"We know every rock in this building." - Checking in with the masons restoring the historic Louw-Bogardus Ruin in Kingston
A photograph of the Frog Alley ruin showing the front and side exterior walls. All photos in the post taken by Tim Burger.
This guest blog post from our colleagues at Friends of Historic Kingston shines a light on an exciting rehabilitation project they are overseeing on the Frog Alley ruin, just outside Kingston’s Stockade Historic District. Using traditional masonry techniques, tradesmen Derrick McNab, Tim McDonough, and Manuel Roque are stabilizing the iconic structure.
Looking into the ruin through one of the doorway openings, you can see buckets and other tools the masons are using in their work.
For the past two years, masons Derrick McNab, Tim McDonough, and Manuel Roque have spent the summer at Frog Alley carefully restoring the Louw-Bogardus ruin, stone by stone. Curious passers-by, sometimes dozens per day, stop to inquire about their work. Most people open with the same line, "When are you putting a roof on this place?"
Derrick McNab uses a power tool to remove inappropriate modern cement from the historic masonry.
They might be joking, but the crew has an answer. Capping each wall was their first task at the site, protecting the structure from water damage. Since then, the masons have continued their painstaking work, replacing modern cement from previous restoration efforts with a permeable lime-based mortar.
According to Derrick, the house utilizes "essentially medieval technology. The exterior walls were pointed or parged. The interior walls were plastered with lime, and have mud and straw inside. The buildings are soft and tend to move over time, unlike modern construction methods which are very rigid. We're respecting the original building techniques by using breathable materials."
Derrick notes that all of the original materials were sourced near the site, from the stones the first builders burned to create lime mortar, to the hand-formed bricks in the ground floor fireplace.
Pictured left-right: Manuel Roque mixes the lime-based mortar; Manuel Roque demonstrates how loose stones are rearranged to fill large gaps, previously filled with concrete. "We know every rock in this building," he says; Tim McDonough was a clinical research coordinator for a New York City hospital before he began working with Derrick two years ago. Tim has been documenting the oyster shells, pottery shards, and even fossils the crew has found as they carefully restore every inch of the ruin.
These stone ruins survive on the lands of the Munsee speaking Esopus people of the Lenape Tribe, at a place they called Atharhacton. The Louw-Bogardus mill-house was built by Pieter Cornelissen Louw circa 1661 on the site of a dam close to the creek near the Wiltwyck palisade walls. A subsequent owner, Petrus Smedes and his wife Catrina du Bois, operated the grist mill, barn, and lands along with four enslaved people, Harry the Elder, Thom, Hono, and Harry the Younger. Later owners, the Benjamin Bogardus family, enlarged the house to its present dimensions in the 18th century. The house was lived in continuously until a major fire in the 1960s left it vacant. The property was purchased by Friends of Historic Kingston in 1975 and began the ongoing project to stabilize the ruins.
Manuel repoints the stones below a window on the south wall.
Derrick working on removing mortar.
Today this site bears witness to three centuries of struggle and loss, wars and devastating fires, building and farming, planting fields and milling grains. The stones hold stories of displaced indigenous peoples, enslaved people, and immigrants. The current preservation project saves a place to view the walls of the house ruin that serves as a tangible link to more than three and a half centuries of our shared history. The Friends of Historic Kingston would like to thank Derrick McNabb, Manuel Roque, and Tim McDonough for their ongoing efforts in restoring the Louw-Bogardus Ruin, and our members who have contributed funding to support this important work.