four
family tenements. Lefevre, writing for an audience of
mine owners and managers, noted proudly that each tenement
was separated by a space of thirty to forty feet, had a
small flower garden for each family, and one or two double
barns with "accommodations for a cow, chickens and a pig,"
and privies "built in a corner of the barns." Lefevre
concludes:
23
This general arrangement avoids a nondescript
collection of shelters in each back yard. Prizes
given for the best-kept lawn, flower bed, and window
box have stimulated interest and pride in
appearances, and have added greatly to the
attractiveness of the village. 30
In the trade literature of company housing, house to lot
ratios, sanitation, and appearance were preoccupations. In
an era of epidemics, industry leaders took care to
distinguish their company housing from squalid urban
tenements.
It was not just the threat of epidemics which stimulated
the Witherbee Sherman Company to provide new housing,
gardens and other amenities to its workers c.1910. Like
many other industries during this period, the Witherbee
Sherman Company was subject to intense scrutiny by the New
York State Labor Department. Valerie Rosenquist writes
that in the period just following the devastating Triangle
Fire, both the state and local labor organizations were
compelled to develop and campaign for minimum health and
safety standards. Because iron mining was one of the most
hazardous occupations in the country, with employment of
unskilled immigrants, its use of explosives, danger of
cave-ins, and occupational lung diseases, it invited more
careful study than other industries. In 1912, after being
targeted by labor organizations, newly organized local
24
unions in Mineville threatened a general strike. As part
of the state mediation which followed, the State Department
of Labor sent an inspector to Mineville to conduct a survey
of housing conditions. She found conditions
overcrowded, due to the number of boarders kept by many
families. She found that outhouses were under-maintained
and "vile," that "livestock, such as cows, pigs, and
chickens, were allowed to roam about at the very doors of
homes," that the water supply was inadequate and
inconvenient, and that "garbage and refuse was gathered in
heaps around the kitchen doors." When the state
published this report in 1913, the Company responded
positively, with the results, if not the stimulus behind
improvements, summarized in Lefevre's 1915 article on
sanitation at Mineville.
Mineville housing may have been kept tidy and blooming
through the company's incentives program, but a lack of
accessible running water meant that very few homes were
built with indoor plumbing. Lefevre's article detailed the
obstacles to installing a sewer system: lack of an
available stream or reservoir as water source; prohibitive
expense of burying sewer pipes in a valley covered with "a
combination of boulders and hard pan;" and the scattered
location of the housing over four miles of streets.
Instead, the company established a system for the
25
collection and incineration of wastes, costing about
l$/tenement per month to operate. Custom-made, sealed
privy boxes were collected weekly by horse and wagon, and
their contents burned in a central incinerator. Refuse
lumber from the company sawmill, including concrete forms
left over from housing construction, fueled the
incinerator. The company also installed several concrete
septic tanks. Twenty-one homes did have indoor toilets and
baths; presumably, these were the same homes that employed
septic tanks. Those homes with indoor plumbing included at
least one of the large, fifty-men boarding houses, in
addition to several of the nicer one-family homes. The
cost of installing the plumbing and fixtures for an indoor
washroom and laundry, as well as steam heat, was $1000,
while construction of the entire boarding house, minus
plumbing, cost only $4000.
Of the 238 tenements owned by the mining company in 1914,
88 were of concrete block. Of these 88, approximately 50
were built between 1903 and 1906. The remainder were built
by 1910. The use of tailings block lasted only seven
years, but during that time eighty-three one, two, and four
family structures, and five large rooming houses were
built. Each of the rooming houses was designed to house as
many as fifty men (See Fig. 7) . In addition to their use
of concrete in company housing, the mining company also
26
used the relatively new and experimental building
technology of "monolithic reinforced concrete" in the
construction of an electrical power-house in Port Henry,
and in the company office building and school in Mineville
(all built from 1903 to 1906). 35
Not all construction during this period was of concrete,
however. In 1906, the Witherbee Sherman Company built
Memorial Hall, a large, shingle-style building with a
random-coursed stone base, as a memorial to the Witherbee
family. Memorial Hall functioned as a sort of settlement
house, with recreational facilities and meeting rooms for
the use of mine workers and their families. The state
Labor Department inspector who surveyed Mineville in 1912
reported that "no social activities had been undertaken of
any value or interest to the foreigners, although a large
hall for social activities was available." Although
company provided the hall, they did not immediately provide
the means to fill it by providing money or instructors for
either social or educational events or classes.
The new school, also constructed in 1906, was located next
door to Memorial Hall, and was of reinforced slab, rather
than concrete block construction. Also adjacent to
Memorial Hall, the company constructed a "lock-up" of
tailings block, with an attached residence for a
27
company-paid policeman.37 Presumably, this jail was used
to isolate workers who were drunk and disorderly, or who
had committed other minor offenses.
The other buildings constructed in 1906, all of tailings
block, provided housing for immigrant labor: a "Hungarian
Boarding House," located across from the Change House, on
West Street in Witherbee, near the mine itself; and six
detached houses, on the west side of Norton Avenue (now
Bridal Road) . The Change House was literally where the
miners changed their clothes; it was an open shed lined
with lockers, and was also constructed of tailings
block. (See Fig. 8)38
Construction of tailings block housing, designed by company
engineers, continued in 1907-8. Seven homes, all
five-room, gambrel-roofed, single-family houses, were built
on the north side of Joyce Road. On the south side of
Joyce Road, two double tenements were built. On the
north-south road connecting Joyce and Wall Streets, five
more single-family houses were built. On one corner of
this connecting road, a seven-room house was built. The
tailings block used in these homes, manufactured by the
mining company, was produced in both rough and smooth-faced
blocks. Roofs were of slate. Many of the less luxurious,
four-family homes, almost exclusively reserved for foreign
28
labor, were located a mile west of Mineville, in Witherbee,
on Barton Hill. A few more elaborate houses were designed
for department heads, including an L-shaped, six-room house
with an elaborate front porch, facing Plank Road, and
immediately next door to the south, a double house built
for Mine Superintendent Alvin Cummings and his elderly
father. The Cummings house was divided down the middle,
with rooms arranged symmetrically on either side. In
addition to these homes of tailings block built between
1907 and 1908, three houses of wood-frame and stucco
construction were built on Wall Street (in 1907) (See Fig.
9).39
In about 1910, tailings block housing construction resumed
with the building of several two-to-three family houses,
all double gabled, on Wasson Street in Witherbee.
These houses marked the last use by the mining company of
tailings block for housing construction.
In 1910-12, a sixteen-bed hospital was established in an
existing red-brick building, the former blacksmith shop,
dating from the 1870' s. The mining company offered heavily
subsidized surgery and hospitalization to its employees
(typical room and board, $2/day) . Because transportation
to Burlington, Vermont, or other "nearby" hospitals was not
yet practical during this period, the hospital was a
29
necessity, and not mere paternalism. 1 The hospital also
performed a community health function, sending a trained
nurse on welfare visits. The nurse would report to the
company any unsanitary conditions or cases of illness
found, and provided advice to workers' families on the care
and feeding of infants and children, as well as other
health issues. 2
In 1913 and 1914, there was no new housing construction but
the Mineville community did face several crises, including
a miners' strike, and several fires. The causes for
the strike are detailed by Valerie Rosenguist; ironically,
housing conditions were improved by the company in 1913 in
response to a threatened strike in 1912, but the workers
struck anyway as the company failed to meet demands for
improvements in wages, worker safety, shorter hours, and
the elimination of institutionalized graft. The company
acted brutally to crush the strike, evicting union leaders
from their new company-built, company-owned homes in the
midst of the Adirondack winter. The fires were related
to the labor unrest. The first fire, in June of 1914, was
described in local papers as having been caused by a spark
from the stack of a mine shaft; within a half hour of the
discovery of the fire, two separators, the shaft house, and
a cobbing plant were destroyed. The company was insured
against this $300,000 loss, but production was severely
30
A R
hampered while rebuilding was underway. J As described
by Valerie Rosenquist, however, "selected company
buildings" were burned in the summer and fall of 1914 by
newly arrived Italian immigrants, members of a local Black
Hand group, which actually met in the company-provided
facilities of Memorial Hall. This arson was a protest
against working conditions which had not been improved by
the strike.
A second, unrelated fire took place in September of 1914 in
Mineville's commercial center, destroying several stores.
The local paper called the fire "the most destructive
conflagration in the history of Mineville," but must have
exempted the fire at the mine itself, since damage was
assessed at $75,000. A clothing store, a wholesale
cigar store, a jewelry store and a barber shop, all owned
by immigrant merchants independent of the mining company,
were lost, but firemen were able to save nearby housing
from damage. This fire may have been a result of arson as
well, a protest by the have-not workers of the Black Hand
against the now-prospering earlier immigrants.
The severity of these two fires should have confirmed mine
executives reliance on the fire resistance of tailings
block, much touted in the trade literature at the time of
their construction. Instead, the housing built in the
31
years immediately following these fires was of wood frame
construction. There is a store extant in Mineville,
fronting Plank Road, built independently from the mining
company. The two-story, post-office/store, with residence
above, was constructed c. 1910-20 entirely of tailings
block, but it is not clear whether it was built before or
after the 1914 fires.
In 1915-16, a company-built High School was established,
augmenting the existing elementary-eighth grade school
established twenty years earlier. In 1917-18, the
Witherbee Sherman Company resumed housing construction,
building two single-family and approximately six
double-family houses built on Park Street. Like the homes
built on Wall Street in 1907, these new homes were of
wood-frame construction with wooden shingle or stucco
exteriors. These houses were designed for administrative
or managerial staff. The dead-end road on which they were
built was provided with a grass strip down the center,
distinguishing Park Street houses from earlier workers'
housing (See Fig. 10). 48 The construction of these homes
marked a third period of increased production, stimulated
by World War I. These were the last homes built by the
company until a fourth period of booming production which
would arrive with World War II.
32
Chronology of Decline of Witherbee Sherman Company, and
Iron Ore Mining in Moriah, 1924-195
Much of the early success of the Witherbee Sherman Company
had been due to a prudent investment in new technologies.
In the 1850 's, Witherbee, Sherman & Co. began experimenting
with the new technology of magnetic separation for refining
magnetite ore. Thomas F. Witherbee, partner in the mining
company in the 1860's, was among the first furnace managers
in the United States to employ a chemical laboratory in the
regular operations of his blast furnace. In 1870, the
company was among the first in the United States to adopt a
closed top on its blast furnace, adapting the stack and
tunnel of its Fletcherville blast furnace for the use of
anthracite because it was readily available. The company
lapsed in its search for new refining technologies in the
late 19th century, relying instead on its dominant position
in national iron production of the 1870's and 1880's. By
the time the company returned to investing in new
technologies, they had lost their market dominance. In
1915, while facing fire losses and labor unrest, the
company completed a new concentrating plant which was the
largest of its type ever built, with a capacity for
treating 1400 tons of crude ore in nine hours.49 It was
33
this revived willingness to invest in new technologies that
facilitated the construction of tailings block housing at
Mineville, but the capital improvements of 1915-1925
occurred to too late to recapture market position lost to
Carnegie and the national steel monopolies.
In the 192 O's, Louis Francis, who had married into the
Witherbee family, was president of the Witherbee Sherman
Company. In 1924, Francis borrowed heavily to build a new
blast furnace, to replace outdated furnaces built by the
company years earlier in Port Henry. Following this
expenditure, the company could not meet its tax obligation,
nor support its debts, as the furnace did not prove cost
effective. Over the next decade, this poor investment
sent the Witherbee Sherman Company into an irreversible
decline, accelerated by the onset of the Depression.
By the mid-1930 's, the Witherbee Sherman Company, which had
managed to rule the mining company dynastically for over
seventy years, had failed, and was placed in receivership.
In 1937, the Republic Steel Corporation stepped in, leasing
Witherbee Sherman holdings from the Bank, first for
twenty-five years, then extending this to forty years, and
finally acquiring the company outright. With the arrival
of Republic Steel, the Witherbee/Sherman families withdrew;
there were no heirs involved in mining operations from the
34
1930 's on. The transfer of management in 1937 included
the gradual transfer of all company-owned housing deeds
from Witherbee-Sherman to Republic Steel.51
By 1942, Republic Steel owned all Witherbee Sherman
housing, then totaling 470 employee dwellings in Mineville,
Witherbee, and Port Henry. The average rent in 1942 was
$10/month, 2 which still represented a subsidy to
workers. With lucrative government contracts and a
war-stimulated production boom, Republic Steel added to
this housing stock, constructing an entirely new community
of spare, wood-framed bungalows in Mineville, dubbed Grover
Hills. Houses were sited much closer together than the
earlier, ad-hoc housing construction had allowed, making
the provision of services easier. By the mid-forties,
after nearly twenty years of hard times, the older
Mineville houses were considered barely habitable by the
new workers recruited to meet the war-time expansion in
production. Evidence that the company failed to maintain
its turn-of-the century workers housing is found in this
remembrance by a miner's wife:
We moved into one of the company houses in 1944. It
had originally been a boarding house, and then a
four-family house. The section of the house that we
rented was only two rooms. The upstairs was used
for storage by another family, the same family that
was raising chickens in the part we rented. I don't
think the company knew about it. What a mess. All
the old flooring had to be torn up and I scrubbed
35
and bleached the boards underneath. It was a poorly
insulated, run down dump. The company offered us
the use of the upstairs, but we moved out. 53
As World War II stimulated production, housing needs once
again exceeded supply, and two or three families were
crowded into space intended for one family. The never
popular boarding houses were subdivided into four-family
tenements. Lefevre's strict sanitation rules regarding
livestock were abandoned, and no care was given to the
maintenance of the tailings block houses. Instead of
renovating its existing, turn-of-the century housing stock,
upgrading systems, and providing general maintenance, the
company seems to have adopted a policy of abandoning it in
favor of new, smaller wooden houses. A new community of
company housing, Grover Hills, was constructed southeast of
Mineville, just off the Plank Road. Of course, the company
continued to rent out space in the older houses when it
could.
By the mid 1950's, Adirondack magnetite mines were reaching
a depth at which it was no longer very profitable to
operate them, particularly in comparison to newer mines in
the Lake Superior region. Republic Steel, in the beginning
of a gradual withdrawal from the region, began to curtail
its operations in Mineville, and elsewhere in the region.
In 1955-6, Republic Steel sold all of its company-owned
housing, along with building lots, to the Mineville Housing
36
Co. , a real estate corporation owned by the Galbreath
family. The Galbreaths were, according to former mine
supervisor Patrick Farrell, "an outfit that travelled
around the country, buying up company-owned housing, and
turning it over to tenants or other buyers for a profit.
Originally, Republic Steel was going to sell the housing
itself; instead, Galbreath's Mineville Housing Company,
Inc. sold them for a lot more than Republic Steel would
have asked for them. Many mining employees were surprised
at the cost." The Galbreaths also bought housing at Lyon
Mountain, another Adirondack iron ore mining company, from
Republic Steel.54 The Galbreath Company did in fact
specialize in the disposal of company town properties
across the country. Based in Columbus, Ohio, John W.
Galbreath and Company was heralded in a 1958 article for
turning "company towns into home towns." At Morgan Park, a
U.S. Steel Corporation company town in the Lake Superior
mining region, buyers of company houses in 1942 voiced
complaints about the Galbreaths similar to those made by
Mineville residents. In Mineville, the Company had ceased
to provide routine maintenance of company houses during
World War II, ten years prior to the sale of the houses to
residents, so Mineville residents were angry mainly over
price gouging. In Morgan Park, the buyers were unprepared
when the Galbreaths promised but failed not only to
maintain their houses, but to provide services like snow
37
removal and heat and light to public buildings.55
Sale prices for the Mineville houses varied widely, from
$500 to $5200, with an average price of about $3000. The
variety can be accounted for by differences in size and
condition of the houses: a double tailings block house
fetched the highest price; but since the houses were sold
primarily to resident mine employees through competitive
bidding, prices also reflected the ability and willingness
of various residents to pay for them. The average price of
a company home in adjacent Witherbee was much less than in
Mineville, or approximately $1400, because the majority of
Witherbee homes were the multiple-family residences built
in close proximity to the mine itself. Community
resentment was engendered by the fact that after years of
providing subsidized housing as a benefit, the company had
not protected its long-time employees from real estate
gouging. Many of these employees had raised several
generations in the same house; company housing had become
family homes. Barbara Denton, who grew up in the
community, wrote in 1981:
By selling the houses, the company relinguished one
of its more unprofitable obligations, leaving the
responsibility of maintenance and desperately needed
remodeling to the individual owners. These houses
were once valuable because they were close to work,
but when the industry shut down, the houses lost
their. . .value. 57
38
Republic Steel followed its sale of company houses almost
immediately with a severe curtailment of mining operations
at Mineville. Although some mining continued through the
mid-1960 's, the company employed successively fewer and
fewer people, down from a peak of three thousand employees
during World War II. The increasing depth of the mines
over the years increased the cost of transporting the ore
to the surface. Open pit mining, common elsewhere in the
country, provided cheaper ore, as did international
sources, both increasingly exploited by Republic
Steel.58 The mines were finally closed in 1971. Since
then, every five years or so, a chemical extraction scheme
will be proposed to recover various minerals from the
remaining tailings, and former Republic Steel property
changes hands from one metallurgical corporation to
another.59 Economic hopes are revived at least briefly
in a community which in 1977 had a per capita income of
$5,225.60 No corporation, thus far, has fulfilled these
hopes. One community resident with whom I spoke felt that
until these hopes of a revival of mining were finally put
to rest, no new long term industry would be able to
revitalize this once thriving community. The ARC
(Association for Retarded Citizens) began leasing or buying
space in Moriah from group homes and sheltered workshops
for retarded adults in the late 1970 's, and is now a major
employer in the town. Within the last year, a state prison
39
facility has been constructed in Moriah, providing a "boot
camp" for young offenders. This facility does not provide
as much employment or local investment as the ARC, but the
young residents of the "Shock Incarceration Center" do
perform work-camp duties locally: clearing brush, repairing
roads. Lately, proposals have been made to develop the
Lake Champlain waterfront of Moriah as a year-round
resort. However, without the infrastructure — highway
access, waste treatment, fresh water — to attract a
developer, this isolated community of long hard winters may
remain in economic limbo.
