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I got inspired to play my with house plan ideas after visiting Phil Godenschwager who does architectural drawings. I want to have some basic plans in place for him to work with when he is ready. It is so much fun to play with floor plans. It helps you see glitches and research things like "how much space do you need around a kitchen island? How wide should useful doorways/walk-through areas be? Can you put a refrigerator next to a doorway?" And to think about cozy vs. open space. Here is my initial plan at this point. It maintains the beautiful wide front door with sidelights (windows up both sides), the evenly spaced two windows to the right of the door, two windows to the left of the door...so the front of the house will look the same from the road. The sides just along the the corner from the front edge of the house will also be the same with those two windows on each side. Otherwise, from halfway along the side to the back, it will be slightly different from the original house (French doors into dining room on the south side, bathroom windows on the north side and a mudroom entry door). And all along the east side (the true back side of the house) it will have many more windows, but mostly matching those that were above the kitchen sink...the three smaller higher windows in a row letting light in from morning sun. Except the dining room on the east...where the door to the 2nd house used to be, it will have two windows that match the front window. More morning light there too with no garage in the way blocking light. The porch can be reminiscent of the same house in the 1800s that had a porch: https://www.ridgeroadhouse.blog/post/the-original-land-grantee Phil and I talked about the importance of the angle of the roof on a covered porch, the porch beam size and style and finial style. I want all of that to be appropriate to this house style (in the past).

On the first day of spring, March 21, 2024, I visited with Phil Godenschwager at his studio in Randolph, Vermont on Weston Street (in the former Tewksbury Store). If you have never had a chance to tour his studio, you are missing an experience. As a life-long artist, it is filled with his creations. Even the building itself has been preserved and enhanced from his stewardship. Front porch posts with a whimsical design (preserved from a nearby house that was torn down) send a warm welcome to those who enter. Tucked towards the back of the building is an old door he found beside the road. With two long narrow curved spaces for windows, he completed them with handmade stained glass, gradations of pale yellow to gold. http://www.philgodenschwager.com/about-1.html He generously gave me a good chunk of his afternoon to talk about the plans for this Randolph Center house. I am excited to say he will draw up the architectural plans for us. I was so impressed with his work both artistically and professionally and at a reasonable 'Vermonters only' rate. He will help bring my ideas to life with floor plans and elevations that a contractor can use to build the house again. http://www.philgodenschwager.com/architectural.html In the meantime, I can dream (and ponder, analyze, research and brainstorm). The circular driveway as it comes up from the northern side of the property: The circular driveway as it passes along the back of the property: The driveway as it exits the south side of the property: I think of this short, strong guy as a sentry on the property:

As this video pans to the left, remember the 2nd house was located there, pushed out to the south a bit, connected to the far 'left' corner of this foundation. You can kind of see the rectangle where it was (the garage, the fireplace room).

https://www.ourherald.com/articles/historic-homes-demolition-helps-local-fire-depts/ Firefighters from Randolph Center, East Randolph, Randolph Village, and Brookfield train at a house on Ridge Road, which was scheduled for demolition and donated to the department for exercises by Dan and Sylvia Cooley. (Provided / Ruth Tucker)

