Sahler Stone House

Set well back from Kyserike Road in the town of Rochester, Ulster County, this stone house dates to about 1750 and is attributed to the Sahler family, who held extensive land in the area and built many early dwellings nearby. The original block is a one-story, one-room stone structure. A larger one-and-one-half story, four-bay stone section was added to the east, followed by frame additions. Inside are hand-hewn beams, wide plank floors, original fireplaces, early moldings and hardware, and a basement cooking hearth. The house represents the linear stone dwelling that dominated Ulster County building from the late seventeenth to the mid nineteenth century. Its stone gable walls rising to the roof peak are unusual in southern Ulster County, where timber-framed, clapboard gables were more common. Despite alterations over nearly two and one-half centuries, it remains an important example of eighteenth-century mid-Hudson Valley vernacular craftsmanship. It is still used as a single-family home.