40
CHAPTER NOTES
■"-Winslow C. Watson, The Military and Civil History
of the County of Essex. New York; and a general survey of
its physical geography, its mines and minerals, and
industrial pursuits (Albany: J. Munsell, 1869), 391,
395-96; and H.P. Smith, ed. , History of Essex County
(Syracuse:D. Mason & Co., Publishers, 1885), 566, 570-71,
577, 607-609.
p ,
Valerie Beth Rosenquist, The Iron Ore Eaters: A
Portrait of the Mining Community of Moriah, New York Ph . D .
dissertation, Duke University, 1987 (Ann Arbor, MI:
University Microfilms, 1987), 9.
3
Frank S. Witherbee, History of the Iron Industry
of Essex County. New York ( [Keeseville, New York]: Essex
County Republican, 1906), 1-29; Floy S. Hyde, Adirondack
Forests, Fields, and Mines (Lakemont, New York: North
Country Books, 1974), 147-48.
4Watson, 395.
5Witherbee, 29-30.
6Watson, 395-96.
7Witherbee, 1.
Q
Rosenquist, 9.
q
Rosenquist, 17; from John R. Moravek, "The Iron
Industry as a Geographic Force in the Adirondack-Champlain
Region of New York State, 1800-1971," Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1976, 118.
Rosenquist, 17.
i:LRosenquist, 9.
41
12O.W. Gray & Son, New Topographical Atlas of
Essex County. New York (Philadelphia: O.W. Gray & Son,
1876) .
13Watson, 397.
14H.P. Smith, 608.
15John Talbot Smith, A History of the Diocese of
Ogdensburg (New York: John W. Lovell Company, c.1885), 339;
cited in Rosenquist, 22.
16Patrick Farrell, Interview with Author.
Mineville, Moriah, New York, 1 August 1988; and Unpublished
Manuscript, "History of Iron Mining in Adirondacks from
Pre-Revolutionary Times to the Present." Note: The mining
company may not have built housing for workers until the
1870's, but in 1915, Lefevre describes some of the wooden
tenements as dating from the 1850's (See note 23, below).
It is possible that the company acquired some existing
houses in addition to constructing new tenements in the
1870's; Jessica Smith, et. al., Reconnaissance Level Survey
of Historic Resources in the Town of Moriah. New York.
Prepared for the Essex County Planning Office.
(Elizabethtown, New York: Essex County Planning Office,
August 1989) , 150.
17Smith, 608, and Rosenquist, 28.
18"Mineville and Witherbee Public Schools,"
Manuscript dated Nov. 18, 1916, Mineville Collection,
Brewster Library, Essex County Historical Society.
19Rosenquist, 19-27.
? o • ...
Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
2 ■'•Rosenquist, 9.
22Rosenquist, 24.
42
S. Lefevre, "Housing and Sanitation at
Mineville," Mining and Metalurgy Bulletin 98 (Feb. 1915),
231-33; and Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
24Lefevre, 227.
25Lefevre, 233.
26Rosenguist, 72-73.
27Rosenguist, 51, 53.
28Lefevre, 235-6.
29Lefevre, 234, 237; and Frederic F. Lincoln, "A
Concrete Industrial Village: Mineville, New York, in the
heart of the Adirondack forests is being rebuilt in
concrete. Wooden buildings fast disappearing. Low first
cost, fire protection and small cost of repairs responsible
for the change," Cement Age 9 (September 1909), 160.
30Lefevre, 238.
31Rosenguist, 45-50.
32Albany State Department of Labor, 12th Annual
Report of the Commissioner of Labor. Albany, NY: 1913, 14 6;
cited in Rosenguist, 50. Hereafter cited as Report of the
Commissioner of Labor.
33Lefevre, 227
34 Lefevre, 2 36,
35Lincoln, 159,161,
43
36Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 146; cited
in Rosenquist, 50-51,
37Lincoln, 163.
38Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
39Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
40Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
41Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
42Lefevre, 231. See Rosenguist, 61-2, for
description of how this Polish-speaking, company-sponsored
district nurse played a role in breaking the 1913 strike,
acting as interpreter and carrying company's threats to
miners' wives.
Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
44
Rosenguist, 45-69.
45"Witherbee, Sherman & Co. have $300,000 Fire
Loss," The Essex County Republican. Friday, 19 June 1914,
Keesville edition.
Rosenguist, 74
47"$75,000 Conflagration Destroys Mineville
Stores," The Essex County Republican. Friday, 25 Sept,
1914, Keesville edition.
4 R . ...
Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
44
49Hyde, 221-3.
50Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
JiFarrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
52Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
3 Barbara Denton, "The Social and Economic Decline
of a Mining Community," Undergraduate Sociology Paper,
Plattsburgh State University (November 10, 1981), 11.
(Based on interviews with 21 former miners and their
families, among other sources) .
S4 . ...
Farrell, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks. "
Arnold R. Alanen, "The Planning of Company
Communities in the Lake Superior Mining Region," Journal of
the American Planning Association 45:3 (July 1979), 270.
Based on analysis of 60 Deeds recorded January
1, 1957, Essex County Courthouse; in Grantee indexes 343,
pages 435-599, and 344, pages 9-105.
57Denton, 12.
58Rosenquist, 201.
"Has Mineville Reached a turning point?," The
Times of Ticonderoga, 9 September 1986.
Essex County Rural Development Planning Project,
"Directions for Development: Planning for Essex County in
the 1980's," December 1979-December 1980; in Denton.
45
CHAPTER III: TAILINGS BLOCK HOUSES, 1903-1910
Survey and Description of Houses
Of the eighty-eight tailings block houses constructed
between 1903 and 1910, the majority of those built in
Witherbee, nearest the mine itself, were multiple-family
dwellings. Witherbee was the location of the majority of
Witherbee-Sherman & Co.'s industrial buildings: separator
sheds, power plants, sawmills, repair and machine shops.
Witherbee was also the site of two public schools and of
Memorial Hall, the community center. As discussed in the
previous chapter, the multiple-family tenements and large
boarding houses were almost exclusively designated for
immigrant workers and their families. Therefore, the small
commercial enterprises and social institutions which
catered to this immigrant population were also located in
Witherbee. Built independently of the mining company, but
nonetheless of tailings block, a commercial building on
West or Back Road in Witherbee, c.1910, housed a grocer, a
barber, and a cobbler. Also built of tailings block c.1910
was St. Michael's, a Roman Catholic Church, located near
the large "Italian" and "Hungarian" boarding houses (See
Fig. 11) .
46
Witherbee 's immigrant tenements were clustered near the
mine, while Mineville's more exclusive housing was oriented
along the Plank Road, well east of, and on an incline
above, the mine's center (See Fig. 12) . However, Mineville
was not exclusively residential, but, like Witherbee,
contained a mix of residential, commercial and industrial
buildings. At the time the tailings block houses were
completed, in 1910, Mineville was the site of the hospital
and chemical laboratory operated by the mining company, as
well as many privately operated establishments: two hotels,
a post office and drugstore, and by 1916, a movie house.
The Presbyterian Church, dating from the 1870's, was
located along the Plank Road, as were a general store,
butcher and barber shops, a variety store and several
livery stables and auto shops. A 1916 Sanborn map shows
that except for the tailings block building, built in 1909
and housing the post office, the drug store, and a barber,
all of the commercial buildings were of wood (See Fig. 13).
It is likely that many of the stores and the hotel along
the Plank Road in Mineville were the successors of earlier,
similar establishments of the 1860's-1880's, and therefore
older than comparable stores in Witherbee, which were built
of tailings block between 1903 and 1914. 1 Witherbee,
although home to many concrete buildings, also contained
earlier, wood-frame workers' housing. Neither Witherbee
47
nor Mineville were industrial villages that appeared
overnight; they were built over a period of many years.
The tailings block buildings comprise only one chapter of
an ongoing, evolving construction history.
Although the majority of buildings in Mineville and
Witherbee in 1910 were of tailings block or wood, there
were a few brick buildings in each community. Mineville
contained the mining company's hospital and laboratory,
both in brick buildings dating from the 1870 's, and a Roman
Catholic Church, St. Peter and St. Paul's, which was built
of brick in 1872 and "remodeled" in 1882, with a bell tower
added in 1887. The only other use of brick in Mineville
was in the construction of several engine houses operated
by the Witherbee Sherman and Port Henry Iron Ore companies,
which are shown on the 1916 Sanborn map but which were
probably constructed prior to 1900. Two other industrial
buildings, built by the Witherbee Sherman Company c.1910,
combined brick with additions or wings of tailings block
(See Fig. 14) . This combination of tailings block with
brick was also used in one residential building: a
four-family tailings block tenement in Witherbee was built
partially of red clay brick; but this was exceptional. In
both residential and industrial construction, brick
buildings were rare in Witherbee-Mineville after the turn
of the century.
48
Size, Location, and Number of Tailings Block Houses in
Study Group
All of the tailings block houses of Mineville were either
one or two-family houses, and the majority of these were
located on or between Wall Street and Joyce Road, just off
the Plank Road. Because these homes are all within walking
distance of each other, they have been selected as the
study group or focus of this study. Although all but seven
of these houses were built within a two year period,
1907-1908, they present a variety of styles within a few
town blocks. In addition, because these single and
double-family houses are more detailed and architecturally
complex than the multiple-family houses of Witherbee, they
present more challenging preservation issues; i.e. How can
cracked decorative elements of unreinforced concrete be
preserved? What original decorative and landscape
elements: porch trim, door and window surrounds, and
perimeter fences, for example, might be easily restored?
Altogether, sixteen single-family houses and nine
two-family houses were surveyed (See Fig. 15) .
The twenty-five houses surveyed are all two stories in
height. For the purposes of this study, the three
49
different types of single-family houses and the three
different types of double-family houses have each been
assigned a number:
Type One consists of seven identical single-family
homes, c.1907, all facing south-southeast on Joyce
Road, and four identical single-family homes, all
facing east-northeast on Foote Street, c.1908.
These six-room homes are L-shaped in plan, with
gambrel roofs capping both wings. Interior floor
area measures 425 square feet on each floor (See
Fig. 's 16 and 17) .
Type Two consists of three identical single-family
homes, c.1908, all facing south-southeast on Wall
Street. These six-room homes are also L-shaped in
plan, with gable roofs capping both wings. The
volume of these houses is listed in a 1909
periodical as "11,561 cubic feet,"3 or slightly
under 400 square feet on each floor (See Fig. 18) .
Type Three consists of two single-family houses,
c.1908, both facing east-northeast on Foote Street;
one on the northwest corner of Joyce Road, and the
second on the southwest corner of Wall Street. Both
are rectangular in plan, with large barn-like
50
gambrel roofs. These houses contain four rooms per
floor instead of three, or approximately 600 square
feet per floor (See Fig. 19) .
Type Four consists of seven two-family homes,
c.1910, three facing east-northeast on Sherman Road
and three directly opposite. The seventh house is
around the corner from Sherman Road, on the
northwest corner of Wall and Foote Streets. Divided
evenly down the middle, four of these homes feature
hipped roofs, providing a full-height second story.
The other three also feature full height second
floors, with conventional pitched roofs punctuated
by peaked gables centered in front facades. Each
half of these double houses contained approximately
500 square feet of floor area per floor (See Fig.
20a and 20b) .
Type Five consists of one two-family home, c.1908,
facing north-northwest on Joyce Road, opposite Type
One. This house features gambrel roofs and open
porches at either end of the front facade, and is
oriented horizontally, with most of its width
oriented along the street. This double house
contains approximately 600 square feet per floor
(See Fig. 21) .
51
Type Six consists of one two-family home, c.1908,
facing east-northeast on the Plank Road. This house
is similar in size and shape to Type Five, with
gambrel roofs and open porches, but features more
decorative masonry. Each half of this double house
contains approximately 700 square feet per floor
(See Fig. 22) .
The architectural features of each of these house types
will be discussed in more depth in the section which
follows.
Architectural Features and Landscape Elements
Architectural Features
Monotony was a common criticism leveled against workers'
housing of this period, while at the same time, concrete
block was routinely rejected by architects as a
structurally poor and visually monotonous material,
inappropriate for residential construction. Aware of
the criticism of concrete block in contemporary trade
literature, and perhaps of their role as innovators,
Witherbee Sherman engineers made conscientious attempts to
52
add variety and detail to the tailings block houses. In
his address to the American Institute of Mining Engineers,
Lefevre wrote:
The secret of avoiding the sameness of appearance
which spoils the effect of most concrete-block
structures is in selecting the materials to put in
the face of the mold. If the face of one block is
of moderately coarse material and the next one is
all fine, when they are laid in the wall side by
side the monotony is broken. 5
This subtle exposure of the aggregate was just one of the
methods used by company engineers to avoid monotonous
concrete facades. Different block molds were used within
one building: rough-faced block would be accented with
smooth-faced block in quoins or string courses; gables or
window lintels were laid up in tailings brick rather than
block. The more important the resident, the more varied
were the architectural elements employed in the
construction of the house. Even within houses of one type,
lined up in an unbroken row on identical-shaped lots,
subtle variations occur in the addition or omission of
string courses or keystones. This indicates that company
engineers probably drew only schematic floor plans and
elevations, leaving company masons free to embellish
individual homes. Predictably, the stature of the resident
was reflected in the degree to which the masonry of his
home was embellished.
53
Housing Type One appears at first glance to consist of
eleven identical single family homes, all six-room homes,
L-shaped in plan, with gambrel roofs capping both wings.
Closer examination reveals subtle differences, however. As
originally built, the four houses along Foote Street
featured attached, wood-framed privy sheds. The seven
homes along Joyce Road had no attached outhouses. Privies
for these homes were located in the rear barns, at least
forty feet from each house. This distance would have
caused considerable hardship during the long Adirondack
winters. Like most of the tailings block houses, these
homes lacked indoor plumbing and heating. The kitchen
stove provided heat to the rooms adjacent to the chimney,
but this must have left the front sitting room and bedrooms
extremely cold (See Fig. 17) .
Among the seven houses along Joyce Road, masons and
carpenters executed subtle variations in facade
decoration. All seven homes featured some wood siding
immediately under the roof line at each gambrel end. This
siding extended halfway down the second story windows on
four of the houses: numbers 472, 474, 480 and 484. This
siding stopped just above the second story window at
numbers 476, 478, and 482. Number 472 has plain masonry
lintels and a single projecting sill course just above its
foundation. Number 474 features keystoned lintels at first
54
floor and basement windows, and a large "picture" window
fills two-thirds of the first floor facade. Numbers 476
and 478 lack keystones, but have three projecting belt
courses: at the level of first floor lintels and sills, and
just above the foundation. Number 480 is the most
embellished, with a double belt course above first floor
windows, a projecting sill course just above the
foundation, and smooth-faced quoins at both exterior and
interior corners. In addition, at least the lower portion
of the roof is of slate, while all other Type One roofs
were originally shingled. The original wide-board siding
of the second story has been replaced with a more
decorative fish-scale shingle. Number 482 is identical to
476 and 478, while number 484 is identical to number 474.
The differences between these homes is subtle, but does
relieve some of the monotony of their parallel siting and
identical floorplans (See Fig.'s 23-29). Not surprisingly,
it was the fanciest of these homes, Number 480, which was
photographed for Lefevre's article (See Fig. 16) .
The three Type Two houses combine the use of rough-faced
tailings block with a smooth-faced tailings brick. The
brick is limited to the second story of each home, just
under the gable ends, and extending midway down the second
story window. Each house features a double window in the
front sitting room, and a wooden entry porch with simple,
55
square columns and a plain pediment or shed roof. All
originally had slate roofs. As originally built, the three
houses were identical, with what appeared to be masonry
lintels with projecting keystones at all windows,
fifteen-over-one light windows, and simple, pedimented
entries with adjacent shed-roofed porches. No decorative
columns originally supported porch or entry pediment;
utilitarian metal posts are used (See Fig. 's 49 and 50).
Not surprisingly, two of the three porches have been
enclosed, while the third, 446 Wall Street, has had a
substantial wooden porch added. 446 Wall Street has
retained its original multi-light windows, but has lost its
masonry lintels, due to an inherent design flaw which will
be discussed in Chapter IV (See Fig.'s 30-32).
