A little dilapidation goes a long way
Chelsea, Muttontown, L.I.
I have commented before about the perils of over-restoration, in which a building’s owner becomes a little too enthusiastic about its preservation and ends up with a building that, except in style, looks almost new. Chelsea sits on a 500-acre preserve in Muttontown, L.I. which has come into the hands of the government of Nassau (the county on Long Island in-between Queens County and Suffolk). The county has managed to maintain the house and its grounds at exactly the appropriate level: not plastering over every crack to make it ‘good-as-new’, nor neglecting it so it becomes structurally unsound, but rather allowing it to develop and age naturally. These photographs from the ever-capable James Robertson admirably display the house and its grounds, including its shallow canal-moat.
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3:04 pm
Meh, I don’t like dilapidation
4:44 pm
My undergraduate degree was Surveying, my dissertation on stonecleaning. One part was on the perception of building before and after cleaning, with one group comprising surveyors and architects, the other ‘the man in the street.’ Both groups preferred the pre cleaned buildings, the surveyors /architects more strongly, with the acid cleaned ashlar terrace being noted to have been ‘ruined’ by cleaning.
The restored great hall at Stirling Castle is interesting. It was restored to the yellow colour it is believed to once have been. It does stick out like a sore thumb and looks peculiar when you see the castle from a distance. Can be seen at [link]
and from a distance
[link]
You can imagine what the locals think of the wind farm…
6:17 pm
Just perfect, solid but aging in a romantic way.
12:43 pm
Beautifully mellow. Reminds me of a certain “historical house”, where the conservation motto is “as much as is necessary; as little as possible.”
3:23 pm
We old New Yorkers are glad to remember that Benjamin Moore, the builder of this large but rather simple house, was the son of Clement Clarke Moore, author of
“Twas the Night before Christmas”, and owner of many acres of that part of Manhattan called Chelsea to this day.
5:00 pm
I am wondering if the moat would be useful if there was a full scale zombie attack hereabouts. How close is this to Manhattan?