Quarry for granite posts. After being cut, they were left in place, and abandoned. Somewhere in the greater Boston area.
My book Exploring Stone Walls featured about 150 photographs combed from at least 1500 taken during a 15,000 mile trip criss-crossing the backroads of new England that was funded by an advance from my publisher (the book was his –George Gibson of Walker & Co.– idea). Below is a small sample from that trip, young and old, which illustrates the range of what’s involved.
An abutting wall (solid row of boulders) at the Rhode Island-Connecticut Border.
Classic historic fieldstone wall, also called the farmer’s wall, thrown wall, tossed wall, pasture wall, and the tumbled wall.
Facade wall from Edgartown (Marthas Vineyard, MA) is pre-fabricated shaped stones pressed into a mortar matrix, likely on top of cinder blocks. Still, the effect is pleasing.
Carefully laid wall of tablet-shaped stones of granite gneiss. Characteristic of new construction.
Red jasper precipitated from hot water in a volcanic fracture ended up being the face of a stone in the face of a wall at Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, CT.
Billboard advertising sale of strip-mined stone.
Mutant wall in Guilford, CT
Mortar just doesn’t last that long in New England.