The two Type Three houses, large and rectangular in plan,
with barn-like gambrel roofs, display some of the same
simple decorative elements as the Type One and Type Two
houses, but this decoration is swallowed up by the larger
facades. Each has one gabled dormer centered on its second
floor, south elevation. Each originally featured an open
entry, or grade-level porch, both of which have been
enclosed (See Fig.'s 51 and 52). The southernmost of the
two, at the corner of Joyce Road, has its material
indicated as "cement," rather than "cement block," on the
1916 Sanborn Map,6 but employs rough-faced tailings block
56
in projecting quoins at both inner and outer corners of the
building. At some point after 1916, this house was
re-faced with vertical wood siding, perhaps to cover a
failed or scaling stucco coating. The northernmost of the
two Type Three houses, at the corner of Wall Street, is of
rough-faced tailings block, and retains both the lower
portions of its slate roof and several of its original
twelve-over-one-light, double-hung windows. Both houses
feature keystoned masonry lintels. Both houses employ
several double windows, perhaps an attempt by a carpenter
to compensate for the flat, barn-like expanse of the
facades (See Fig.'s 19 and 35).
The seven Type Four houses were also large and rectangular
in plan. Although the floorplans are identical, the three
houses on the east side of Sherman Road featured center
gables, while the three on the west side and the one double
house on the north side of Wall Street featured hipped
roofs. The seven houses, with their rectangular plans, are
very plain, but do not look awkwardly large or barn-like.
With their hipped or center-gabled roofs, symmetrically
placed windows, projecting string courses, lintel blocks
(two blocks per lintel rather than a single rectangular
lintel), and quoins, often of contrasting texture to the
surrounding face block, these double houses present an
imposing appearance, reminiscent of contemporary Georgian
57
Revival housing design. Although pleasing in proportions,
the Type Four houses were essentially simple workers'
tenements, and lacked the decorative detail of
contemporary, commercially developed domestic
construction. Other than the string courses and quoins, no
masonry decoration was used, and no attempt was made to
subtly vary the facades of these identical double houses.
The fact that six of the houses were built in straight rows
lining both sides of a short street tends to emphasize the
fact that they were two-family, and therefore more modest,
homes than those of Type One, Two or Three (See Fig.'s 20a,
20b and 34) . The Type Four houses do compare favorably
with the four-family tenements of Witherbee, which were
twice as long and lacked the hipped roofs of the Type Four
houses (See Fig. 35) .
The single Type Five and single Type Six home were
virtually identical in plan and roof line, with open
porches at either end of each front facade. The Type Five
house, unlike the double houses of Type Four, employed both
rough-faced tailings block and smooth-faced tailings brick,
while the Type Six house used both rough-faced tailings
block and smooth-faced block. Like the Type One houses
directly across the street, the Type Five house employed
keystoned lintels and projecting, smooth-faced sills. The
most unusual facade embellishment of the Type Five house is
58
a decorative band course between first and second floors,
consisting of three courses of tailings brick laid at a
forty-five degree angle, creating a saw-toothed pattern.
Each gable end of the Type Five house was laid up in
smooth-faced, running bond tailings brick, and its fr'nt
elevation featured four sets of double windows with
fifteen-over-one light windows. The Type Five house was
featured in several contemporary periodicals, which termed
it "well-designed," and described its original occupants as
"machinists, etc.," i.e., skilled workmen.
Although very similar to the Type Five house, the Type Six
house was unique among double tailings block houses in that
it was built specifically for a mine superintendent, who
shared the double house with his father (See Fig.'s 21 and
22) . The importance of its original occupant is indicated
by subtle masonry embellishments, by the addition of a
large stable at the rear, and by its siting along the Plank
Road. To enhance the exterior masonry of the Type Six
house, a variety of molds were used to create tailings
block elements with different shapes and surface textures.
Even the basic building element, rough-faced block, was
cast in different sizes, with square units forming porch
columns, and rectangular units cast with rough faces on
both stretcher and header, to create a variant of Flemish
bond. Windows were framed with smooth-faced block quoins,
59
while arched lintels were constructed of tailings brick.
Cast concrete elements, like the porch roof slabs, were
scored on exposed edges to mimic brick. A cast concrete
egg-and-dart sill course was included just above the
foundation. A tailings block stable, with gambrel
roof, graced the back yard, instead of the usual
wood-framed barn. A coal-fired furnace provided steam heat
to both house and stable, by means of underground pipes
connecting the two buildings. The original roof was of
slate, and even gable vents in the front facade were
decorative: each vent was a round window, echoing the round
cast concrete finials of the porch directly below. All of
these elements combined to differentiate the status of the
resident of the Type Six house from that of the
volumetrically similar Type Five house (See Fig.'s 36-43).
Along with architectural detail, landscape design, or the
lack thereof, was also an indicator of the status of
residents of the tailings block houses. The landscape
surrounding Mineville's tailings block houses will be
explored in the section which follows.
Landscape Elements
According to S. Lefevre, chief engineer for the Witherbee
Sherman Company, the tailings block houses were built "a
60
few at a time wherever a clear space could be found and the
slopes were not too steep."8 Unlike many other
turn-of-the-century company housing developments, in which
formal landscape or site planning preceded construction, no
site or overall street planning preceded construction of
the tailings block houses. This lack of site planning or
landscaping is consistent with the construction of company
housing in a pre-existent company town. Often, when new
housing was built in an existing company town, no master
plan governed construction. Instead, varying types and
quantities of housing were built at different times, to
meet the needs of a periodically expanding work force.9
At the time the tailings block houses were built, the
inadequacy of workers' housing was widely criticized, both
in the popular press and in contemporary social science
journals. The housing provided in remote mining
communities was found particularly lacking, probably
because of the finite life-span of most mining
installations. The huge influx of immigrants and the
resulting overcrowding of urban tenements during this same
period also fueled the movement for the reform of workers'
housing. Some turn-of-the-century captains of industry
were sensitive to vilification by the press, and responded
by hiring professional designers to plan new company towns,
or to tidy up existing housing. In industry, where skilled
61
workers could leave one factory for another which provided
better services, there was an added incentive to provide
more than adequate housing, schools, and recreation
facilities for workers' families.10 Proud of their
accomplishments, leaders of both manufacturing and
extractive industries presented papers on their exemplary
housing and social programs to meetings of their trade
associations. Chief engineer Lefevre presented his paper,
"Housing and Sanitation at Mineville," to a meeting of the
American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1915. The paper
was then published in the Institute's periodical,
illustrated with sketches of a company-designed
incinerator, as well as floor plans and photographs of five
types of tailings block houses.
Although engineering innovations, including the use of the
tailings block itself, earned the tailings block houses
publication in several contemporary journals, no
architects, planners, or landscape architects were engaged
by the Witherbee Sherman Company to supervise their design
or construction. This lack seems most evident in the
unimaginative siting of the houses in straight rows along
perpendicular streets. The naturally hilly terrain added
some interest and views to an orthogonal street plan, but
rows of identical houses were routinely oriented in exactly
the same direction; even a simple mirror-image variation in
62
plan was not attempted. The garden-city movement, imported
from Britain and first applied to American workers' housing
contemporarily with the construction of the tailings block
houses, does not seem to have influenced their design.11
The only evidence that the Witherbee Sherman Company was
cognizant of this popular landscape movement appears in
Lefevre's 1915 article, in his description of
company-sponsored contests for the best-kept gardens, lawns
and flower boxes.
Little visual evidence of these gardens survives.
Photographs taken between 1909 and 1913, for publication in
mining and construction journals, show sparse evergreen
plantings on otherwise stark front lawns. Some flowering
shrubs do appear in photographs of single family houses
taken from 1913 to 1915. Gardens are visible in one
photograph accompanying Lefevre's 1915 article: low plank
fencing has been installed in front of four-family
tenements, marking off individual gardens. Home-made,
ladder-like plant stands emerge from tenement windows,
supporting potted flowers. At least one whitewashed picket
gate is visible (See Fig. 44). Because these gardens did
not appear in earlier photographs of the Witherbee
tenements (See Fig. 35), it seems apparent that decorative
gardens and shrubs were an afterthought; adeguate housing
for its workers was of tantamount importance to the mining
63
company .
Gardens and flowers were added several years after
construction of the tailings block houses was complete;
between 1909, when the first journal article appeared, and
1915, when Lefevre wrote about the company-sponsored garden
contests. Photographs taken for a 1913 article show vines,
flowers, and large trees surrounding a "concrete block
house occupied by clerks and foremen" (See Fig. 45) ; a
fence but no plantings bordering "double concrete block
houses occupied by machinists, etc. "(See Fig. 46); and an
ungraded, grassless yard with one lone shrub decorating the
front of a four-family tenement (See Fig. 35). By 1915,
ivy had grown up along the porch of the "concrete block
house occupied by clerks and foremen," a rocking chair and
additional flower pots graced the front porch, and
additional flowers softened the foundation (See Fig. 47) .
As the years passed, renters and, eventually, owners of the
tailings block houses would add trees and flowers, fill in
porches, and use siding and paint to differentiate their
homes from adjacent look-alikes.
The engineers who designed the tailings block houses for
the Witherbee Sherman Company had neither an open nor a
partially forested site to work with. The former, an empty
building site, might have inspired a more geometrically
64
regular community, while the latter, a forested site, might
have led to a more gracefully landscaped development.
Instead, tailings block houses were built on former forest
land which had been almost entirely denuded of trees. In
addition, the tailings block houses were not all built in
the same place. Although rows of four or six identical
tailings block houses were built, they were not always
linked to other rows of tailings block houses. Instead,
the new houses were sometimes squeezed between existing,
mostly wood-frame, industrial, commercial, and residential
buildings which had been built in Mineville over the
previous forty years.
For cohesiveness, the tailings block houses had their
construction material and their detached barns in common.
For landscaping, the company provided some shrubs and
fencing. One fencing design, which combined rough-faced
tailings block posts with "waste wire rope," was termed
"novel" by Cement Age, 12 but inevitably corroded and was
demolished. Perhaps under-maintained after the company
sold the tailings block houses, a second fencing design,
which combined the same posts with cast iron pipe, also
eventually corroded and was demolished.13 Although stark
rather than elaborate, this tailings-post fencing seems to
have been reserved for the more elaborate single or double
houses (See Fig.'s 46 and 48). The even less durable plank
65
fencing, which surrounded tenement gardens c.1915, has also
disappeared.
At the same time that fences and original roofs have
deteriorated and disappeared, owners have added coats of
paint, shingles and siding to their tailings block houses,
in part in an attempt to obscure the block itself. The
results have been mixed. With their parallel siting, the
tailings block houses look as identical as ever, despite
differences in color and texture. Landscape elements like
flower beds and fencing, added by the company in the years
immediately following construction to enhance community
pride, have disappeared at the same time that owners have
attempted to differentiate their houses by obscuring their
common construction material. With the loss of these
connecting elements, Mineville has lost some of its feeling
of continuity and community.
66
CHAPTER NOTES
■••For description of stores in Mineville,
1866-1885, see H.P. Smith, ed. , History of Essex County
(Syracuse: D. Mason & Co., Publishers, 1885), 607-8; for
Witherbee's tailings block stores, see Fig. 13. Proving
that many of the wooden commercial buildings of Mineville
predate the tailings block commercial buildings of
Witherbee is difficult, since most of Mineville's
commercial buildings no longer exist. However, the
rambling floor plan of the Crystal Hotel of Mineville, as
shown on the 1916 Sanborn map, indicates that it was
probably built in the 1870 's or 1880 's and added on to in
subsequent decades. Similarly uneven footprints indicate
the pre-1916 lineage of other wooden commercial buildings
on the Plank Road: the triple building housing a butcher,
a barber, and a clothing store, for instance.
2Smith, 608, Rosenquist, 31. See Valerie
Rosenquist, 27-33, for history of Catholic church in
Moriah. Irish Catholic immigrants had established
themselves in Mineville with the first great Irish
immigration, in the 1840's, two generations prior to the
arrival of Italian and Hungarian immigrants. They founded
a church in Port Henry in 1852, close both to the Cheever
mines just to the north and to the commercial center of
Port Henry, where second generation Irish immigrants were
establishing stores. It was not until 1870 that the
Catholic miners in the more remote Mineville, generally
Irish immigrants who had not succeeded from mining to the
mercantile trade, were granted their own church by the
diocese, and St. Peter's and St. Paul's was built in 1872.
Primary evidence that the Irish population was established
prior to the construction of the tailings block houses is
found in the local newspaper, as in this advertisement
appearing in a "Moriah Supplement" to the Essex County
Republican. Vol. LXVII, No. 13, Friday, November 24, 1905:
J. J. O'BRIEN, MINEVILLE,
Keeps a meat market and sells all kinds of
Chicago and native meats at lowest possible
prices. Why don't you patronize him? He is
an honest dealer, who will give you a hundred
cents' worth for a dollar every time you trade
with him.
67
3Frederic F. Lincoln, "A Concrete Industrial
Village," Cement Age: A Magazine Devoted to the Uses of
Cement (September 1909), 162.
4For a summary and critique of worker's housing,
see Leifur Magnusson, "Company Housing," Encyclopaedia of
the Social Sciences III, (New York: The MacMillan Co.,
1937), 115-118; for a critique of concrete block
architecture, see Oswald C. Hering, "Concrete Block,"
Concrete-Cement Age (February, 1913), 77-8; and "Advancing
the Architectural Appeal of Concrete Wall Units,"
Concrete-Cement Age (April, 1914), 195-7.
5S. Lefevre, "Housing and Sanitation at
Mineville," Mining and Metallurgy Bulletin 98 (Feb. 1915),
233.
It is unclear whether this means the house was
built of reinforced concrete, with the tailings block
quoins built up first and the concrete forms framed to
incorporate them, or if the house was stucco over block.
The latter seems more likely, since, according to Pat
Farrell, houses using stucco were built on nearby Wall
Street in the previous year, 1907. Those houses were
supposedly of stucco over wood-frame construction; but the
fact that the Sanborn Map indicates that this house is
"concrete" implies that the stucco was applied over block.
7
Lincoln, 162; "Witherbee, Sherman and Company,
Mineville, N.Y.," Monthly Bulletin of the American Iron and
Steel Institute I, 9 (September, 1913), 246.
8Lefevre, 227.
For a summary of company housing types in the
northeastern United States at the turn of the century,
including housing built in a preexistent company town, see
Leland M. Roth, "Three Industrial Towns by McKim, Mead &
White," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
XXXVIII (December 1979), 320-21.
10Magnusson, 116; Roth, 319.
68
For a discussion of the impact of the
garden-city movement on architect-designed workers' housing
in the northeast, 1910-1918, see Richard M. Candee and
Greer Hardwicke, "Early Twentieth-Century Reform Housing by
Kilham and Hopkins, Architects of Boston," Winterthur
Portfolio 22, Number 1 (Spring 1987), 47-80.
12Lincoln, 162.
William and Leah Gray, Interview and tour of
house, Mineville, Moriah, New York, 3 August 1988.
69
CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS OF TAILINGS BLOCK AS BUILDING
MATERIAL
Material Properties of Concrete Manufactured with Iron Ore
Tailings Aggregate: Compressive Strength, Absorptive
Properties
The tailings block used in the construction of the
Mineville houses was tested in 1909, just prior to the
publication of an article on Mineville in Cement Age. The
testing was performed by G.B. Dixon, Chief Chemist of the
Glens Falls Portland Cement Company of Glens Falls, New
York, which supplied some of the Portland cement used in
the construction of the tailings block houses.
Technically, the results of these tests apply only to those
tailings block made with Glens Falls cement. However, for
the purposes of this study, we can assume that all the
tailings block used in the Mineville houses would have
performed similarly.
The Cement Age article states that the tailings block were
manufactured using a cement mix of 1:5, Portland cement to
tailings. No sand or gravel were mixed with the tailings,
and this accounts for the production of a "very superior
concrete block," according to author Frederic F.
Lincoln.1 No range of sieve sizes for the tailings
70
aggregate is given in the article, but it is mentioned that
prior to mixing the more fine-textured tailings brick, the
tailings aggregate was screened. A recent sampling of
tailings found them to be fairly fine-textured, similar in
color and appearance to a fine yellow beach sand. Somewhat
oddly, the 1:5 mixture used in tailings block manufacture
was not duplicated in Dixon's testing. Instead, Dixon
tested the following mixtures:
Mix Mix Time Compressive
Ratio Contents Set Strength
1:3 1 Part "Iron Clad" Portland 7 days 341 psi
Cement to 3 parts iron
ore tailings
1:3 it ii ii ii ii ii 28 days 450 psi
1:4.4 1 part "Iron Clad" Portland 30 days 1010 psi
:9.42 Cement to 4.4 parts iron
tailings to 9.42 parts
broken stone
1:4.4 " " " " " " " " 60 days 1273 psi
:9.42
1:4.4 " " " " " " " " 90 days 1428 psi
:9.42
1:4.4 " " " " " " " " 120 days 1528 psi
:9.42
1:4:4 " " " " " " " " 150 days 1653 psi
:9.42
1:4:4 " " " " " " " " 180 days 1686 psi
:9.42
Concrete block testing was not completely standardized
until about 1925, although tests on Portland cement itself
71
were standardized by about 1900. After 1900, block
manufacturers began to supply the results of their own,
non-standard compression and absorption tests with their
product literature.2 Although it is extremely difficult
to assess the results of turn-of-the century tests, which
used different sample quantities, cement mixtures, and
curing times, one can compare both the results of Dixon's
tests and the cement block mixture described in Lincoln's
article with test values described and mixtures recommended
in contemporary industry handbooks. Several treatises
devoted to the manufacture of concrete block, sponsored by
Portland cement trade associations, were published between
1905 and 1910: Spencer B. Newberry, the manager of a
Portland Cement Company, published two in 1905; Harmon
Howard Rice published an article on the subject in Cement
Age in October 1905; Mr. Rice and William M. Torrance
published a book on the subject in 1906 and Rice a second
the same year; a pamphlet by Newberry was issued by the
National Association of Cement Users in 1906; and in 1908,
Charles Palliser published an illustrated volume: Practical
Concrete-Block Making, based in large part on Newberry's
1905 works.