I got the idea to share this site on Front Porch Forum from my writers’ group with Sara Tucker.  https://www.korongobooks.com/  Great idea! So far, I have heard from at least three neighbors, life-long residents of Ridge Road as well as newer folks, plus many more (maybe 100 visitors) have looked at this website because of that notice.  Thank you for getting in touch.  It makes me feel very welcomed. Thank you to Wayside Farm for reaching out. My husband remembers the Abbot farm well. We think this is a photo of Hartwell Abbot on one of his fields off Ridge Road. Followup- (Good questions in the comments below Sara. So, to answer those questions to the best of my ability, see below.  I really should just be asking Chet Abbot from Wayside Farm but I like trying to solve mysteries the hard way.) Dan Cooley says: this is from a slide (most likely in an older family collection of slides). The color is real (a Kodachrome slide), not colorized. Dan thinks either his grandfather Harry or his father Charles Cooley took it. Dan did a bunch of scanning of old family slides and saved this along with the others. We have it in our digitized collection of photos. Kodachrome was invented in 1935 and used for slides starting in 1936 (used by many Americans after WWII around 1945).  Maybe if I look for the original slide it has a date on it.  Or maybe I can see which other slides were scanned around the same time and infer a date from that. When I research Hartwell Abbot there was a Hartwell Brown Abbot Sr., which made me wonder...is this Hartwell Abbot Sr. or Jr.? Dan says Hartwell's son was Brownie Abbot (so maybe Brownie was Hartwell Jr.?  But Dan is sure this is not a photo of Brownie Abbot). Hartwell Abbot Sr. lived from 1912-1977. Most horse-drawn equipment was replaced by tractors in the 1940s. It could be a photo just before horses were replaced by tractors on their farm (except Hartwell looks older than his 30s in this photo).  Or it could be a photo of someone who had access to tractors but was very versed in horse-drawn farm equipment. So it's a photo taken via a Kodachrome slide film sometime after the 1940s (and before 1977 when Hartwell passed away). It's a field of corn with a beautiful team of white horses, one who is listening to the team driver, and one who has one ear towards the photographer, one ear to the driver. I can't imagine the team driver would be just doing this as a photo op, so real work was being done. The fields are open with a border of trees along the edges. Almost looks like a huge Elm tree in the left background. Many Elms were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease by the 1950s but a few were resistant. https://vermonthistory.org/vermont-elm-trees-history Now I hope Chester Abbot can comment and confirm or correct.

I wrote this as an assignment from a prompt for a writers group run by Sara Tucker https://www.korongobooks.com/ An Empty Building Comes to Life February 25, 2024, 462 Ridge Road, Randolph Center, Vermont Smoke was oozing out of cracks in the house.  I wasn’t surprised.  I knew the firefighters would have started training first thing in the morning and it was already 10 a.m. when I pulled into the driveway of the Ridge Road house.  Poof, a giant cloud of smoke obscured the front of the house and traveled across the road towards the farm fields below. Soon, very orange flames were flowing out of downstairs windows (but flowing out and upward, defying gravity).  Orange flames started emerging from a gap where the two houses are joined together on the south side.  I don’t think I have ever seen anything that orange.  More orange than a pumpkin.  More orange than the most orange fall leaves.  Oh!  I know!  It was as orange as those close-up pictures I’ve seen of the sun spewing up solar flares.  I hadn’t expected this much fire until about noon.  But I’ve never been to a controlled burn of a house before, so how would I really know what to expect?! Suddenly there was an eerie sounding alarm…almost like a fog horn at an ocean lighthouse.  I somehow knew this meant “everybody out!” As I passed Chief Williams, he said, “the fire got away from us a little faster than we’d hoped.”  But it’s a house with wood over 200 years old.  Dry, thin, friable, lighting up like dry twigs in a campfire.  They would have liked to have conducted even more inside training (they’d already done 3 hours), but safety is their top priority.  Everybody out. You might expect all of the pumper trucks with hoses on all sides of the house would spring to life, shooting out gallons of water at the house in giant arcs.  Many firefighters were surrounding the house.  Helmets on, labels on the back of khaki coats RCFD (Randolph Center) or BROOKFIELD, or black coats with ERFD (East Randolph), or finally, some red/some black coats reading RVFD (Randolph Village).  But no, this was not a firefighting situation.  This was just a let-it-burn-but keep-the-fire-under-control situation.  In fact, the chief wanted it to burn hot, the hotter the fire, the less smoke is produced.  And it was hot.  The February day was 19 degrees with snow on the ground but you could feel the heat all the way across Ridge Road almost 100’ away. There were some streams of water, firefighters aiming hoses up at trees near the house, helping the old Maples make it through this.  We’ll know if they leaf out in the spring. As I watched and took photos, I could start to see the insides of rooms I had gotten to know so well in the months before the event.  It was surreal to see these intense orange flames now filling the house and shooting out of windows.  Rooms where I could imagine the contents, the sunshine coming through windows while standing inside, looking out at the view.  It was especially weird to shoot videos and zoom in on the house…almost like traveling into the fire and into the rooms with flames.  You could start to see the structure of beams and supporting rafters. The main house was now all lit up, the roof a general mass of orange flames, with the upstairs windows seeming to direct flames out of the openings. The 2nd house, the saltbox house with the fireplace room and its two upstairs bedrooms, caught last but when it did, it became an even bigger conflagration than the main house. I could see right through the main house to the other side- from south bedrooms to north bedrooms which were once separated by cozy walls.  From time to time a section of the house would collapse with a beam left over, tilting at a strange angle.  Like snapping photos at a basketball game I’d “awwww” when my bad timing missed catching an especially dramatic event. It didn’t take long, after being there a little more than a couple hours, only the barest of frames of the bottom floor was standing, charred gray and black corners posts that had been huge beams back in 1790.  Most of the leftover fire was in the cellar hole.  The excavator driver started working on pushing everything into the hole.  Firefighters helped him by dousing his shovel with water to protect the electrical connections. Was I sad?  Yes, a little.  But this didn’t seem real, despite all the planning and reading and imagining.  It was like watching a movie; yes, it was really hot, but you wouldn’t get hurt.  One firefighter smiled at me as I took his photo so he could send it to his mom.  People were casually standing around, starting to eat burgers that one of the younger volunteers was cooking on a gas grill. And when I think of the house, it is still there.

