By Kate Hill

Staff Writer

This month, the CazArts monthly newsletter highlighted the past and future of Carpenter’s Barn, the historic stone building located on the southeast corner of Lakeland Park.

Owned by the Village of Cazenovia, the building will be partially re-purposed to house the CazArts Studios and Art Hub.

CazArts is an alliance of artists, arts organizations and members of the public, founded to foster the creation and appreciation of arts in the greater Cazenovia area.

In the Nov. 1 newsletter, Ted Bartlett, senior associate at Crawford & Stearns, Architects and Preservation Planners, PLLC, provided an overview of the history of Carpenter’s Barn.

“Most of my research is my own from over the years, [and] much of it was presented in a study to the village back in 2008,” said Bartlett. “I have been working on Lakeland history for years, drawing from Lorenzo and the Cazenovia Public Library’s files, as well as online research.”

According to Bartlett, Carpenter’s Barn was built in 1889 as a carriage house for the former Lakeland estate (now Lakeland Park).

Samuel Forman, business partner to Cazenovia’s founder, John Lincklaen, originally developed the property at the end of the 18th century.

In 1824, Jacob and Betsy Ten Eyck purchased the estate and expanded the property by infilling the shorelines of the lake and creek.

In the late 19th century, their daughter Elizabeth Rogers Ten Eyck and her husband, Jesse Fairfield Carpenter, added Carpenter’s Barn to the estate, along with a boathouse, the lake pier, stone walls, and the existing wrought iron fence with the name “Ten Eyck.”

The couple commissioned architect Henry Ten Eyck Wendell to design the carriage house.

“The result was an eclectic, rusticated stone and frame rambling structure characterized by gabled and broad hipped roofs, two massive octagonal ventilators, a balcony, two towers, diamond pane windows, decorative wood shingle siding and sawn wood trim,” Bartlett wrote in the newsletter.

The main section of the barn housed a carriage room containing a single-story space for garaging and servicing horse-drawn vehicles, including a German-built Tally-Ho carriage that seated up to 22 passengers. The east and north walls featured tall carriage doorways within arched masonry openings. An overhead lift allowed for the seasonal storage of sleighs and carriages upstairs. The area beneath the carriage space contained a partial basement with mechanical spaces to accommodate the building’s steam heat and gas lighting.

According to Bartlett, the second story above the carriage room was open to the street with a pair of double-doors in a projecting bay for loading hay. About one-third of the space at the rear of the main section was partitioned off into an office and contained a single doorway to the balcony and a private exterior stairway.

The southern stable wing of the barn complex contained eight horse stalls, a forge, a blacksmith shop, a cast iron watering trough system, a coachman office, and a separate harness room with glass cupboards for tack. Feed storage was located on the second story and accessed via trap doors and chutes. A stone wall extended from this wing and ran along Forman Street, ending in a small stone tower that was removed sometime before 1900.

By the mid 1930s, following the death of Mrs. Carpenter and a succession of owners, Lakeland was turned over to the village for use as a public park.

The mansion and estate outbuildings were subsequently demolished, leaving Carpenter’s Barn as the sole architectural remnant of the former Lakeland estate.

In the years that followed, Carpenter’s Barn was used as a maintenance facility and received minimal upkeep and repairs. Its interior spaces were opened up and converted into service areas. By the 1950s, the second story had been further partitioned to create a youth meeting space.

Extensive interior renovations occurred in 1974 when the Cazenovia Area Volunteer Ambulance Corps. (CAVAC) became the building’s sole tenant. After CAVAC left the building in 2010, the village initiated an extensive structural stabilization and exterior restoration project.

Since then, the barn has stood mostly empty.

“Carpenter’s Barn is a distinctive historic resource that acts as an entrance anchor to this portion of the village,” said Bartlett. “The village’s historic character is something that provides a comfortable and inviting place for Cazenovia residents to call home and for visitors to come and enjoy. As Lakeland Park’s rehabilitation continues to move forward, Carpenter’s Barn becomes all the more important to preserve and reuse. The old phrase ‘they don’t build them like they used to’ is particularly appropriate here; no one could begin to afford to recreate Carpenter’s Barn with its distinctive designs and details. It is already here, in good condition and ready to be an active part of the community again.”

Recently, CazArts worked alongside the Village of Cazenovia, Cazenovia College, and the Cazenovia Area Community Development Association (CACDA) to secure a grant from the Madison County Capital Resource Corporation to begin refurbishing and re-purposing the inside of the building.

“We were notified that it would be awarded last December and the grant agreement was signed in July 2020,” said CACDA Executive Director Lauren Lines.

The renovation will provide studio space for local and visiting artists. The building will also eventually be used as a hub for community arts programming and activities.

“To activate a community space it is important to have the community involved and active,” said CazArts President Geoffrey Navias. “There is a framework that will be [our] foundation and other activities are clearly envisioned, but we are thoughtful about not getting ahead of ourselves. COVID 19 has made social gatherings unadvised, and we do not know when and how that will change. So, as a foundational first step a couple of artist studios will be formed and managed for area artists while the pandemic runs its course.”

According to Navias, the building could also potentially serve as a post-pandemic workspace for the Cazenovia Water Color Society or other artist groups; a space for workshops and programs with local artists and Cazenovia College; a small business resource center for artists; a place to view artwork in progress; an organizational home-base for art festivals and events; a meeting place for artists who want to initiate new programs; and an information center for visitors looking to connect with local artists.

“I am excited about this future use for Carpenter’s Barn,” said Village Mayor Kurt Wheeler. “Cazenovia has long been a destination for the arts and this project will enhance that status. The building has enormous potential and has historically been under-utilized. This use will bring the beautiful old structure to life.”

Navias said the idea of a community art hub came about through artists, the public, and civic leaders coming together to assess the needs of the community that the arts were serving.

“Cazenovia is blessed to have an abundance of artists working throughout the community,” Navias said. “The Cazenovia Art Trail highlights this and also helped to identify a strong desire for networking among local artists . . . [Our work also involved] looking at other communities, which had positive models, and then seeing what could best grow and nurture the greater Cazenovia area.”

According to the CazArts newsletter, the completion of the project is currently unknown due to COVID-19.

“With the current state of the pandemic and the unknown nature of what this winter might bring, a time line for an opening launch is not realistic,” the organization said. “But in this time a lot more pieces are being put in place; and interior reconstruction, geared for the arts, will soon start making the barn ready.”

Contractor proposals for the renovations were due Friday, Nov. 6.

For updates on the Carpenter’s Barn progress and other CazArts news, subscribe to the monthly newsletter at cazarts.com.

Questions can be directed to [email protected].