For the manufacture of concrete block, Newberry recommended
mixing cement and aggregate in the following proportions:
Cement 1: Hydrated Lime 1/2: Sand and Gravel 6. The
72
success of this relatively poor mixture depended on a
properly graded aggregate, with the distribution of coarse
and fine materials necessary to fill voids, creating a
dense concrete. If interior walls were not furred and
lathee1 but plastered directly, then a richer and more
water-resistant concrete was needed; Newberry recommended
the following mixes: Cement 1-1/2: Hydrated Lime 1/2: Sand
and Gravel 5, or Cement 1: Hydrated Lime 1: Sand and Gravel
5. Newberry also mentions a 1:5 mix without lime, the
mixture that, according to Cement Age reporter Frederic
Lincoln, was employed in producing Mineville's tailings
block. Elsewhere, the mixture used in the manufacture of
the tailings block is guoted as 1:6.
Dixon's tests of the Mineville block seemed to be skewed
towards demonstrating the strength of tailings block even
when formed with a very poor mixture: 1:13.82, cement to
mixed stone and tailings. At 30 days, this concrete had a
compressive strength of 1010 psi, which matches the minimum
standard of 1000 psi for concrete block at 28 days set by
the National Association of Cement Users in 1906. The
richer 1:5 mixture used in the tailings block would have
far exceeded 1000 psi. Newberry set the compressive
strength of a block of 1:5, cement to sand and gravel, at
over 2,000 psi at 28 days, and over 3,000 psi at one
year. 5
73
In order to assess Dixon's 1909 results, and to compare the
strength and absorption of turn-of-the century tailings
block to standard 1980 's concrete block, compression and
absorption tests were run on four large fragments of c.1910
tailings block. Tests were performed by E. L. Conwell &
Co., Engineers, Chemists, Inspectors, of Bridgeport,
Pennsylvania, on November 6, 1989. The results of these
tests are included in the Appendix to this paper, as
Exhibit A. The tests found that for three samples of
block, compressive strength ranged from 3290 to 4570 psi (a
30% variation) , with density of the test block varying from
145.9 to 150.1 pcf (insignificant variation). Absorption
tests were run on a single sample, which showed 8.1%
absorption after 24 hours of immersion. The source of the
c.1908 samples was the site of a tailings block building
demolished over ten years ago, so each sample block was
broken into several pieces and weathered on all sides.
Lacking the protection of surrounding masonry, the sample
fragments appeared porous on the surface. Despite their
exposed condition, the samples far exceeded modern minimum
standards for compression and absorption:
74
Compressive
Strength:
Samples
Compressive
Strength:
ASTM C 90-85
(Hollow Load-
Bearing emu)
Compressive
Strength:
ASTM C 145-85
(Solid Load-
Bearing emu)
SI 4570 psi
S2 3790 psi
S3 3290 psi
Average of 3
Samples:
Average of 3
Samples:
Average of 3
Samples:
3883 psi
Minimum
700-1000 psi
Minimum
1200-1800 psi
% Absorption:
Sample 4
8.1%
% Absorption:
ASTM C 90-85
13 - 20%
% Absorption:
ASTM C 145-85
13 - 20%
In both compressive strength and absorption, Mineville's
tailings block exceeds today's minimum standard
specifications by a factor of 2 to 3 times. These tests
prove that contemporary claims concerning the great density
and strength of tailings block were not exaggerated, and
emphasizes that the special material qualities of tailings
block were not adequately exploited by Witherbee-Sherman's
engineers, as will be discussed in the section which
follows.
75
Contemporary Arguments for the Use of Tailings Block
As discussed in the introductory chapter, contemporary
trade literature praised the material properties of
concrete manufactured with iron ore tailings aggregate.
Oswald Hering, an architect and vocal critic of vernacular
houses of concrete block, mentions the use of tailings
block in his 1912 monograph: Concrete and Stucco Houses,
stating that a 1:5 mixture of cement: tailings was equal in
strength to a 1:3 mixture of cement: sand, due to the
"sharpness" or hardness of the tailings aggregate.6
Frederic F. Lincoln, in his article on Mineville for Cement
Age, goes even further, citing Dixon's tests and claiming
that a 1:5 mixture of cement : tailings had double the
7
compressive strength of a mixture of 1:3 cement: sand.
Despite variations among the contemporary assessments of
tailings block, the unusual compressive strength of the
material was noted by all. Despite this special property,
a compressive strength which far exceeded the standard or
required strength for concrete block building units, no
attempt was made on the part of the builders of Mineville' s
tailings block houses to exploit the special properties of
the tailings concrete. For instance, given its higher
strength, Witherbee Sherman engineers might have varied
from the standard wall thickness, casting a narrower block
76
to carry the same load as a standard cement and gravel
block. Mineville's blocks measured 8" x 8" x 20", the
industry standard thickness. Although many city building
codes required foundation walls to be 12" thick,
Mineville's engineers might have experimented with the 8"
block as the foundation unit, relying on the material's
greater compressive strength to make up the difference in
width. By taking advantage of the great compressive
strength of the tailings block, Mineville's engineers might
have built higher buildings: three stories of unreinforced
block instead of two. Instead, claims of great compressive
strength were made, but not exploited. The tailings were
available, they were free, and they were therefore
utilized.
Brief History of Concrete Block; Its Use in Domestic
Construction; Contemporary Applications
The use of concrete block as both backup and facing
material first achieved widespread popularity in the United
States in the 1890 's. While concrete block building
technology was pioneered much earlier, with U.S. patents
for hollow-core concrete block dating from the 1860 's, it
was not until the 1890 's that domestic production of
Portland cement was established, helping to make concrete
77
block an even more affordable alternative to other
masonry. ° The presence of local concrete producers
meant the development of new trade networks, as the
fledgling concrete industry formed trade associations,
published journals, and generally promoted the use of
concrete in all types of construction. After 1900, the new
concrete industry increasingly lobbied for the
standardization of building codes and insurance assessments
governing concrete construction, and performed
self-regulation by developing standard specifications for
concrete manufacture and testing.
Ann Gillespie, in her study of the Canadian manufacture of
decorative or "artistic" concrete block, divides the
history of the decorative block into two phases, spanning
fifty years, from the 1870 's until about 1920: "the early
or pioneering phase, characterized by the prevalence of the
rock-face block, which lasted into the first decade of this
century, and the transitional phase, characterized by the
dressed stone block." The "rock-face" block is what we
have termed "rough-faced" block in our description of the
Mineville houses. Gillespie writes that the appearance and
popularity of the two types of block were determined by
developments in block manufacturing eguipment. Blocks
could be cast in simple wooden boxes, but to produce large
guantities of block of identical shape and size, durable
78
cast-iron molds were developed.12 To speed the process
of block manufacturing, mechanical molds were designed,
with built-in tamping levers to compress shallow layers of
concrete, built-in cylinders to produce hollow cores, and
hinged sides to allow the release of the finished block.
The machines were an improvement over hand-formed block,
providing a denser block through even tamping, and a
lighter block by creating hollow cores. The hollow core
block also helped alleviate condensation, provided an air
space for better insulation, and used less material to
manufacture.
Between 1870 and 1910, the type of block machine generally
used was known as the "side-face" machine, consisting of a
metal box with removable hinged sides, mounted on a
convenient, waist-high stand. In 1902, the "down-face"
machine was introduced by the Ideal Concrete Machinery
Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.14 The down-face machine
featured a mold box mounted on a lever, with the face
texture of the block determined by a cast iron bottom
plate, which in turn was often cast directly from an actual
cut and tooled stone. Once the mold box was filled with
tamped concrete, the entire box, including bottom "face
plate," was tilted up at a forty-five degree angle,
allowing the hinged bottom and sides to be swung away, and
the block to be released (See Figure 53).
79
With the side-face block machine, blocks were cast in an
upright position, with a fairly dry mixture tamped into the
box in at least four separate layers. The face texture of
the block was determined by the texture of the hinged
sides. Blocks could be cast guickly, as the dry mixture,
and the hinged sides, allowed the block to be removed from
the box almost immediately after being formed. The fact
that the texture of the block face was determined by the
side panels meant that the mixture used had to be
homogeneous; it was not possible to use a different mixture
to cast the sides vs. the center of each block. Attempts
were made to segregate the sides or face mixture from the
center mixture by means of separating plates, which were
lifted out prior to removal of the block from the mold.
However, this created a block with a built-in flaw or
cleavage plane between the face and body. In order to
create a strong block, a uniformly rough-textured mix,
employing a coarse aggregate, had to be used. The use of
this rough concrete created a block with a porous, pebbly
surface texture, which could best be disguised by using the
"rough-faced" casting plate. The uneven surface of the
rough-faced block hid the flaws created by the coarse
aggregate.
With the development of the down-face machine, a one-inch
80
layer of finely textured concrete could be tamped in first,
followed by the stronger mixture employing a coarse
aggregate. This allowed the use of a variety of casting
plates, including dress-faced stone designs with sharp,
beveled corners, raised central panels, or even raised
wreaths or garlands more typical of finely textured ceramic
masonry units.17 The use of a different facing mix also
provided the opportunity for varying the color and texture
of the face block by adding colored aggregates or mineral
pigments to the face concrete. The extra expense of a
crushed colored stone or mineral pigment was limited to a
small quantity of material, encouraging experimentation.
This allowed the production of block of various colors and
textures, often more lively than the dull grey of Portland
cement block, and enabled block manufacturers to mimic the
colors of various natural stones. °
Whether produced from carved wood molds in a limited
quantity, or cast in either of the two block machines, the
newly manufactured blocks were placed on pallets to
air-cure for seven to ten days, during which time they were
sprinkled periodically. This sprinkling prevented rapid
drying of the exterior of the block, and ensured even
crystallization of the cement throughout the block. Cement
block generally achieved maximum strength and was fairly
stable from evaporation shrinkage by about one month, but
81
at least one turn-of-the-century manufacturing guide
recommended a six month curing time.19
It is not clear whether Mineville's tailings block were
cast in a side-face or a down-face machine. Frederic F.
Lincoln, in his 1909 article on Mineville for Cement Age,
writes that the tailings block were manufactured on a
"Hercules Machine," manufactured by the Century Cement
Machinery Co. of Rochester, New York, while the tailings
brick were manufactured on a "Peerless" brick machine
manufactured by a company of the same name in Minneapolis,
Minnesota. Because no special facing mixtures were
attempted, and because experimentation with tailings block
was begun by mining management as early as 1903, it is
likely that an earlier model, or side-face machine, was
selected. With its one step removal process, the side-face
machine allowed for faster block production. What is
interesting to note is that the regional cement
manufacturing industry was complemented during this period
by the development of a regional block machine
manufacturing industry.
All technological developments in the manufacture of
concrete block, from about 1860 through 1910, were aimed at
producing a decoratively faced block which convincingly
mimicked the appearance of natural, guarried, or cut
82
20
stone. w Unlike reinforced, poured concrete, then known
as "monolithic concrete," decoratively faced concrete block
provided the building trades with a construction material
which was familiar, as it was similar to brick or stone
masonry units in size, shape, and weight. In contrast to
concrete block, monolithic concrete could not be purchased
in units of standard size. While the manufacturing process
for concrete block was very similar to that developed for
clay brick, monolithic concrete was mixed wet, poured into
forms, and most often manufactured on site and in place
within a wall. The successful use of monolithic concrete
during this period required skill and experience,
particularly in avoiding shrinkage of long sections of
wall, while a relatively unskilled workman could
manufacture block or lay up a concrete block
p 1
foundation. Concrete block, dressed stone, and brick
could all be treated in the same way, and even easily
combined within the same building, using existing masonry
building technology. The use of block did not require a
mason to purchase any special tools, nor did it require him
to be trained in any special way.
The education required before architects and buildings
tradespeople could work with concrete in a new and
sophisticated manner was discussed by Rolf R. Newman, a
Riverside, California engineer, in a 1914 article in
83
Concrete-Cement Age. Rolf blamed the profusion of
unimaginative, foursquare concrete block houses built
between 1900 and 1910 on the innate conservatism of the
building trades and design professionals:
It is undoubtedly a fact that engineers have done
more than architects in establishing "correct
methods" and assisting in the "proper organization"
of such work as applied to house construction,
because they have approached the matter from other
fields of experience in which they have used
cement. Architects and builders are as a rule more
bound by precedent in the matter of building
materials—more closely related to and allied with
the existing building trades — than engineers. For
this reason the concrete house today is more a
product of engineering than it is of architecture.
For complete success it must, however, become both
architecturally and structurally correct. 22
The essentially conservative nature of decorative concrete
block was both a help in its early marketing and a
hindrance in sustaining its popularity. Increasingly,
after the turn of the century, architects and building
product manufacturers sought "honesty" in materials,
bringing this discussion, and a critique of the decorative
concrete block, to the editorial pages of building trade
journals. The popularity of block as a vernacular building
material persisted until about 1930, when the growing
influence of modernism and of industrial architecture,
contemporary developments in steel construction,
improvements in "monolithic" or poured concrete technology
and design, and the dissemination of new concrete
84
engineering methods within the architectural community
eclipsed the lowly, and to modern eyes, dishonest,
decorative concrete block.
In the trade literature of the period 1912 to 1914,
immediately following the construction of Mineville's
tailings block houses, one issue dominated any discussion
of concrete block: the objection, by the architectural
community, to its use in domestic construction. To
overcome the objection that concrete block, unlike the
natural stone for which it substituted, presented a dull
and monotonous appearance, the trade journals offered
recipes for exposing surface aggregate by removing the
surface skin of concrete to enhance the color and
reflectivity of the block. Other suggestions included
forming the block from casts taken from actual cut stone,
prescribing the number of different molds necessary to
produce an adeguate variability of wall texture. The more
elite architect-critics denied that concrete block, with
its unvarying standard-sized unit, would ever be an
appropriate domestic building material, unless masked with
stucco and used in combination with classical detail:
capitals and balusters of specially molded or sculpted
concrete. Freguent criticism was aimed at the artifice of
the most common form of concrete block: the rough-faced
block, which was found both false and monotonous. The
85
rough or rusticated face masked surface flaws and allowed
the use of a larger aggregate, for increased strength,24
but never successfully imitated dressed stone. In defense
of block, if not rough-faced block, one critic argued that
while the rough-faced block failed as an imitation of
quarried stone, the smooth-faced block, employing a colored
aggregate, could be both honest; i.e., visibly of concrete,
and attractive.25 It was this current in the design
community which would lead to the commercially successful
production of concrete products known as "cast stone,"
which was extemely popular from about 1910 through the
nineteen-twenties. Although it was most popular among
architects in the art deco period, cast stone is still
manufactured. Cast stone has been seen recently in the
1980 's as designers have turned to richer, polychromatic
materials to clad steel-framed buildings. Cast stone is
also often specified in restoration projects as an
affordable substitute for a particular natural stone which
is no longer being quarried.
Turn-of-the-century trade journals illustrate various
applications for decoratively faced concrete block, but
domestic, rather than industrial or commercial buildings,
were pictured most often. This focus on domestic
construction reflected the most lucrative market, then and
now, within the building industry: new housing
86
construction. Of twelve articles illustrating concrete
block buildings appearing in Concrete-Cement Age between
February 1913 and April 1914, two articles featured
churches with decorative concrete block trim and
smooth-faced concrete block walls; two articles described
smooth-faced concrete block workmen's cottages in Norfolk,
England, featuring concrete tile roofs and floors, while a
third article showed cow-stalls and pig styes, part of the
same complex and built of the same materials; one article
featured a smooth-faced, concrete block schoolhouse of two
rooms, constructed in Wilmington, North Carolina, using a
beach shell aggregate; one article pictured a castellated,
architect-designed garage, built of two-toned, smooth-faced
concrete block; and the balance, five articles, illustrated
and provided floor plans for single-family homes of
concrete block. These houses ranged in size from modest
workmen's cottages, like the twelve six-room cottages
constructed by the U.S. Portland Cement Company of Denver
for employees at a cost of $1,500 each, to an
architect-designed, thirteen-room mansion of "broken
ashlar" concrete block, constructed at Scarborough-on —
Hudson, New York, at a cost of $15,000. The article
emphasized the special facings cast onto the concrete
block, employing both black and white crushed marble
aggregate, tinted red to resemble pink granite, and used in
the trim as well: smooth-faced concrete guoins, sills, and
87
lintels, as well as cornice, specially cast ionic columns
and balusters were all tinted to resemble bluestone. The
article also emphasizes that even these special treatments
were affordable; the concrete work accounted for only
$1,162 of the $15,000 cost.26 In each case, the articles
represent not the norm, but the apex of concrete block
design in terms of special aggregates, facing textures and
materials, or the best designed, most economically feasible
plans for constructing workers' housing of concrete block.