I am lucky to be a Cooley.  When I got married to Daniel R. Cooley back in 1974 I was (already) a feminist but I also thought it would be fun to change my name.  You don’t get to do that every day.  So to honor my father who had four girls I kept his name as my middle name and dutifully sign everything Sylvia Shepard Cooley. I have known the Cooleys for 52 years and the Tuckers (Idora Cooley married Ransom Tucker) for 58 years. My son is Alex, Alexander Shepard Cooley and he has another Charlie Cooley in the next generation (aka Charlotte). Here are four generations of the Cooleys, from left to right: Daniel (2nd gen.), Charles (1st gen.), Charlotte (4th gen.) and Alex (3rd gen.): If something happens to me tomorrow, I want to go on the record as having had the most wonderful life with the Cooleys. Harry H. Cooley at his book signing in 1978 with his grandson Daniel R. Cooley (my husband) and his son Charles H. Cooley (my father-in-law). We believe the woman talking with them is Margaret Hodgson (wife of Bill Hodgson who taught horticulture at the Aggie school). Harry and his son Charles as a baby away from the farm in Randolph Center and visiting the in-laws (Smalls) in Claremont, N.H. 1927 Charles H. Cooley as a young man. Charles visiting at our place in Western Mass working on the tractor (it was his and he gave it to us...a treasure). Harry Cooley was just so nice to me, as was Charles. I was truly welcomed into the family and treated with a lot of respect. Getting to know them was wonderful. Both such intelligent, interesting people. Their Bios could fill a book, but suffice it to say: farmers, Vermonters, educated, well-read, life-long learners, politically active Democrats, Secretary of State in Vermont (Harry), High School and then college math teacher (Charles), military member (Charles, Navy and Army), fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, long-lived (Harry a couple weeks shy of 93, Charles 91), lovely men. Hard to describe time with them but it gives me a warm, comfortable feeling...they were engaging but were also interested in what you had to say. Thank you for this house at Ridge Road. <3

