Restoration & Preservation

After acquiring the home in 1994, Dr. Rogers slowly began the restoration process.   The house was in need of much love.  Over the years much work has been done including complete restoration and modernization of five fireplace flues and chimneys, the massive job of replacing the the rotten beam supporting the two floors on the west addition of the house.

Notes from Dr. Rogers:

I started looking after Brickhouse at the end of  1993.  The last of my Lassotovitch cousins living in the house had passed away, and the house was uninhabited, though not empty.

As I have seen it do to others many times since, the house offered a kind of magic invitation and inspiration. For all the  flaking plaster and detritus  of a half dozen generations living, dying, and being born there, it conveyed a nobility of permanence, a presence that I will admit I needed, probably more than the house needed me.

What a privilege to respect the vision and craftsmanship of people who invested themselves in creating this presence over two hundred summers ago. I hope some of these pictures and commentary convey the manifest pleasure I have been given in honoring them, my family, and our successors.