From our survey of turn-of-the-century trade literature, we
have a good sense of the application of concrete block to
domestic construction. What the journals recommended and
what was actually constructed, however, are two different
things. While conducting historic sites inventories for
state preservation offices in New England, the Midwest and
the South in the 1970's and 1980's, J. Randall Cotton
observed many concrete block survivors from the early
1900 's. From his observation, the special aggregates and
pigmented faces so touted in period literature were
reserved for a very few, special buildings, such as
churches. 2
Found more commonly in Cotton's surveys were frame houses
resting on concrete block foundations, with rock-face,
cobblestone, panel-face and ashlar all popular face
88
designs. Another common application for concrete block was
in the construction of new automobile garages in the
1920 's; building codes reguired fire-proof construction,
and concrete block provided an affordable material. A
third common application for concrete block was in the
construction of farm buildings. Cotton writes that Sears
sold a "Farmer's Special" during this period, which
produced segmental block for the construction of silos, a
more elaborate application for concrete block than the
rectangular British farm buildings illustrated in
Concrete-Cement Age. Cotton found that concrete was an
especially popular material for farm buildings in the
Midwest, because "concrete block buildings were thought to
■ ? 8
survive tornadoes better than frame structures."*0
Cotton also found the use of concrete block most common in
rural areas, for the commercial buildings of small town
centers: feed stores, eguipment suppliers, and gas
stations; churches, again often in very rural communities,
29
were also sometimes built of concrete block.
The reasons for this prevalence of concrete block
construction in rural areas were twofold: first, the
fireproof ing value of concrete, and second, the fact that a
rural area might have too small a population to sustain
other building material suppliers and building
tradespeople: local lumber or brickyards, or local guarries
89
and skilled stone cutters. As the Sears Catalog and other
block machine manufacturers made block machines readily
available, the use of block spread rapidly in the
hinterlands, where there was often a regional supplier of
concrete, but a dearth of manufactured masonry materials.
Cotton's surveys did locate entire homes, as well as
foundations, of concrete block, most built between 1910 and
1915, at the same time as Mineville's tailings block
houses, during what Cotton terms the "post-Victorian"
period:
Block houses were built in Bungalow, Colonial
Revival (even Dutch Colonial!), and Foursquare
styles, as well as plain Homestead and farmhouse
types. The uniform, rectangular dimensions of block
made it an ideal building material for the boxy
foursquare houses of the period.
Quite often, two-storey [sic] houses were cast
block on the first floor, topped by shingled or
clapboarded upper floor. Like foundations, the
common face designs for house walls imitated stone.
More ornate designs like egg-and-dart , "daisy belt,"
scroll, or rope-face were usually used as trim in
water tables and belt courses, copings, cornices,
and sills. Panel-face blocks could be used as
corner quoins in conjunction with rock-faced walls.
Porches were commonly constructed of decorative
block; special moulds could produce columns,
capitals, bases, balusters, rails and under-porch
"lattice." Sears sold a complete porch block kit
for $57.25 in 1908, which included a choice of Ionic
or "Gothic" capital moulds. 30
Many of the architectural modes and motifs identified by
Cotton in his surveys are echoed in Mineville's tailings
90
block houses. Mineville's houses were built in the first
and second decades of the 20th century, the period Cotton
labels "post-Victorian," and featured both Colonial Revival
and Dutch Colonial details. Like the "boxy" homes
described by Cotton, Mineville's houses are strictly
perpendicular in plan, without curves or towers that would
be difficult to execute in modular blocks. None of the
tailings block houses within the study group were built
with tailings block below and wood shingles above; perhaps
to be consistent in the use of fire-proof, low-maintenance
materials. However, the very first row of tailings block
houses, "Bridal Row," built in Witherbee c.1907, did
feature wood-shingled second story gables as well as wood
columned porches (See Fig. 54). While none of the later
tailings block houses shared this feature, the design of
the Type One and Type Two homes, with a change in texture
or module at the gable peak from rough-faced to smooth
block, or from block to brick, was another form of this
differentiation. Many of the gabled homes were eventually
modified, with shingles or clapboard added to the gable
peak, above the tailings block base (See Fig.'s 24, 25,
27) .
The elaborately detailed Type Six house, built for the Mine
Superintendent at 511-513 Plank Road, featured many of the
decoratively cast blocks and elaborate porch details
91
described by Cotton. Mineville's engineers probably did
purchase special cast-iron plates, if not an entire "porch
kit" like the one sold by Sears, in order to form the
chamfered balusters, panel-faced quoins, and egg-and-dart
sill course of this elaborately detailed home. The scored
porch finials, the size and shape of melons, and the
square, molded capitals of the porch columns would have
been cast in individual box molds rather than block
machines, and may well have been featured in a "porch"
package sold by a block machine manufacturer. Other
evidence for the use of a special "porch kit" is found in
early photographs of 509 Plank Road (See Figure 45) . These
show an L-shaped, gambrel-roofed house, similar to the Type
One house in plan, but with a large front porch and a
large, geometric stained glass window. Carrying the porch
roof were two large, keystoned arches of segmental tailings
block, with another arch at each return; porch columns were
of tapered block, while the corner balusters were paneled,
with squared-off but elaborate railing spindles. Arched or
segmental blocks, like those carrying the porch roof of 509
Plank Road, were among the "porch kit" details found by
Cotton in c.1915, foursquare homes in both North Carolina
and Indiana. The two highly decorated Mineville examples,
509 and 511-513 Plank Road, represent concrete block at its
most elaborate. After about 1915, with the decline in the
use of concrete block in domestic construction, elaborately
92
decorated concrete block was no longer manufactured.
Is Tailings Block a Good Domestic Building Material?
As we have seen in the analysis of tailings block in the
"Material Properties" section, above, the combination of
iron ore tailings and Portland cement created an extremely
dense and heavy block. As mentioned briefly in the
Introduction, tailings block buildings have proved
extremely difficult to demolish or alter. In an interview
in the fall of 1989, one resident described his attempts to
add a room to the rear of Number 430 Wall Street, a Type
Four house. Although it was possible to saw-cut through
joints, it proved impossible to cut a large opening through
the block. A shed addition could only have been entered
through an existing rear door, and would not have created
the larger room desired. This same resident described a
problem with heating the house: the lack of insulation. He
was considering furring and insulating the house on the
exterior, then cladding the entire facade with aluminum
siding, although the expense of this work, along with his
frustration in building an addition, indicated that he
would prefer to move than to invest any further in the
3 1
house. x The technique of adding exterior insulation,
accompanied by aluminum siding, has been applied to No. 509
93
Plank road, which is now not visibly of tailings block and
was therefore not included in the study group (See Fig.
55) .
Also faced with the prospect of heat loss, the owner of one
of the very large former boarding houses, located across
from the Change House on Witherbee Road, formerly West or
Back Road, in Witherbee, painstakingly removed the upper
story of his house, block by block.32 While the tailings
block houses generally require less routine maintenance
than their wooden neighbors, and while they have proved
more fireproof, despite wood interior finishes, these
values seem offset, to their occupants, by the material's
weight and permanence, or its resistance to demolition and
alteration. The problem of lack of insulation, however, is
a problem endemic to older houses, and does not reflect on
tailings block as a material. Residents interviewed did
not seem to notice much insulating value in the thick
masonry walls, although one house toured in August of 1988
was comfortable on an otherwise steamy day. The relative
coolness of the tailings block houses in summer is
consistent with contemporary claims about the insulating
value of hollow concrete block.
Other ongoing problems have developed with the tailings
block houses, which will be discussed in more detail in
94
Chapter V. Essentially, these houses have proven to be as
durable as their original construction detailing and the
skill of their builders allowed. Because of the relative
newness of the material and the isolation of their
location, Witherbee-Sherman's staff carpenters and masons
had to have been inexperienced with the manufacture and use
of concrete block. Evidence of their experimentation with
untested methods is found in the deterioration of certain
stucco applique details found on the houses. Rather than
casting lintels and keystones of tailings block, for
instance, the mining company's contractors employed a
shortcut. The casting of lintels and keystones would have
required the construction of special box molds and the use
of steel reinforcing rods. Instead of reinforced masonry
lintels, stacked wood planks were used. To this wood, a
mixture of tailings cement was applied directly, and
decorative keystones either built up or formed over wood.
In time, this pastiche deteriorated; the false keystones
sheared from the plank back-up, and the composite wood
lintel was left exposed to the elements. In other
locations, masonry lintels were formed, but without
properly designed steel reinforcement. Movement and
cracking of surrounding masonry have resulted from these
built-in structural weaknesses. Porch construction was
another area where inexperience with masonry construction
caused deterioration. Many original tailings block or
95
tailings concrete slab porches have been largely replaced
as they were filled in to create additional rooms. The
original porches were built directly on the ground, with no
damp-proof course and no ventilation. As a result of this
practice, the highly decorative porch of No. 509 Plank Road
deteriorated rapidly and was removed by the mining company
for the present owners in the late 1940's. Other
porches undoubtedly underwent similar deterioration,
leaving occupants with no incentive to preserve the
original porch configurations. The poor design detailing
of the porches, combined with the difficulty in adding to
the tailings block houses through exterior masonry walls,
has led to their redesign and enclosure (See Fig.'s 30-33).
The Use of Tailings Block in the Heart of the Adirondacks:
The Selection of Cement Block by Mining Management
The choice of tailings block as a building material by
mining management was an unusual one. The most obvious
reason for the choice was one of circumstance: Mr. S.
Norton, the General Manager of Witherbee Sherman, had come
to Mineville after working for a cement manufacturer.
He, or those he worked for, may have had invested in the
recently developed regional cement industry. Mr. Norton,
as a reader of the newly organized cement trade journals,
96
may have realized the publicity value of the construction
of a concrete village "in the heart of the Adirondack
forests."35 Articles featuring the tailings block houses
were published in three journals between 1909 and 1915:
Cement Age in September 1909; the Monthly Bulletin of the
American Iron and Steel Institute in September 1913, and
Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers
in February 1915.
In the journals, the advantages of concrete block over wood
frame construction are described as three-fold: reductions
in routine maintenance (painting) ; protection against fire;
and reductions in fuel costs due to the insulating value of
the hollow block walls. The fact that the tailings existed
as a free source of high-quality aggregate is also named as
a reason for the choice. The construction cost of the
tailings block houses is variously given as the same as
wood construction (Cement Age) , or as 10% higher than wood
construction (Transactions) , with the savings in
maintenance paying the difference. Two other factors, not
mentioned in the articles, contributed to making the choice
of concrete block affordable: the depletion of local
large-dimension lumber in the mid-19th century, and the
establishment of regional Portland cement manufacturers in
the 1890's: the Helderberg Portland Cement Co. of Home
Cavern, headquartered in Albany, and the Glens Falls
97
Portland Cement Co. of Glens Falls, New York.
Cement Age illustrates the Witherbee Sherman Company's Port
Henry powerhouse, and Witherbee schoolhouse, both built of
monolithic or reinforced concrete, along with pictures of
the tailings block houses and tenements. The article does
not explain why the choice was made to use block, rather
than monolithic concrete construction, for the workmen's
houses. The issue may have been one of cost, although the
more elaborate of the block houses, which featured indoor
heating and plumbing systems, cost 12 cents per cubic foot,
and a block office building, with reinforced concrete
flooring, cost 17 cents per cubic foot, as compared with 14
cents a square foot for the "monolithic" school building.
Cost for the more modest concrete block tenements and
double houses, all without indoor plumbing, were much
lower: from 6 to 9 cents per cubic foot.36 The greatest
savings, however, may have been in labor costs. The
construction of reinforced or monolithic concrete buildings
must have required the on-site supervision of S. Lefevre,
the mine's chief engineer, or his immediate subordinates,
whose chief responsibilities were elsewhere: engineering
the safe removal of iron ore. The manufacture of the block
and the construction of the block houses could be executed
with much less supervision by less skilled workmen.
Structural inadequacies in the construction of the block
98
houses, like the faux keystones, may have occurred through
the unsupervised experimentation of workmen, not by the
engineers' design. Evidence for this is found in the fact
that the periodicals are quite specific about the use of a
particular block or brick machine, the dimensions of blocks
or the ratio of cement to tailings, but do not mention the
use of stuccoed wood for exterior trim.
Traditionally, housing for miners has been temporary in
nature, and invariably of wood. The housing usually was
built to match the life expectancy of the mines. When the
mines were exhausted, the housing left behind was depleted
as well; or, if of frame construction but well built, the
houses could be moved to a new site. Mineville's tailings
block houses were built when the local beds had been active
for half a century, already a significant length of time.
The mines would prove practical to mine for only a half
century more. By an irony of their construction, the
eighty-year old tailings block houses, constructed of a
by-product of the mines, have already survived the mines by
thirty years.
99
CHAPTER NOTES
1Frederic F. Lincoln, "A Concrete Industrial
Village," Cement Age: A Magazine Devoted to the Uses of
Cement (September 1909), 158.
2
^Sidney Mindess and J. Francis Young, Concrete,
(Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981),
14; Theodore H.M. Prudon, "Simulating Stone, 1860-1940:
Artificial Marble, Artificial Stone, and Cast Stone," APT
Bulletin XXI No. 3/4 (1989), 87.
-j
JSpencer B. Newberry, Hollow Concrete Block
Building Construction. (Chicago: Cement and Engineering
News, 1905), 8-9; and S. B. Newberry, Concrete Building
Blocks. (Philadelphia: Association of American Portland
Cement Manufacturers), 7; S. Lefevre, "Housing and
Sanitation at Mineville," Transactions of the American
Institute of Mining Engineers (February 1915), 232.
Charles Palliser, Practical Concrete-Block
Making. (New York: Industrial Publication Company, 1908) ,
66.
Newberry, Hollow Concrete Block Building
Construction, 14 .
Oswald C. Hering, Concrete and Stucco Houses:
The use of plastic materials in the building of country and
suburban houses in a manner to insure the qualities of
fitness, durability and beauty, (New York: McBride, Nast
and Company, 1912), 15.
7Lincoln, 159.
8J. Randall Cotton, "Ornamental Concrete Block
Houses," The Old-House Journal XII No. 8 (October 1984),
180.
9Lincoln, 160; Newberry, Hollow Block
Construction, 12-13.
100
10Ann Gillespie, "Early Development of the
Artistic Concrete Block: The Case of the Boyd Brothers,"
APT Bulletin XI No. 2 (1979), 30; Sidney Mindess and J.
Francis Young, "Historical Development of Cement and
Concrete," Concrete. (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc.), 14. The two companies which provided
the concrete for Mineville's tailings block houses, the
Glens Falls Portland Cement Company of Glens Falls, Warren
County, New York and the Helderberg Cement Company at Howe
Cavern, Scoharie County, New York began operations in 1894
and 1898, respectively, as described in Henrich Ries,
Ph.D., "Lime and Cement Industries of New York, Bulletin of
the New York State Museum No. 44 Vol. 8 (1901), 858, 866-69.
10Gillespie, 31.
i:LPalliser, 38-43.
12Cotton, 182.
13Gillespie, 39.
14Cotton, 183.
15Cotton, 182; Gillespie, 35.
16Cotton, 183; Palliser, 43-45.
17"House of Concrete Block, Attractive as to Color
and Texture," Concrete-Cement Age (June 1914), 297-98;
"House Built of Concrete Block with an Interesting Facing,"
and ""Advancing the Architectural Appeal of Concrete Wall
Units. "Concrete-Cement Age (April 1914), 167-170 and
195-97; "House of Concrete Blocks and Stucco: A Design
Involving a Combination of Materials Which Produce Very
Pleasing Results," Building Age 36 (May 1914), 59-60.
18"Spraying Freshly Made Block," Concrete-Cement
Age (January 1913); Palliser, 21-22.
101
19Charles H. Doubler, "How to Produce Realistic
Stone Facings," Concrete-Cement Age (December 1912), 55-57;
"Concrete Stone Tooled by Machinery; Methods in Manufacture
and Use of Products of the Onondaga Litholite Company,"
Concrete-Cement Age (February 1913), 61-65; "Concrete
Products — Architectural Considerations; The Materials for
and Treatments of Surfaces of Concrete Building Stone,"
Concrete-Cement Age (October 1913), 155-160.
20Newberry, Concrete Building Blocks. 11.
21Rolf R. Newman, "A Review of the Development in
the Construction of Concrete Houses — 1907 to 1914,"
Concrete-Cement Age (April 1914), 168-170.
22Gillespie, 30, 37.
0 3
Oswald Hering, "Concrete Block [letter to
editor]," Concrete-Cement Age (February 1913), 77-78; Frank
A. Bourne, "The Development of Concrete Block [letter to
editor answering letter by Hering cited above],"
Concrete-Cement Age (May 1913), 244-45; M. Wetzstein,
Oswald C. Hering, W. L. Rohrer, A. T. Bradley, Charles H.
Doubler, "Concrete Block — A Symposium," Concrete-Cement Age
(March 1913), 139-142; J. Frank Norris, W. M. Kinney, and
A. E. Cline, "Objections to Concrete Block, and the
Answers," and W. F. McGann, "Why are not more Concrete
Brick Used [in comparison with clay brick]?"
