Reflections of The Farmhouse... Miz Mary

The House of Many Windows

Crystal Springs was our very first farm; as a young couple just starting out in life, it was our dream to own a farm.  It consisted of property on both sides of Rt. 13 between DeRuyter and Cuyler, NY.  I had driven by it probably hundreds of times when going to work, only giving it a glance, but never in my wildest dreams would I have dreamed I would be actually living there.  I will describe the house because that was my territory for the first five years of our farm life.  I also knew the barn intimately, having spent many hours there also, but will leave that for someone else to describe.  My love was for the house.

It looked like a grand place, large, flat-roofed, antebellum style of the 1800's -- however, on my first visit I found that the reality did not live up to first impressions.  It had been a grand place. It's footprint was a big square with a porch on each side in front - one over a  small entryway on the DeRuyter side, and an enclosed front porch on the Cuyler side.

The "DeRuyter Side" - Our First Domicile

The house was almost duplex, but the side toward Cuyler  (note to ed: west?)  was obviously the main part of the house, the rooms on that side were elegantly sized and sensibly laid out.  However, the rooms we first lived in were on the DeRuyter (east?) side and were not laid out in a way that made sense for a second family.  The home must have been built to conform to the needs of a specific family group, with the additional bedrooms to accommodate guests that had to stay the night? (Were we in the "In-Law" side?)

The room we designated for a kitchen was the only one available, a small, dark inner room having one window that looked out onto the back porch. It sufficed after we installed a sink There was a stairway to the cellar. A chimney did exist for that side but no heat source, we didn't want a parlor stove, so we installed a used coal furnace.  

The little side porch opened to a very large main room, a combined dining room and sitting room where a corner china cabinet had been built in at a more recent time. Double doors led to another large room at the front of the house which we used as a downstairs bedroom.  I knew that this room had been meant for use as a formal parlor because it had a "funeral door" leading onto the side porch.  In that era  family funerals were held in a front parlor and a door leading directly onto the porch was necessary to take the coffin from the parlor without disturbing the mourners who had gathered in the adjacent room, giving two closely adjacent doors access to outside.  (I knew about this because my grandfather's home had a room like this and it had one of these doors, which had been used at both of my grandparent's funerals.)  On the other side of the main room to the back was a small room which we used as a little bedroom for the first little boy we had at that time.

From the living room an enclosed staircase led up to a large space at the head of the stairs (in the day that this home was built this space typically would have been where the sewing machine was kept, since most all clothing was made at home, especially ladies dresses), two bedrooms and a large attic. There was no access to the other side of the house from the upstairs rooms.

I tried to make the one habitable upper bedroom (plaster intact) at the front comfortable for my brother, who visited us on his last leave before heading for Air Force duty in Alaska.  He loved the idea of the farm for us and looked forward to coming back; however it was not to be, he perished in an airplane crash just short of his destination.

Ceilings were high (10 ft.?)  and the windows were many and tall.  In order to keep symmetry in the overall architectural design there were usually at least two windows in most rooms (no storm windows, which with the high ceilings, made it very hard to heat - an understatement.).

The Cuyler Side

We attempted to rent out the larger, vacant side of the house, but we soon found  it difficult  The obvious thing to do was to move ourselves to the main side, since our family was growing and  I had always been envious of the kitchen !  Now we had the run of the whole house, and the boys plenty of room to ride "trikes" and play on rainy days.

From the back door one walked into a good-sized backroom where we kept the big freezer and shed muddy boots before entering the kitchen.  That big kitchen was truly made for the farm family.  As large as two normal size rooms, tall built-in cupboards were on two walls. My favorite feature was the built-in flour sifter which held a  ten-pound bag of flour: I filled it frequently.  It was a red letter day when the white enameled cook stove was installed, complete with warming oven and hot water reservoir.  Because the rooms were so large, we needed an additional source of heat in the kitchen. When we moved, I missed that stove more than anything else we left behind. (But when we did finally move, I couldn't take it: our new farm had a very small kitchen!).  I can so well remember the smell of three pairs of small, soggy wet, red hand-knitted woolen mittens drying on top of the warming oven and the sight of six small stockinged feet propped up on chairs in front of the open oven door - my three little sons, in from sliding in the pasture.  We had deep, deep snows those years.

My wringer washer took up residence in the far corner by the door to the storeroom, a room that matched the back room but wasn't very useful because there was always something parked in front of the door, and it was unheated in winter.

I got to do some papering and painting, and new tile was laid over the bare boards of the floor.  I especially loved the dark red paper with small geometric print that I put in the small dining area which had the requisite built-in white china cabinet.  The dining room was only large enough to walk around the round oak table & chairs, piano on the side, between a couple of antique dressers, small & large, in contrast to the huge kitchen and living room.  The party-line phone was in that room, installed under a window.  The proprietor could check to see if the receiver was off the hook by looking in the window, which he did have occasion to do!

By contrast, the living room was a very big and open, as large as two rooms together, with little wall space.  Entering from the double-sized doorway from the dining room and going around the room to the left, there was a 3-window bay at the west end, two windows that faced onto the enclosed front  porch, one on either side of a windowed door onto the porch, doors to the bedroom, bathroom, upstairs stairwell, and back to the double door to dining room.  I had a good time making curtains, lots of café curtains, popular at the time.  I also made a 9 X 12 wool braided rug for the boys to play on and watch TV, which made the room a little more welcoming and comfortable.

