LeRoy Pennysaver & News

LE ROY PENNYSAVER & NEWS - NOVEMBER 15, 2020 by Lynne Belluscio After discovering the drawings of the Lent pump house in Carl Schmidt’s book, “Fences, Gates, and Garden Houses” I thought I’d look for some other drawings he made in LeRoy. And sure enough he had a beautiful fence post from West Main (although I do not know where it is and it probably was taken down.) There was also a drawing of a “fragment of the fence of Graney-Hamilton House” on East Main Street. I then looked in Schmidt’s book “The Victorian Era in the United States” and discovered a couple of other LeRoy drawings. Some Important Architectural Drawings of LeRoy by Carl Schmidt There are the details of the bookcase in the Morgan- Lovria House on West Main Street and the interior doors from the Harold Krueger house at 123 East Main Street. As well as the mantle and interior door of the Lent/Drayo house (where the pump house came from). Carl Frederick Schmidt (1894-1988) was a local architect who had a keen interest in historic preservation and conservation. I had the opportunity to hear him speak a couple of times and he was a close friend of Stuart Bolger, Director of the Genesee Country Museum. He wrote many books on historical architecture, which focus primarily on homes in the Genesee Valley area. The LeRoy Historical has only two in our library. Carl worked for the architectural firm, Gordon & Kaelber, that designed the University of Rochester School of Medicine and the Strong Memorial Hospital in the 1920s. Schmidt was responsible for the old hospital lobby off Crittenden Blvd. Carl and his wife Mary lived in Scottsville. He sketched and measured houses and details of doors, windows, fences and cobblestone buildings, and published nearly 20 books. The State University College at Geneseo has some of his drawings in their collection, as does the University of Rochester. During his apprentice years, he worked with Edwin Gordon, Claude Bragdon (architect for the LeRoy Municipal Building) Henry Larzelere, Horace Hatton, James Taylor and Samuel Lelong – all well-known in the architectural field. In his book on VictorianArchitecture, he includes ten pages of architectural terms from annulet and archivolt to plinth (remember the plinth for the Statue of Liberty on the creekbank) and voussoirs – (the archstones between the impost and keystone). So I am rediscovering this valuable resource and hope you find some of these drawings interesting.