Concrete-Cement Age (August 1914), 71-73, 77-78; J. K.
Harridge, "Objections to Concrete Block, and the Answers,"
Concrete-Cement Age (September 1914), 126.
24Hering, Concrete and Stucco Houses, 52-53.
25"A11 the Exterior Trim of the Broadway
Presbyterian Church, New York City, is of Concrete," in
"Concrete Stone Tooled by Machinery," Concrete-Cement Age
(February 1913) 61-63; "St. Luke's Church, Chelsea, Mass.,"
and "Church of Epiphany, Dorchester, Mass.," in "The
Development of Concrete Block," Concrete-Cement Age (May,
1913) 244-45; "Concrete Block Cottages Built in England,"
Concrete-Cement Age (February 1913), 73; "Concrete Block
Cottage at Wayford Wood Estate, Norfolk, England," in
"Building Low Cost Concrete Houses in England,
Concrete-Cement Age (April, 1914), 185; "Unit Cow-Stalls,
Fodder Room and Pigsties," in "Concrete Block Farm
102
Buildings Built Economically in England," Concrete-Cement
Age (March 1913) 142; "Concrete Block School,"
Concrete-Cement Age (May 1913), 247; "Concrete Block
Garage, New Bedford, Mass." in "Two Tones of Granite-Faced
Block in Garage Wall," Concrete-Cement Age (April 1914),
170; "Concrete Block Cottages Built Complete for $1500
Each," Concrete-Cement Age (March 1913), 137-38; "Evanston,
Illinois, Concrete Block House," in "House of Concrete
Block, Attractive as to Color and Texture," and "Cottage
Built of White Face Block," Concrete-Cement Age (June
1913), 297 and 298; "Residence in Kansas City, Mo.,"
"Peoria, 111., House," and "Residence in Evanston, 111.,"
in "Advancing the Architectural Appeal of Concrete Wall
Units," Concrete-Cement Age (April 1914), 195-96; and
"House at Scarborough-On-Hudson Built of Specially Faced
Concrete Block," in "House Built of Concrete Block with
Interesting Facing," Concrete-Cement Age (April 1914), 167.
26Cotton, 183.
27Cotton, 181.
28Cotton, 182.
29Cotton, 181-82.
30Interview with resident of 430 Wall Street,
October 8, 1989.
31Interview with resident of 430 Wall Street,
October 8, 1989.
32L. N. Babbit, "Living in Concrete Houses,"
Concrete-Cement Age (April 1914), 190-91.
33Interview with Mrs. Martin, owner, with her
husband, Howard, of 509 Plank Road, October 8, 1989.
34Lincoln, 158
35Lincoln, 158
103
36Lincoln, 162
104
CHAPTER V: TAILINGS BLOCK HOUSES TODAY
A Survey of Houses in Study Group; Typical Alterations
There are several types of alterations which are common
among the twenty-five houses of the study group. Overall,
the single-family homes have been altered more freguently
than the two-family homes. This phenomenon was explained
in a 1989 interview with a resident of one of the large
Type Four double houses: it had been difficult for him to
convince the co-owner of his home to share the cost of
proposed repairs or alterations. The most common
alteration is that of roof replacement, altering original
slate roofs by replacing them wholly or in part with
raised-seam metal or asphalt shingle roofing. This is
followed by window and door replacement, which alters the
configuration and material of original, multi-lite wood
windows and panelled or plank doors. Another very common
alteration is the construction of exterior chimneys of
cement block. Next most freguent is the construction of
additions, usually in the form of attached sheds or
filled-in porches. The next most common alteration is the
partial cladding or covering over of tailings block with
wood clapboard, shingles, or with aluminum or vinyl
siding. This cladding is usually limited to the upper
105
portion of the 2nd story; typically, at the gable peak of
the Type One, gambrel-roofed houses. The final category of
alterations is exterior painting, which markedly alters the
appearance of the block.
Altogether, 18 of the 25 houses have had original slate
roofs either partially or completely replaced with either
asphalt or metal roofs. In some cases, upper roofs have
been replaced with raised-seam metal roofs, while the slate
has been retained at lower roofs, as at 480 Joyce, a Type
One house, and at 423 Foote, a Type Three house (See
Fig.'s 27 & 33). At 430-32 Wall Street, a Type Four
house, half of the double house features a new metal
replacement roof, while the other half retains its original
slate (See Fig. 56) . Intact slate roofs remain at 444 and
446 Wall Street, both Type Two homes (See Fig.'s 30 & 31).
The reason for the replacement of original slate roofs in
the majority of the houses can be found in the type of
slate originally used. According to Frederic Lincoln, the
roofing material chosen was "Granville second guality sea
green slate, which is as cheap as lumber at that
point."2 The inferior slate almost invariably failed, or
proved difficult to patch, and was eventually replaced.
Another built-in flaw in the tailings block houses was
their lack of fireplaces and chimneys. The majority of the
106
houses were originally heated only by coal-fired kitchen
stove, and nearly every home has augmented this original
flue with a central heating system requiring an additional
masonry chimney, usually of concrete block. Some of the
larger homes, like 423 Foote, a Type Three house, have two
chimneys, perhaps indicating the addition of a wood burning
stove or fireplace in addition to the furnace (See Fig.
33) . The Type Six house, unlike the rest of the houses in
the study group, originally featured a coal-fired central
heating system, and its large, central, brick chimney, with
two interior fireplaces, has not been altered (See Fig.
57) .
Window replacement, like roof replacement, has been
conducted in an ad hoc fashion. Many of the tailings block
houses retain at least one or two original windows, while
the rest have been replaced. All of the original windows
were double hung, but configurations varied. Some of the
fancier homes featured multi-light (fifteen-over-one) wood
windows. Most of the others originally had simpler,
two-over-two light windows. Wood frames were flat, without
raised moldings. Of the twenty-five houses in the study
group, only half retain at least fifty percent of their
original windows. Of Type One houses, 482 Joyce is the
prototype, retaining all of its original two-over-two wood
windows (See Fig. 28) The original double windows of the
107
first floor parlor at both Number 474 and Number 484 Joyce
Road have been replaced with the same triple window (See
Fig.'s 24 & 29). Two of the Type Two houses, Numbers 444
and 446 Wall Street, retain most of their original
fifteen-over-one, multi-light wood windows. However, 446
Wall Street does have early replacement, or perhaps
mismatched but original, two-over-one light windows at
upper floors (See Fig.'s 30 & 31). One of the Type Three
houses, 423 Foote, retains multi-light wood windows at the
ground floor (See Fig. 33). Four of the Type Four houses,
430-32 Wall Street, and 408-410, 409-411, and 416-418
Sherman, retain their original two-over-two wood windows
(See Fig.'s 56, 58, 59, & 60). All of the original
multi-light windows of 503-505 Joyce, the Type Five house,
have been replaced or altered into one-over-one wood
windows, with exterior metal storm windows. Most of the
windows of the Type Six house are now one-over-one wood
windows, probably installed at the same time that the
easternmost porch was filled in. This house does retain
two-over-two wood windows at the carriage house and rear
kitchen ell (See Fig.'s 61 & 62). In general, the
multi-light wood windows seem to have been used on the
fancier of the single and double houses, but the Type Six
house is an exception to this rule. Overall, the original
multi-light or two-over-two windows have been retained
where they remained in good condition, sometimes only at
108
one window or at one floor, and replaced when they
deteriorated, with exterior storm windows installed over
original windows at many of the houses for added
insulation.
Original wood-and-glass front entrance doors have been
replaced at least as frequently as original wood windows,
and for the same reasons. The simpler houses originally
featured very rough plank doors (See Fig. 18) , which have
all been replaced. The fancier homes featured hardwood
doors with a single recessed panel below and a large single
light above, as retained at 511-513 Plank Road, the Type
Six house (See Fig. 63) .
The third most frequent alteration is the construction of
shed porches and additions, and the filling in of
originally open porches. Of the twenty-five houses in the
study group, seven originally featured porches. The two
Type Three and single Type Five and Type Six houses
featured ground floor porches that were notched out of
corners, under overhanging second story bedrooms (See
Fig.'s 51 & 45). The three Type Two houses featured very
simple, open, shed-roofed porches of wood (See Fig.'s 18,
49). Of these seven original porches, six have been filled
in to create new front rooms, a symptom of the difficulty
of adding to the tailings block houses by demolishing side
109
or rear walls (See Fig. 's 33, 64 ,65, 30 & 32). Simple,
shed-like additions were also built along the front
elevation of three of the Type One houses: Nos. 427-431
Foote (See Fig.'s 66, 67, & 68), and one of the Type Four
houses: No. 430-32 Wall Street (See Fig. 56) . Altogether,
new rooms have been created from original porches or added
sheds at ten of the twenty-five houses in the study group.
Partial cladding of the houses, particularly at upper
gables, has occurred at nine of the twenty five houses, and
is limited to Type One and Type Three houses. All of the
Type One houses on Foote Street have been clad in this
manner, with horizontal or vertical wood siding, clapboard,
or shingles, generally beginning at gable peak and
continuing halfway down second story window (See Fig.'s 66,
67, 68, & 69) . On Joyce Street, the majority of Type One
houses have been treated similarly (See Fig.'s 23, 24, &
27) , while No. 476 Joyce Street has clapboard only at its
gable peak, and not extending down around the central
window (See Fig. 25) . The reason that wood cladding was
limited to the gable peaks is found in the original
tailings block construction. For most of the Type One
houses, smooth-faced tailings block was used only at second
floors, beginning at gable peak and extending midway down
second floor windows. This smooth-faced block eventually
weathered, revealing coarse aggregate masked by the uneven
110
texture of the rough-faced block below. Owners then
covered up the uneven block at upper gables with wood
siding. In some cases, no siding was used, but the gable
peak was painted, as at 484 Joyce (See Fig. 29) . In the
case of 405 Foote Street, a Type Three house, stucco was
applied directly to smooth-faced tailings block, and
immediately failed (See Fig. 70) . Vertical board siding
was added to cover the stucco (See Fig. 33) .
The final category of alterations is the painting of the
houses. The tailings block itself has been coated with
paint at only six of the twenty five houses in the study
group. Almost all of the houses that have been painted are
located on Foote Road: three Type One houses, Nos. 425,
427, and 429, and the two Type Three houses, Nos. 405 and
423 (See Fig.'s 69, 66, 67, & 33). The proximity of these
five houses may account for the similarity of treatment:
the tailings block is attractive in context, but might
appear drab next to a freshly painted house. The sixth
house to have been painted is also a Type One house, No.
484 Joyce Road (See Fig. 29) .
Ill
A Survey of Houses in Study Group: Typical Condition
(Exterior) . Including Types of Deterioration and Causes
In general, the tailings block houses are in good
condition. However, certain types of deterioration have
occurred within each of the six house types. The Type One
houses are generally in very good condition, in part
because of their small size, the simplicity of their
design, and their lack of projecting decoration. No
settlement cracking is visible in any of the Joyce Road
houses, except in the "monolithic" concrete entrance steps
(See Fig. 28) .
For the most part, projecting sill courses at ground level,
and projecting string courses between first and second
floors, are in excellent condition, with no evidence of
displacement, few open joints, and little cracking. The
projecting string course above the first floor at 482 Joyce
Street does display horizontal cracking, and on closer
examination, reveals a lack of vertical joints between
smooth-faced blocks. To distinguish the surface texture
and rhythm of the projecting string course from the coursed
block above and below, the original builders used a
smooth-faced block which was then coated with stucco,
creating the illusion of a monolithic masonry band. The
visible cracking in this string course at the east
112
elevation of No. 482 Joyce has developed as the very thin
stucco skim coat has begun to fail, separating from the
smooth-faced block substrate. This deterioration has
gradually progressed, after years of differential shrinkage
and expansion of coating and substrate during freeze-thaw
cycles (See Fig. 28) . The same failure mechanism has
occurred at 474 Joyce Street, where the stucco skim coat
has delaminated from a second story window sill, revealing
the two smooth-faced blocks underneath (See Fig. 71) . This
same house displays one open joint in the stucco-coated
block sill course (See Fig. 24). Although the thin stucco
veneer over smooth-faced block, which did not allow for
thermal movement of the substrate, has failed in several
locations, the tailings block itself is in excellent
condition. Only one sizable area loss was noted in
decorative or projecting tailings block, at 480 Joyce
Street, in the string course just to the left and above the
entrance door (See Fig. 27) .
The Type One houses along Foote Street lack projecting
string courses, and are difficult to inspect due to the
prevalence of paint coatings. It is significant to note
that even where the tailings block remains unpainted, the
projecting lintels and keystones have often been painted
white, as at 472 and 474 Joyce Road (See Fig. 's 23 & 24).
Like the siding over deteriorated gable blocks, the
113
painting of lintels and keystones has taken place only
after deterioration has occurred and patching has been
performed. Most, if not all, of the lintels lacking
keystones have had original, spalled or deteriorated
keystones removed. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, the
keystones were not cast elements, but were created of wood
and stucco. In general, however, construction was sound,
and the projecting eaves of the Type One houses have
protected these facades from water penetration and
subsequent deterioration.
The three Type Two houses are generally in good condition,
but display some of the same modes of deterioration as the
Type One houses. The deterioration of keystones and sills,
caused by a reliance on a thin stucco coating, occurs again
here. Number 446 Wall Street, which has been well
maintained and retains its original slate roof and porch,
has had all its keystones removed, no doubt following their
deterioration. The removal of the keystones and
surrounding projecting layers of stucco has revealed the
wood back-up material of the lintels. The wood appears
somewhat rotten and sheds paint, a result of moisture
trapped between the wood and the stucco veneer during the
years that the keystones remained. Deflection has occurred
in the running bond brickwork above the second floor window
at the front elevation, indicating that the wooden lintel
114
is inadequate to carry the load of the heavy tailings brick
making up the gable above. The thin coat of stucco
covering the smooth-faced block sill below this window has
also deteriorated and been removed, leaving an open joint
between the two blocks (See Fig.s 31 & 72). Numbers 444
and 448 Wall Street retain keystones at upper floors, but
have had them removed, and remaining, projecting, stuccoed
lintels painted, at the ground floor (See Fig. 's 30 & 32).
The two Type Three houses are generally in very good
condition, although both have been painted, making
inspection difficult. Number 423 Foote Street retains
keystones only at the ground floor, while no keystones
remain at Number 405. No settlement cracking is visible at
either house, and the deteriorated stucco which plagued
Number 405 immediately following construction (See Fig.
70) , has been covered in vertical wood planking (See Fig.
33). This vertical siding is somewhat deteriorated,
indicating that the moisture problem which caused the
original stucco to fail remains. The installers of the
siding probably felt that to install furring or nailers
over the block substrate, to create air space for
ventilation behind the plank siding, would cause the siding
to project too far from the face of the building.
The seven Type Four houses are generally in fair to good
115
condition, displaying settlement cracking in various
locations due to their large size and lack of vertical
expansion joints. Detailing which would allow for
differential movement along long expanses of cement masonry
walls would not be developed for years after the
construction of the tailings block houses. Vertical
cracking has typically developed along corners and between
lintels and sills, two areas of weakness. At 417-19
Sherman Road, cracks have developed along the north
elevation, running from the center of first floor lintels,
stepping upwards through a projecting string course and
ending at the center of second floor sills (See Fig. 73).
These cracks have been caulked. Similar cracking has
developed from lintel to sill along the west elevation of
430-32 Wall Street (See Fig. 56) . Severe cracking has also
occurred vertically at the northeast and northwest corners
of this double house, with half-inch cracks progressing
vertically right through the center of projecting,
panel-faced quoins (See Fig.'s 74 & 75). These cracks have
3
also been caulked, but periodically reopen.
The single Type Five house is in good condition, and
appears well-maintained. A network of hairline step-cracks
has appeared in the gable ends of the house, which may be
related to the weakness of the wooden lintels below. The
brick of gable ends is in poor condition compared to the
116
tailings block, displaying open joints and some
discoloration (See Fig. 76) .
The single Type Six house is also in good condition, but
displays deterioration which has resulted from its
exuberant and sometimes poorly detailed decoration. The
most serious problem is cracking of the roof slab of the
remaining open porch (See Fig. 39) . Another visible
problem is the deterioration of the slate roof, which has
been removed in many locations and replaced with roofing
fabric and coated with tar (See Fig.'s 22 & 35). A final
problem, not visible from the exterior, is the apparent
outward movement of the second floor gabled roof of the two
porches. This has exacerbated leaking, and resulted in
gaps between plastered walls and ceilings at the closets
housed in these locations. The carriage house displays
corner cracking similar to that found at the Type Four
house, 430-32 Wall Street (See Fig. 40) . The causes of and
solutions to all of these problems will be discussed in the
chapter which follows.
117
CHAPTER NOTES
^■Interview with resident of 430 Wall Street,
October 8, 1989.
2Frederick Frederic F. Lincoln, "A Concrete
Industrial Village," Cement Age: A Magazine Devoted to the
Uses of Cement (September 1909), 162.
3Interview with resident of 430 Wall Street,
October 8, 1989.
