Cornell-Manchester Farmstead

Along Lower Pine Valley Road in eastern Pittstown, this 141-acre farmstead includes two groups of buildings, each centered on a 19th-century frame house. The eastern house began as a wing built around 1820-40, gained a second wing before 1850, and was remodeled about 1900 into a two-family dwelling with Queen Anne porches. Nearby stand a hewn-frame tool barn and grain house, a pig house, a blacksmith's shop, a brick smokehouse and an oat barn, all built by the Manchester family. A western house dates to about 1860. After Ira Cornell bought the farm in 1940, his family added hen houses, hay sheds, corn cribs and garages. Of 25 resources, 18 are counted as contributing. About 40 percent of the land remains open for tillage, hay and grazing. The property is listed because its buildings and land show how one farm evolved across several generations of two families, from the early 1800s into the later twentieth century.