Our bathroom and hot water heater were installed in the small room which connected the two sides of the house, (the only connecting place inside for the two sides).  As long as we shared the same source of water with the dairy, (the "crystal spring" for which the place was named, located on the hill above the house) the flow was just not enough for us and the cows both.  When we had dry spells in the summer water had to be brought in for the cows in milk cans from the river -  very labor/time-intensive task.  Because the source of water just was insufficient, especially in summer, it became necessary to drill a new well. (It should be noted that the original owners must have utilized the large stone cistern in the cellar to which water funneled from the roof, therefore the flat roof).*

All of the work that was done on the house, installing furnace, bathroom, septic system, fixing roof, laying tile, etc., was done by my husband in whatever hours he could steal from the demands of running the farm.  Just starting out, a new farmer would have to learn to do most everything himself.  

There was an existing coal-fired furnace , but it required so much attention to keep the house warm that we did install an oil burner in it. 

In any story about an elegant old house there should be a ghost story.  This one is no exception, and definitely not "made up": At the head of the stairs on the main side of the house there were two bedrooms toward the front (the boy's bedroom and the "mystery room" (see below) and two more bedrooms which faced Cuyler, and open space at the head of the stairs .  My boys used the huge bedroom over the living room.**  

The small bedroom above the kitchen was totally empty but had a little closet, a feature totally lacking in any of the other rooms. Oftentimes when I was alone in the kitchen during the afternoon, usually when I was sewing or doing handwork and the house was very quiet, there would be a sound coming from the ceiling above, continuous and rhythmical, like someone in an old rocking chair rocking on the bare floor boards. (I had an old oak rocking chair in the living room that had been my Grandpa's, which was my reference.) This would happen on a windless day but never when it was windy, so I ruled out something flapping outside after looking around. I checked out the attic room which was adjacent, as well as the room where the sound seemed to originate, without finding any possible explanation for it, either inside or outside.  After I had gone upstairs to the room to investigate a few times and found all quiet when I got there, I just decided that we had a friendly spirit who had spent her old age in a rocker in that room, and loved the quiet, and the view from the two windows, and was trying to enjoy it still.

The second mystery about those upstairs rooms is that: viewing the house from the front, there was a shuttered upstairs window, which shows up in the earliest photograph of the house.  When looking into that front bedroom where that shuttered window should have been accessible, there is no sign of a second window ever having been there; the wall is smoothly plastered over.  Did this room have a window removed because it is a very small room, and more wall space was desired, but showing evidence of a window on the outside was required to preserve the symmetry of the outside view of the house?  Or did something untoward happen that led those long ago family members to board it up to erase the memory of some sad event?  Surely a mystery.

The Setting

The grounds need mention because there were vestiges of original glory in the plantings which had survived the rigors of time, weather and neglect.  The house was on a significant elevation from the road, which ran between the house and the barn along the side of a gradual geologic elevation, the terrain gradually rising from the river in the valley to the top of the hill far up behind the house (the boy's playground!). Stone steps still remain which lead up to the front lawn from the roadway, with a hitching post for the horse and carriage nearby and a surviving cedar tree.  A maple tree was planted at each corner of the front lawn, and a long driveway went all the way around the house from the road.  The drive may not have been an actual feature of the original property since it was built before autos came into being.  However, I cannot imagine ladies in the long dresses of the day taking on those front stone steps!  

I welcomed the fact that there was just enough lawn to set off the house, but not too much since we mowed it with a hand mower.

Crossing the lawn to the right, we came to the enclosed front porch, (which wasn't originally enclosed).  There were beautiful Bridal-Wreath Spirea bushes on each side of the porch steps.  Around that side of the house there were many large peony bushes at intervals all down the side lawn.  

The thing I loved best of all was the apple orchard.  On the hill in back of the house, visible in all of their pink glory in springtime they were magnificent to behold, and they did not disappoint.  In spite of years and years of neglect, they bore fruit freely.

Unfortunately, much as I would have loved to have stayed, the wheels of progress turned me out of my grand old dame of a house.  I would love to tell you that it is still there, but the "House of Many Windows"*** succumbed to the neglect by those who followed us, and is no longer.

Crystal Springs Farm years will always hold a special place in my heart for although they were often times trying and difficult, they were happy years for our family.

* As much as I loved the house, the heart-breaker for me was that it had a flaw that proved to be out of our control to fix: no matter how many times mended, the roof still leaked, a problem in all of those old flat roofs which were built for the purpose of draining off water into the cistern below.  It had leaked for so many years that the ceiling plaster was down to some degree in most the bedrooms except the two that we used.  The only fix was going to be to build a new roof.  So many other improvements were needed on the farm that no priority existed for the roof, since we didn't use the rooms anyway and the leaks never impacted our living space. The source of the leaks was not evident and proved to be undetectable.  When mended in an obvious place, it would leak in another spot.

**  In the very cold winter months the young ones' beds were brought downstairs, the big upstairs bedroom which relied on the floor register for heat was just too cold.

*** Once when I was describing where I lived to a local resident, she exclaimed, "I know where that is!  I call it The House of Many Windows !"  There were actually 60 windows in the whole house, including the one with the shutters and the windows looking onto the back porch, and not counting the windows on the enclosed porch.