118
CHAPTER VI: CONCLUSION: MINEVILLE PRESERVATION
Recommendations for Future Maintenance and Repair of
Housing
Mineville's tailings block houses have been altered in
several ways, as described in the previous chapter. For
the most part, however, the tailings block houses remain
intact, presenting an appearance very similar to that
documented in photographs taken at the time of their
construction, eighty years ago. We can attribute the
preservation of the tailings block houses to a phenomenon
frequently observed within the preservation community: the
poverty of a community limits the ability of its residents
to perform "home improvement" alterations. The addition
and filling in of front porches, perhaps the alteration
with the greatest impact on the appearance of the houses,
has declined proportionately with mining activity. Most of
these additions date from the 1950's and 1960's, when
mining operations were winding to a close.
Other alterations, including the replacement of slate roofs
with metal or asphalt shingles, the partial cladding of
tailings block with wood, aluminum, or vinyl siding, the
partial or complete painting of facades, and the replace-
119
ment of original windows, have all been undertaken as home
maintenance projects. New, affordable building materials
have replaced or covered the original, faulty or
deteriorated products. These repairs solve problems at
least temporarily, but employ materials with a limited
life-span. New metal or asphalt shingle roofs have
replaced deteriorated and leaking slate roofs, but will not
last nearly as long as the originals. New,
energy-efficient windows, different in configuration from
the originals, have replaced deteriorated and inefficient
ones, but again, will not last as long. Paint and cladding
have been applied over non-matching repairs to deteriorated
tailings block, or have provided a short-term substitute
for repointing. None of these projects have been
undertaken with preservation principals in mind, because
the tailings block houses have not been invested with
historical, technological, or aesthetic significance.
Instead, residents are stigmatized by the community at
large; they are not from town, but from the tailings block
"company houses." The long-term preservation of the
tailings block houses will depend on the recognition, both
within Mineville and Moriah at large, of their
significance.
The tailings block houses are generally in good condition,
but the typical modes of deterioration, if not reversed,
120
will eventually obliterate much of the ornament, and
thereby the charm, of these houses. The previous chapter
has described the failure of stucco coatings applied over
block sills and string courses at houses Type One and Type
Two. Where thin stucco coatings have failed, cracking and
spalling, they should be sounded, and any loose material
removed. Any open joints which remain between exposed
blocks should be repointed as necessary. A thin mortar
mixture using tailings aggregate could then be reapplied,
or omitted altogether. Although not an ideal detail, the
stucco coatings have lasted eighty years before failing.
It is an aesthetic decision whether or not to maintain this
smooth coating, which may be appropriately left to
individual owners.
More serious is the problem of projecting lintels and
keystones at houses Type One, Type Two, Type Three, and
Type Five, which appear for the most part to be stucco
applied directly to wood back-up. The ideal solution for
these areas would be to replace these lintels with new,
steel-reinforced, cast concrete lintels. However, this
would be prohibitively expensive. Another possibility
would be to remove inadeguate wood lintels, and based on an
engineer's recommendation, insert back-to-back steel
angles, fronted by concrete block, and to coat this
concrete with a tailings stucco, built up in half-inch
121
layers to replicate the original keystone and projecting
masonry lintel. The final and most affordable solution is
one which has already been practiced at the Type Five
house, where the owner has removed the failing stucco
veneer at lintels, and replaced the stucco with wood,
maintaining the projecting, angled profile of the lintels
and keystones, and painting these elements white to protect
the wood (See Fig. 64) . Assuming that the remaining
lintels are structurally adequate, this repair is practical
and does not markedly alter the appearance of the house.
This lintel repair could be applied universally to all the
tailings block houses featuring keystones.
A problem unique to the Type Four houses, and to the
carriage house behind the Type Six house, is the
development of settlement and corner cracks. For the most
part, these are hairline cracks, and do not pose a serious
problem. Where the cracks have progressed to 1/4" or more,
the owners have typically caulked them on an annual basis.
Unfortunately, readily available, light-colored caulk has
been used, instead of a more appropriate dark gray or black
caulk. Where cracks have opened 1/2" or more, as at 417-19
Sherman Road, it may eventually be necessary to first
shore, and then take these corners down, rebuilding them
with new vertical expansion joints. Wherever possible,
original block would be reused; for block which has cracked
122
through, a source of salvaged block might be found.
Finding the correct replacement block would be difficult,
however, since the cracked blocks are special, panel-faced
quoin blocks. Simple molds might be cast from existing,
intact quoin blocks, and tailings block cement mixed in a
1:5 proportion, utilizing tailings from the surviving
mounds.
Another area where cracks have appeared is the gable ends
of the single Type Five house. This network of hairline
step-cracks may be related to the weakness of the wooden
lintels below. The brick itself is in poor condition
compared to the tailings block, displaying open joints and
some discoloration. The brick may perform more poorly than
the block because of a difference in their manufacture:
the brick were composed of a 1:3 mixture of cement to
tailings, creating a harder, less plastic material than the
1:5 tailings block. The cracking is relatively minor, but
the brickwork at gable ends is in need of repointing.
A structural problem has developed in at least one
location, at the remaining open porch of the Type Six
house. The roof slab has cracked as a result of inadequate
reinforcement of this cast concrete element (See Fig. 39) .
This crack should be monitored over the course of two or
three years, using "tell-tale" crack monitors, which use a
123
simple gauge to determine the extent of movement. If the
crack is active, a remedial repair might involve the
installation of steel straps at the base of the slab,
spanning between vertical posts which support the porch
roof.
A result of poor detailing is the lack of adeguate roof
flashing at the Type Six house. The owner has made
localized repairs, removing failed slate and using roofing
felt and mastic patches to bridge interior leaks, but the
problem is ongoing (See Fig.'s 22 & 35). Ideally, new
metal flashing should be installed at all ridges, angles,
and valleys of the intersecting gambrel roofs. A final
problem, not visible from the exterior, is the apparent
outward movement of the second floor, gabled roof of the
two porches. This movement has exacerbated leaking which
had developed at the gable valleys, and has resulted in
gaps between plastered walls and ceilings at the closets
housed in these locations. Again, this should be monitored
to determine if the movement is stable or ongoing.
Adeguate flashing should help prevent interior leaks in the
future, but cracks will probably continue to develop at
this sensitive joint between wall and ceiling.
For the most part, the repairs recommended here could be
performed by the homeowners themselves, although some
124
training would be required to execute expert repointing.
Since many of the houses display similar problems, it would
be very helpful if homeowners could be trained together,
through a one or two day long workshop: "Maintenance and
Repair of the Tailings Block House." Sample repairs could
be performed on actual houses; different seminars could
arranged for specific problems or individual house types.
Appropriate tools and materials might be distributed to
interested homeowners. Organization and proposed funding
for such a workshop is detailed in the section which
follows.
Possible Sources of Funding for Housing Preservation
Very often, grants for historic preservation are tied to
the certification of landmark status of a building or
neighborhood by the municipal or state government.
Mineville currently lacks such official designation, but
has recently been studied as part of a reconnaissance level
survey of historic resources in the town of Moriah,
undertaken by the Essex County Planning Office and the
Housing Assistance Program of Essex County. This survey
was funded by a grant from the New York State Office of
Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, with
technical assistance from the Preservation League of New
125
York State. This preliminary survey is the first step in
generating a thematic National Register nomination, and one
of its recommendations was that a more intensive survey be
conducted "on all the historic resources attributable to
the theme of iron mining and manufacturing."1 This
intensive survey would focus on remaining mining
structures, both industrial and domestic, and would include
the tailings block houses of Witherbee-Mineville. This
intensive survey would then result in a National Register
nomination.
Because this process is well underway, the following
discussion of funding sources will assume that Mineville's
tailings block houses have been listed in the National
Register, as part of a thematic nomination recognizing
Essex County's national dominance as an iron-producing
region, c.1880. Once certified, Mineville's tailings block
homeowners would have to create a community organization,
giving homeowners the not-for-profit status which is
another frequent requirement of grant programs. Because
the tailings block houses are generally in good condition,
funding requirements for exterior preservation work are
low. However, the comfort and long-term desirability of
the houses would be enhanced by an upgrading of mechanical
systems, and by increasing the energy efficiency of the
homes.
126
Programs designed to encourage the preservation of the
tailings block houses should be developed in three areas,
to be funded by different sources. The first, and most
critical, would be educational programs, establishing the
technological and historical significance of the tailings
block houses. The second priority, aimed at preserving the
buildings' exteriors, would be home maintenance and
restoration workshops, which would train homeowners to make
repairs to deteriorated wood and masonry elements
themselves, providing tools, materials and funds for the
repairs. The third type of program would assist owners in
upgrading mechanical systems and increasing the energy
efficiency of the tailings block houses.
Currently, information about the tailings block houses is
available locally at the Port Henry Public Library, in the
Witherbee Sherman Collection, and at the Brewster Library
of the Essex County Museum and Historical Society. The
Essex County Museum also has a permanent exhibition of
photographs and artifacts depicting iron ore mining and
domestic life in turn-of-the-century Witherbee-Mineville.
This collection, lent by local mining historian and former
Republic Steel Superintendent Patrick Farrell of Mineville,
includes photographs of Mineville 's tailings block houses,
and the houses' earliest, immigrant residents. An
127
exhibition incorporating these photographs and others
referenced in this paper could be held at the Essex County
Museum, or in rented or donated public space in the
commercial center of Moriah, Port Henry. This exhibit
could also travel to the public schools, to be accompanied
with month-long units on the mining history of the
community, designed for elementary, junior, and high school
levels. Former mine employees and local historians could
be recruited to lead local school children on tours of
remaining mine facilities and to give lectures; peer tours
could be held, with the children of Witherbee and Mineville
showing their classmates both the interiors and the
exteriors of company housing. The tailings block houses
should be celebrated, and their innovative exploitation of
a local resource studied. A possible funding source for
the exhibit and public school programs might be the New
York State Council on the Arts, which provides funding for
projects in the fields of architecture, architectural
history, historic preservation, industrial design, and
2
architectural documentation.
Following the exhibit and educational programs, workshops
could be organized to encourage the physical preservation
of the tailings block houses. Workshops could be sponsored
by a new not-for-profit community group, perhaps called the
"Tailings Block Homeowners' Association." Help in
128
organizing this not-for-profit group might be available
from the Community and Neighborhood Assistance Program
(CNAP) of the New York State Department of State, which
provides technical assistance and guidance to not-for —
profit organizations in depressed communities of New York
State. CNAP might also help identify funding sources
for home maintenance workshops. One possible source for
workshops funding might be the previously mentioned New
York State Council on the Arts. Another New York State
source might be the Rural Areas Revitalization Program, a
program of the New York State Division of Housing and
Community Renewal, which provides grants of up to $100,000
to fund a portion of the expenses of a specific community
revitalization project, including the preservation or
improvement of housing resources. If we assume that
homeowners contributed the necessary labor, then remedial
exterior repairs: spot repointing, caulking, and lintel
restoration, would cost an average of less than $1000 per
house in tools and materials, particularly if tools were
shared. More elaborate repairs: slate roof replacement or
wood window restoration, could cost up to $10,000 for the
average house, again assuming that the homeowner could
contribute at least some of the labor. This contributed
labor might consist of laying new roofing substrate or
installing flashing. Additional state funding for these
more elaborate repairs might be available from the Historic
129
Preservation Matching Grant Program of the Environmental
Quality Bond Act, which honors donated labor as "funds" to
be matched. This program, administered through the New
York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic
Preservation, is available only to historic buildings
listed on the State or National Register of Historic Places
at the time of application. Finally, technical and
organizational assistance might be available through the
privately funded Preservation League of New York State.
A program which might both serve the long-term preservation
of the tailings block houses, and answer the needs and
priorities of community residents, would be one which
upgraded interior mechanical systems and improved the
energy efficiency of the tailings block houses. Although
the block houses were considered adeguately insulated at
the turn of the century, the hollow space built into the
blocks has proved inadeguate by modern standards. At least
one resident mentioned the expedient of applying furring
strips, fiberglass insulation, and aluminum or vinyl siding
at the exterior of the tailings block house, a solution
which has already been executed at 509 Plank Road (See Fig.
55). 6 Raising awareness of the significance of tailings
block will help prevent this type of treatment in the
future, but practical aid in reducing heating costs would
be the most effective way to preserve the tailings block
130
houses from exterior insulation. Technical assistance in
developing an alternative method of insulating the houses
might be available through the Not-For-Prof it Energy
Conservation Program of New York State. This program is a
partnership between the state and sixteen regional
community foundations, which provide grants for technical
studies, energy audits, workshops, and training.7 Two
federal sources might also provide funding: the Farmer's
Home Administration, which provides FmHA Rural Housing
Loans to not-for-profit organizations representing
low-income families for the purpose of repairing homes in
small rural communities; and the Neighborhood Reinvestment
Corporation, a congressionally chartered corporation which
provides housing rehabilitation loans to low-income
families across the country.
Mineville Preserved: The Tailings Block Houses as
Monuments to the 19th Century Industry which Caused the
Development of this Region
Mineville's tailings block houses are probably unique, and
certainly the only houses of this type to be profiled in
contemporary periodicals. As such, they are significant in
the development of concrete block building technology.
Because the tailings block is in such fine condition, these
131
houses may actually represent an improvement over modern
concrete block construction, and a building technology
which might be reproduced locally wherever iron ore is
mined. The strongest argument for the preservation of the
tailings block houses, however, does not rest with their
significance to the history of building technology. The
tailings block houses, nestled in the shadow of the
tailings pile that made them possible, are important
monuments to the history of the community which still
occupies these houses. Mineville is now being recognized
as the heart of the iron mining and manufacturing activity
fundamental to the development of Moriah. It is to be
hoped that this recognition by the county and state will
translate into future education, training, and preservation
investment in the tailings block houses of Mineville.
132
CHAPTER NOTES
■"■The Essex County Planning Office, Reconnaissance
Level Survey of Historic Resources in the Town of Moriah,
New York, August 1989, 144.
Preservation League of New York State,
Preservation Directory: A Guide to Programs.
Organizations, and Agencies in New York State. 1988, 61.
Preservation League of New York State, 69.
"^Preservation League of New York State, 60.
Preservation League of New York State, 66.
Interview with resident of 430 Wall Street,
October 8, 1989.
Preservation League of New York State, 50.
Preservation League of New York State, 35-36.
133
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In the Bibliography which follows, these abbreviations are
used for archives consulted:
AVRY Avery Library, Columbia University
BRWS Brewster Library, Essex County Museum & Historical
Society
BTLR Butler Library, Columbia University
ECCH Essex County Courthouse
ENLI Engineering Library, Columbia University
NYPL New York Public Library
NYHS New York Historical Society
NYUL New York University Library
PHL Port Henry Public Library
Following each archive symbol, where applicable, is the
call number used by that library for that reference.
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Keller, James C. "Boosting Better Block in Cleveland."
Concrete-Cement Age 5 (September 1914) 127-28.
Kinney, W. M. and A. E. Cline. "Proper Mixtures in Brick
Manufacture." Concrete-Cement Age 5 (October 1914)
163.
[NYPL, VEA +]
Lefevre, S. "Housing and Sanitation at Mineville." Mining
and Metalurgy Bulletin 98 (Feb. 1915) 227-238.
[NYPL]
Lincoln, Frederic F. "A Concrete Industrial Village.
Mineville, New York, in the heart of the Adirondack
forests is being rebuilt in concrete. Wooden
buildings fast disappearing. Low first cost, fire
protection and small cost of repairs responsible for
139
the change." Cement Age 9 (September 1909) 158-165
[NYPL, VEA; PHL]
"'Manufacturing' Concrete Houses at Low Cost — Work at
Midland, Pa." Concrete-Cement Aae 4 (April 1914)
159-60.
[NYPL, VEA +]
McGann, W. F. "Why are not More Concrete Brick Used?"
Concrete-Cement Aae 4 (August 1914) 77-78.
[NYPL, VEA +]
Newman, Rolf R. "A Review of the Development in the
Construction of Concrete Houses — 1907 to 1914."
Concrete-Cement Aae 4 (April 1914) 168-70.
[NYPL, VEA +]
Norris, J. Frank, W. M. Kinney, and A. E. Cline.
"Objections to Concrete Block, and the Answers."
Concrete-Cement Aae 5 (August 1914) 71-73.
[NYPL, VEA +]
"Some Attractive Dwellings Near Pittsburgh."
Concrete-Cement Age 1 (December 1912) 57-58.
[NYPL, VEA +]
"Ten fire-proof houses of field and pre-cast concrete."
Concrete (Aug. 1918) 69-71.
[NYPL, VEA+]
Thompson, C. C. "Spraying Freshly Made Block."
Concrete-Cement Age 2 (January 1913) 25.
[NYPL, VEA +]
"Wet Process Block Machine." Concrete-Cement Age 2
(January 1913) 53.
[NYPL, VEA +]
Newspaper Articles Contemporary with Mineville's
Construction
"Witherbee Sherman Co. Suffers Severe Loss." Plattsburah
Sentinel (June 19, 1914).
[Cited by Barbara Denton in paper at BRWS]
MAPS
1858 J.H. French, Super, of the New York State Survey.
Map of Essex Co. . New York. Philadelphia: E.A.
Balch, Publishers, 1858. (Moriah shown divided into
140
squares or plats; includes Port Henry. Area of
Mineville outlined but not designated except to
indicate structures and plot owners, including M. &
L. Reed, D. Weatherbee, and the American Mineral
Co. Three separators are indicated and an area is
marked "iron ore."
