In a message dated 1/3/06 7:53:46 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> Lastly... even if natural slate is used will it be of the same or similar
> quality to the original? Chances are it would be easy for the pundits to
> substitute Spanish or Chinese slate that is cut thinner than traditional American
> w/ it in mind to maximize the square surface area contained in a shipping
> container. Nowadays technology of slate/stone
> cutting makes it easier to produce thinner slate -- well suited for the
> McMansions.

Have I bored everyone already with the Avon Old Farms school, in
north-central Connecticut?  If so, get ready.

It was founded in the 1920's by Theodate Pope Riddle, a well-born (female)
architect with "independent" and slightly weird ideas (including "psychical
research") who survived Lusitania sinking.   Her family home, Hill-Stead (on which
she worked with Stanford White) is a house museum in Farmington, CT.

After she did the 1923 repro-vation of the Theodore Roosevelt birth-house at
28 East 20th Street (talk about ficititious!  an airless,  spanking fresh 1848
brownstone wrought completely new after TR's death, and only three years
after his actual house was demolished), her door swung the other way and she
endowed/founded/designed/built one of the most wonderful boarding school campuses
ever, a "medieval town" of buildings with half-timbering, deep rusty brick,
sagging beams (she did not use union labor, which was accustomed to machine-grade
construction), pre-worn stone steps - sounds hokey but actually achingly
beautiful, at least with 50 years of real wear.

Most wonderful of all is the rough, irregular, thick slate on the roofs,
rolling and tumbling like a high sea.  She even laid them on (thin) mortar beds to
lift the courses up, providing deep shadows (and just try to fix the leaks in
that!)   Does it sound Disney-like (and, anyway, is "Tomorrowland" or "Huck
Finn's Island" so bad?)  Others may chime in, but I find Avon Old Farms (where
the boys did 8 hours a week of farm or craft labor)  utterly moving.  Not
because of the fictitious age, but for the work and thought and love that went
into it.

Christopher