New Website Will Showcase Sandstone Use

POTSDAM - The Potsdam Museum is creating an interactive website similar to Google Earth that will allow users to explore a virtual timeline of the history of Potsdam sandstone.

The timeline will begin in 1820 during the early quarry days in Potsdam and include nearly two centuries worth of information and photos on dozens of once-majestic sandstone homes destroyed by urban renewal.

Museum Curator Miriam VanDeusen said the website is being designed by local heritage stone mason John Bridges and students from Clarkson University.

She said when completed the website will give the public digital access to a treasure trove of information regarding not just Potsdam's famous sandstone, but the influence it had in shaping the region's history.

Ms. VanDeusen said the site will include an interactive time line at the top of the map, so users can move across Potsdam's history and see what sandstone buildings existed where and at what periods in time.

"It will go on our website, and it will be very user friendly," Ms. VanDeusen said. "You will be able to just cruise your mouse over different areas, and images and dates will pop up.

"We've been working on this for a long time, and it is coming to completion and it's going to be very exciting," she said.

Mr. Bridges, who moved to Potsdam last year because of his love of the red sedimentary rock once quarried here and shipped around the world, is a skilled stone mason who has worked for the Canadian government helping maintain the parliament buildings in Ottawa.

He said when the museum's new website is up in April, it will help inform the public about Potsdam's past and will help historians to glean hidden tidbits of knowledge about the blue-collar craftsmen who once carved out a living in the region from relatives and members of the public.

"Hopefully it will engender more information that may be in private hands to kind of come out of the woodwork," Mr. Bridges said.

As an example, Mr. Bridges said when he first started searching the museum archives looking for information on the stone masons affiliated with Potsdam's past he found a just few dozen names. Since May of last year, however, he has been able to unearth the names of hundreds of forgotten workmen from the past.

"So we are able to start to put names to the men who built these buildings and quarried the stone and cut it," he said. "Not just the owners of the enterprises or the patrons who paid to have a house built, but the actual workmen, who were probably a large percentage of the village population at any given time."

He said each forgotten stone mason he uncovers represents an important link to the past - the men who literally helped hoist, cut and trim the region's sandstone into the buildings and walkways that would eventually become Potsdam itself.

Mr. Bridges is hoping interest generated by the museum's new website will convince area residents to come forward with stories, photos and even tools that once belonged to their stone mason ancestors.

For more information on Mr. Bridges work chronicling the history of Potsdam sandstone, contact the Potsdam Museum at 315-265-6910.