Cobblestone Building Wall Detail On Historic House Royalty-Free Stock Image

Cobblestone architecture was used in the northeastern United States, especially antebellum western New York state. The style was prominent between 1835 and about 1860; around 900 cobblestone buildings were constructed in New York state before the American Civil War. Masons who built the Erie Canal during 1817-1825 started building cobblestone structures about the time the canal was finished. Cobblestone architecture refers to the use of cobblestones embedded in mortar as method for erecting walls on houses and commercial buildings. Cobblestones are typically either set in sand or similar material, or are bound together with mortar. In the Finger Lakes Region of New York State, the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age left numerous small, rounded cobblestones available for building. Pre-Civil War architecture in the region made heavy use of cobblestones for walls. Today, the fewer than 600 remaining cobblestone buildings are prized as historic locations, most of them private homes. Ninety percent of the cobblestone buildings in America can be found within a 75-mile radius of Rochester, New York. In addition to homes, cobblestones were used to build barns, stagecoach taverns, smokehouses, stores, churches, schools, factories, and cemetery markers.