Building
The house is built into a gentle slope on a hill looking out over its section of the New York-New Jersey Highlands, and ultimately the Shawangunk Ridge in the distance. At the north end the foundations are visible. A small group of trees surrounds it on three sides. An old road grade is visible to the east.
The older main section is one and a half stories high and five bays wide, sided in aluminum over old pine clapboards. In the center of the facade is the main entrance, a Federal style entrance with fluted pilasters supporting an entablature and cornice. The asbestos-shingled gabled roof is pierced by brick chimneys at either end. A badly deteriorated porch is attached to the rear.
From the west end projects a double wing, one one-by-two-bay section continuing to the west, set slightly back, with a larger three-by-one section extending to the north. The east wing is similar to the west wing, just a little larger. A terrace is between the two wings in the rear.
On the inside, the house follows a center-hall plan, with fireplaces heating either end. The walls are finished in plaster on lath, likely replaced since original construction. Most trim is original with the exception of a bathroom and nearby cabinet added in the 20th century. The basement is unfinished.
Read more about this topic: Checkerboard Inn
Famous quotes containing the word building:
“Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)