[NYPL, Map Div. ]
1876 O.W. Gray & Son. New Topographical Atlas of Essex
County. New York. Philadelphia: O.W. Gray & Son,
1876. Atlas includes charts showing population of
Moriah, including Mineville and Port Henry, in
1845,50,55,60,65,70, & 75; County Manufactures and
Iron Mining, giving numbers of employees and dollars
generated (in 1875) ; and town maps including
Mineville. Also included are engraved plates
illustrating churches and homes, including St.
Peters and St. Pauls Church in Mineville — a simple
gothic revival church and greek revival/italianate
house and barn; and commercial buildings and
residences in Port Henry. Plate 41, Map of
Mineville, is in scale of 20 rods to 1 inch. Map
shows two active mines at center of town, several
stores to west, church and school to southeast, with
the J. Keough hotel, and approximately 70
houses/structures/lots with individual owners
designated. )
[NYPL, Map Div. ]
1911 Essex County New York. Everts Publishing Co. :
1911. (Map shows Mineville, Moriah Center, and Port
Henry as part of Moriah) .
[NYPL, Map Div. ]
1916
[ BRWS ]
Sanborn Map Company. Mineville. Essex County. New
York. October 1916. Including Witherbee. New York:
Sanborn Map Company, 1916. (Insurance map shows
Witherbee-Sherman & Co. property in 9 plates,
indicating construction materials) .
1953 Essex County Highway Dept. Map of Essex County,
Chester, VT: National Survey Co., 1953.
[NYPL, Map Div. ]
1955
[ECCH]
County of Essex, State of New York. Hamlets of
Mineville & Witherbee. Town of Moriah. Plattsburgh,
NY: Joseph J. Martina. Reg. Prof. Eng. , November
1955. (Map filed with county is result of survey
required prior to sale of company houses) .
141
MICROFORM EDITIONS
Rosenquist, Valerie Beth. The Iron Ore Eaters: A Portrait
of the Mining Community of Moriah. New York. ( Ph . D .
Dissertation, Duke University) Ann Arbor, MI: UMI
Dissertation Information Service, 1987.
[Facsimile Copy]
UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL
Brennan, Bob. Interview with Author. Mineville, Moriah,
New York, 2 August 1988. (2nd generation resident
and former employee of Republic Steel in Mineville.
Lives in wood-frame company house dating from
19-teens. )
Denton, Barbara. "The Social and Economic Decline of a
Mining Community." Undergraduate Sociology Paper,
Plattsburgh State University, November 10, 1981.
(Based on interviews with 21 former miners and their
families. Denton cites a paperOper by the Essex
County Rural Development Planning Project,
"Directions for Development, Planning for Essex
County in the 1980 's," December 1979-December 1980,
which found that the average per capita income in
Mineville/Witherbee in 1977 was $5,225. Denton also
interviewed Eleanor Hall, Moriah Town Historian.)
[ BRWS ]
Farrell, Patrick. Interview with Author. Mineville,
Moriah, New York, 1 August 1988. (Author of
unpublished manuscript, "History of Iron Mining in
Adirondacks from Pre-Revolutionary Times to the
Present." Retired engineer and former
Superintendent of Witherbee/Mineville operations for
Republic Steel (1930's-1960's) . Lives in wood-frame
company house dating from 19-teens.)
Gray, Bob and Leah. Interview and house tour with Author.
Mineville, Moriah, New York, 3 August 1988. (Bob is
a second generation resident and former employee of
Republic Steel. The Grays live in a taling block
company house, c.1908. Bob lived in the house
beginning about 1935, when he was in high school;
assumed occupancy from his parents, and bought the
house in the 1950 's.)
142
Stauffer, Sara. Cast Stone: History and Technology.
(Master's Thesis, Historic Preservation, Graduate
School of Architecture and Planning, Columbia
University) New York: October 1982.
[AVRY, Classics Collection]
143
ESTABLISHED 1894
Engineers - Chemists
inspectors
November 7, 1989
Ann I Friedman
200 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11217
Re: Concrete Block With Iron
Tailings Aggregate
Manufactured c. 1908,
Mineville, New York
Dear Ms. Friedman:
The following is a report of our tests of pieces of concrete block
recently submitted by you identified as shown above. Three (3) of the four
(4) blocks were diamond saw cut into nominal 3" x 3" x 6" prisms for
compression testing and the fourth piece for absorption.
LABORATORY NO. 461464
Compression and Absorption Tests - 3" x 3" x 6" Prisms
Specimen % Absorption Compressive Strength ^ensU/6
Mark (24 Hour Soak) (psi) y
(p-n
4570 us q
3790 150.1
3290 150.0
147.4
Enclosed is a sketch of the four (4) samples.
The above results indicate good quality concrete with physical properties
which conform to present day standards for masonry units (ASTM C90, C145).
Respectfully submitted,
E. L. CONWELL & CO.
D. S. Spitzer, P.E.
DSS/nm
Enclosure
CONTINENTAL BUSINESS CENTER. FRONT S. FORD STS. BRIDGEPORT. PA 1940S |2I5| 277-2402
144
ESSeEE z~ PJEZ
145
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 1 Map showing location of existing company-built
housing of Mineville, by author, from Map of
Essex County. N.Y. Chester, Vermont: The
National Survey, 1986.
Figure 2 Detail, Map of Essex County. New York, by J.H.
French, Superintendent of the New York State
Survey. Philadelphia: E.A. Balch,
Publishers, 1858.
Figure 3 Map of Mineville, from New Topographical Atlas
of Essex County. New York. Philadelphia: 0.
W. Gray & Son, 1876, 40-41.
Figure 4 Detail, Map of Mineville, from New
Topographical Atlas. 1876, 41.
Figure 5 St. Peters and St. Pauls Church, Mineville,
from New Topographical Atlas. 1876, 24.
Figure 6 Lee House, from New Topographical Atlas. 1876,
33.
Figure 7 Detail of Sanborn Map Showing Houses on West
Street (Now Witherbee Road) Constructed by
Witherbee Sherman Company, c.1910, from Sheet
4 of "Mineville, Essex County, New York,
October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
Figure 8 Detail of Sanborn Map Showing Housing
Construction on Norton Avenue (Now Bridal Row)
by Witherbee Sherman Company, 1905-6, from
Sheet 2 of "Mineville, Essex County, New York,
October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
Figure 9 Detail of Sanborn Map Showing Housing
Construction on Joyce Road and Wall Streets in
Mineville, West of the Plank Road, by
Witherbee Sherman Company, 1907-8, from Sheet
7 of "Mineville, Essex County, New York,
October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
146
Figure 10 Map Showing Houses on Park Street Constructed
by Witherbee Sherman Company, 1917-18, by
author, from Sheet 6 of 6, "Hamlets of
Mineville & Witherbee, Town of Moriah, County
of Essex, State of New York." Joseph J.
Martina, P.E., November 1955.
Figure 11 Detail showing commercial center of Witherbee,
from Sheet 3 of "Mineville, Essex County, New
York, October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
Figure 12 Detail showing proximity of tenements, Roman
Catholic Church, and industrial buildings,
from Sheet 4 of "Mineville, Essex County, New
York, October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
Figure 13 Detail showing commercial center of Mineville,
from Sheet 8 of "Mineville, Essex County, New
York, October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
Figure 14 Detail showing industrial building, built by
the Witherbee Sherman Company c.1910,
combining brick with additions or wings of
tailings block, from Sheet 1 of "Mineville,
Essex County, New York, October 1916,
Including Witherbee." New York: Sanborn Map
Company, 1916.
Figure 15 Map Showing 16 Single-Family Houses and 9
Two-Family Houses of Study Group, by author,
from Sheet 7 of "Mineville, Essex County, New
York, October 1916, Including Witherbee." New
York: Sanborn Map Company, 1916.
Figure 16 Photograph Showing a Type One House: 480 Joyce
Street, c. 1915, by author, from illustration
in S. Lefevre. "Housing and Sanitation at
Mineville." Mining and Metalurgy Bulletin 98
(Feb. 1915) 234.
Figure 17 Floorplans of a Type One House: 480 Joyce
Street, c. 1915, as illustrated in S.
Lefevre. "Housing and Sanitation at
Mineville." Mining and Metalurgy Bulletin 98
(Feb. 1915) 234.
147
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 2 0
Figure 21
Figure 22
Figure 2 3
Figure 24
Figure 2 5
Figure 26
Figure 27
Figure 28
Figure 29
Figure 3 0
Figure 31
Photograph Showing a Type Two House, probably
444 Wall Street, c. 1909, as illustrated in
Lincoln, Frederic F. "A Concrete Industrial
Village. Mineville, New York, in the heart of
the Adirondack forests is being rebuilt in
concrete. Wooden buildings fast disappear-
ing. Low first cost, fire protection and
small cost of repairs responsible for the
change." Cement Age 9 (September 1909) 165;
print courtesy private collection of Patrick
Farrell.
Photograph of a Type Three House: 42 3 Foote
Street, October 1989, by author.
Photograph of Type Four Houses, c.1912,
Courtesy Peggy Porter.
Photograph Showing a Type Five House, No.
503-505 Joyce Road, c.1913, as illustrated
in: Monthly Bulletin of the American Iron and
Steel Institute 1:9 (September 1913) 246.
Photograph of Type Six House: 511-513 Plank
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 472 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 474 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 47 6 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 478 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 480 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 482 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type One House: 484 Joyce
Road, August 1988, by author.
Photograph of a Type Two House: 444 Wall
Street, October 1989, by author.
Photograph of a Type Two House: 446 Wall
Street, August 1988, by author.
148
Figure 32
Figure 33
Figure 34
Figure 35
Figure 3 6
Figure 37
Figure 38
Figure 39
Figure 40
Figure 41
Figure 42
Figure 43
Photograph of a Type Two House: 44 8 Wall
Street, August 1988, by author.
Photographs of Type Three Houses: 4 05 and 423
Foote Street, October 1989, by author. Note
entrance surround infill, originally a
recessed porch.
Streetscape Showing Type Four Houses: View
South of 408-10 and 416-18 Sherman Street,
August 1988, by author.
"Tenement houses of concrete block
construction," Belfry Hill Road, Witherbee,
c.1913, as illustrated in Monthly Bulletin of
the American Iron and Steel Institute I: 9
(September 1913) 247.
View of porch at north end of of 511-513 Plank
Road, showing different sizes of rough-faced
block, August 1988, by author.
Detail of smooth-faced quoins, soldier-brick
lintels and string course, at south facade of
511-13 Plank Road, August 1988, by author.
Detail of arched lintel, north facade of
511-13 Plank Road, August 1988, by author.
View of cast concrete porch roof slab, north
facade of 511-13 Plank Road, August 1988, by
author.
Detail of egg-and-dart molding at sill level,
north facade of 511-13 Plank Road, August
1988, by author.
View of stable, 511-13 Plank Road, August
1988, by author.
View of porch at north end of 511-13 Plank
Road, showing smooth-faced block and circular
vent, August 1988, by author.
Detail of post with finial, north porch,
511-13 Plank Road, August 1988, by author.
149
Figure 44 "Four-Family Tenement for Foreign Laborers,"
probably 303-309 West Street, Witherbee, with
293-299 and 285-291 West Street, to north, in
background, c. 1915, as illustrated in S.
Lefevre. "Housing and Sanitation at
Mineville." Mining and Metalurgy Bulletin 98
(Feb. 1915) 235.
Figure 4 5 Type of single concrete block house occupied
by clerks and foremen," No. 509 Plank Road,
c.1913, as illustrated in Monthly Bulletin of
the American Iron and Steel Institute I: 9
(September 1913) 246.
Figure 46 "Double House of Concrete Blocks at Mineville,"
No. 503-505 Joyce Road, c. 1915, as illustrated
in S. Lefevre. "Housing and Sanitation at Mine-
ville." Mining and Metalurgy Bulletin 98
(Feb. 1915) 232-33.
Figure 47 Same house as Figure 45, No. 509 Plank Road,
four years earlier (c.1909), photograph
labeled "Concrete Block Residence of
Attractive Design," in "A Concrete Industrial
Village," by Frederic F. Lincoln, published in
Cement Age 9 (September 1909), 163.
Figure 48 Photograph showing tailings-post and iron pipe
rail fencing of six Norton Avenue Houses,
c.1909, from "A Concrete Industrial Village,"
by Frederic F. Lincoln, published in Cement
Age 9 (September 1909), 164.
Figure 49 Photograph showing Type Two Houses, c. 1908,
444-448 Wall Street, Mineville Collection,
Essex County Historical Society, Courtesy
Patrick Farrell.
Figure 50 Photograph showing 444 Wall Street, c.1910,
Mineville Collection, Essex County Historical
Society, Courtesy Patrick Farrell.
Figure 51 Photograph showing a Type Three House, No. 42 3
Foote Street, c.1910, Mineville Collection,
Essex County Historical Society, Courtesy
Patrick Farrell.
Figure 52 Photograph detail, 423 Foote Street, c.1910,
Mineville Collection, Essex County Historical
Society, Courtesy Patrick Farrell.
150
Figure 53 Illustrations from a Sears general merchandise
catalogue, found in J. Randall Cotton,
"Ornamental Concrete Block Houses," The
Old-House Journal XII No. 8 (October 1984),
183.
Figure 54 Photograph of Bridal Row, Witherbee, c.1907,
Mineville Collection, Essex County Historical
Society, Courtesy Patrick Farrell.
Figure 55 Photograph of 509 Plank Road, showing aluminum
cladding, removal of porch, October 1989, by
author.
Figure 56 Photograph of a Type Four House, 430-32 Wall
Street, October 1989, by author.
Figure 57 Photograph of a Type Six House, 511-513 Plank
Road, October 1989, by author.
Figure 58 Photograph of a Type Four House, 430-32 Wall
Street, October 1989, by author.
Figure 59 Photograph of a Type Four House, 401-403
Sherman Road, August 19 88, by author.
Figure 60 Photograph of a Type Four House, 416-418 & 40 8-410
Sherman Road, August 19 88, by author.
Figure 61 Photograph of Type Six House, 511-513 Plank
Road, Showing Kitchen Ell at Rear, October
1989, by author.
Figure 62 Photograph of Stable at rear of Type Six
House, 511-513 Plank Road, October 1989, by
author.
Figure 63 Detail of Type Six House, 511-513 Plank Road,
August 1988, by author.
Figure 64 Photograph of Type Five House, 503-505 Joyce
Road, October 1989, by author.
Figure 65 Detail of Filled-In Porch, 503-505 Joyce Road,
October 1989, by author.
Figure 66 Photograph of a Type One House, 427 Foote
Street, October 1989, by author.
Figure 67 Photograph of a Type One House, 429 Foote
Street, October 1989, by author.
151
Figure 68 Photograph of a Type One House, 431 Foote
Street, October 1989, by author.
Figure 69 Photograph of a Type One House, 425 Foote
Street, October 1989, by author.
Figure 70 Photograph of 405 Foote Street, c. 1910,
Showing Cracking of Stucco at Second Floor
Level, from collection of Patrick Farrell.
Figure 71 Detail, Second Floor Window at 474 Joyce
Street, August 1988, by author.
Figure 72 Detail, 446 Wall Street, August 1988, by
author.
Figure 7 3 Photograph of a Type Four House, 417-19
Sherman Road, October 1989, by author.
Figure 74 Detail, 430-32 Wall Street, Showing Typical
Cracking at Corners, October 1989, by author.
Figure 75 Detail, 430-32 Wall Street, Showing Typical
Cracking at Corners, October 1989, by author.
152
Figure 1
153
Figure 2
154
Figure 3
155
Figure 4
Upper Plank Road
156
Figure 5
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157
Figure 6
158
Figure 7
159
Figure 8
160
Figure 9
161
Figure 10
162
Figure 11
163
Figure 12
164
Figure 13
165
Figure 14
166
Figure 15
167
Figures 16 and 17
FifitT Flooh Plan
Sccono Floor Fiah
Fio. «.— bu BorH wrra Six Room; No Hut ob Plotoixo; Sauiau Roor.
Corr SMO, uro Immoru Tmamm Bam, $100. Rmt (8 rm» Mwrrm, mxnonra
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168
Figure 18
169
Figure 19
170
Figure 20
171
Figure 21
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172
Figure 22
173
Figure 23
174
Figure 24
175
Figure 25
176
Figure 26
177
Figure 27
178
Figure 28
179
Figure 29
180
Figure 30
181
Figure 31
182
Figure 32
183
Figure 33
184
Figure 34
See Figure 60
185
Figure 35
WlTHEHBEE. ShCHMAN AND COMTAWT, MlMCVILLC, N. Y.
Tenement iimh - of eonervU" lilrick • nn-t nj.t i.xi ilnle roof, four nmnu ew-li;
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186
Figure 36
187
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Figure 38
189
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194
Figure 44
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195
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196
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198
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199
Figure 49 and 50
(See Figure 18)
200
Figure 51
201
Figure 52
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202
Figure 53
203
Figure 54
204
Figure 55
205
Figure 56
206
Figure 57
207
Figure 58
208
Figure 59
209
Figure 60
210
Figure 61
211
Figure 62
212
Figure 63
213
Figure 64
214
Figure 65
215
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