Tim Cooley, a cousin, made a good case for using a builder (vs. a prefabricated house, even if it is a high-quality prefabrication company). For ex., I can easily add in the original home's doors with odd sizes, whereas with a pre-fab house I might be limited. I can also have a closer match to the original house's size (most of the pre-fab plans I was looking at are bit smaller footprint). I want a simple home but not too squeezed in. With a prefabricated Huntington Home I have heard you might be able to get "more house for the money." And one big benefit (at least this is how they promote it) is you can get more of a set price, without increases as the build goes on. Peace of mind. The seemingly more 'instant house' of a prefab is not something I need. We have time. We have a house here in western Mass that we love and enjoy and since Danny is retiring in September of this year, I want to give him time to enjoy this min-farm. You can never plan enough, think things through enough, and you can add to your design as you give yourself time. So I am starting that design process. Taking input! You may have seen my earlier posts where I describe what I'd like to do- keep as close to the original house design as possible. Especially from the front, I want it to look like that same white Cape section of house with balanced windows on each side of a stately front door. I love the unique upside down V dormer upstair on the front with its two windows. So all of that I am sure of. I also want the flow of the house to be the same. If you are a guest, you can enter where the dining room area is (with the kitchen visible just beyond that) and the living room towards the front of the house. If you live there, you can enter from the back, straight into the kitchen. There will be one bedroom downstairs on the front/NW side. And of course a bathroom. There will be two bedrooms upstairs on each side with a bathroom in between. So that is all the same. Changes: Biggest change- no saltbox house that had the fireplace living room and garage. I wish I could keep it, strictly from an aesthetic point of view from the outside of the house; to keep it with that same '2-house look,' along with the nostalgia of those rooms. But we can't afford and don't need two houses. So the house will just be the front Cape house. We most likely (but maybe not right away) add a garage but push it way towards the north (on the east side), rather than have it on the south/east side like it is now. The south is too important to have a garage steal sunlight, etc. Move the kitchen back into that shed area just to use the space (the room that could only be entered from outside the house and was wasted space before). Have the downstairs as open as possible...we'll see what suits it and what works engineering-wise. I was thinking to have the stairwell and the front entrance more open to the living room could be nice. It's a big wide hallway there now (oh gosh, I just realized I am still picturing the house as being there). Why not have it be part of the living room, see the stairway and see that beautiful front door and allow the light to enter the living room. The wood stove will not be in the way of the cellar door & bathroom door like it was in the kitchen, instead most likely in the living room or dining room. I am also reusing some of the old wavy glass from original windows. I have pictured two transom windows for some reason (long, narrow, horizontal with about 10 panes each). They don't open, they just in light and keep the view through the wavy glass. They would need to be framed by a new wooden window frame with the wooden grid separating each pane. I am trying to decide where to put those. Definitely not in the front (I don't want to change that view of the house from the road). Though I could potentially use them for each side of the front door, the so-called sidelites that the original door had (and I definitely want to maintain). That could be a very appropriate spot for them. I could also use them on the north to let in more light without letting in more heat from the sun. Sara has connected me with the artist Phil Godenschwager from Randolph. I will get his advice on these windows. http://www.philgodenschwager.com/home-1.html After looking at his website, I was inspired to imagine these two transom windows, one set above the other with a narrow black etched line running through them from left to right to represent the shape of the ridge line of the hills out in front, and, since he does amazing stained glass, I thought maybe a hint of sunset color along the top middle of the mountain line. But Danny vetoed that saying, "I like simple." So still taking input on reusing the wavy glass. Any input or advice on contractors or design is welcome! So far I have written to two recommended contractors: AJ Hoyt from Chelsea and David Aldrighetti from Bethel. Anyone else you'd recommend? The nice part is, I don't have to rush and I don't have to have someone who is free immediately. Just someone reliable, good at what they do, and nice to work with.

So if you come up from the village of Randolph, driving up the hill on Rt 66 until you get to Randolph Center, take a left at the main intersection at the top of hill, going north. Go past Floyd's Store, go past the entrance to Lake Champagne. When you reach the point where Rt 66 takes a sharp right up the hill, go straight instead, on Ridge Road. It's about 1/2 mile down the road from there. Here is an overall view of the area: The house site is about a 1/2 mile straight north on Ridge Road (after the Rt 66 turn that goes up the hill to East Randolph). You'll see the barn on the property. The next house north is an A-Frame house.

A small business in Vermont: Henderson Excavation & Engineering P.O. Box 695 Williamstown, VT 05679 Eric and his father Lev make a great team. Amazing work on cleaning up after the controlled burn. He has removed all metal & ash, filled in the entire saltbox "2nd house" foundation. He will put up a safety fence on Friday. Thank you for the photos Eric.

Note: I updated these photos today (2/28/24) to include six of Peter Cooley's photos. He captured the north side and the back side. Thank you Peter! Photo below, photo credit Peter Cooley Photo below, photo credit Peter Cooley Photo below, photo credit Peter Cooley Photo below, photo credit Peter Cooley Photo below, photo credit Peter Cooley Photo below, photo credit Peter Cooley Note...just a dummy used in training, not a real person in this suit

Fire training, fire starts to flare up Firefighters training, view across the road. Siren sounds Full on fire This was so surreal, it almost didn't seem real, more like in a movie...flames pouring out windows and doors. Firefighters helping to control fire with hoses, wetting down trees The garage was not used for training (too much of an unstable structure) so it is catching on later than main house More hoses, more involvement The house is fully engulfed in orange flames How the pumper trucks work This is hot work You can see right through the upstairs in the main house now Top floors gone Just the big beams standing These corner posts were huge Popcorn? It's done... firefighters seen through waves of heat Packing up, day is done Thank you firefighters