SUNY Delhi students in Professor Lisa Tessier’s history of architecture class will lead a walking tour of historic homes in Delhi Saturday, May 10.
The walk will begin at 10 a.m. at 72 Main St. and will end at the rectory on High Street. Students will talk about the buildings at 72 Main St., Parker House at 74 Main St., This & That at 110 Main St., Orchard Place on Orchard Street and the rectory on High Street.
Students Jesse Corces, Blake Lawrence, Jason Gonzalez, Idresa Touray and Alexander Maldini met Tessier and Delhi Village Historian Gabrielle Pierce at 72 Main St. and 74 Main St. Friday, May 2, to talk about the houses they researched and some of the things they are going to mention during the tour next week.
Tessier said she had more students, 25, in the class than in years past so they were able to research more buildings. At the beginning of the semester, Tessier gave students a list of houses they could research. Tessier also meets with Pierce to go over the list to make sure there will be enough information about the building for students to research. Students formed groups and picked what property they wanted to research.
The semester-long research project allows students to visualize the vocabulary words they are learning by seeing them implemented into the buildings they researched, Tessier said.
While they were talking, Tessier pointed to a carved metal goose stake with a metal ring on it in front of Parker House and asked students what it was. The hitching post was used to tie up horses in front of the house. Touray took a picture of the hitching post to maybe use in the brochure about the house. A plaque on the streetlamp post in front of the house gave a short history of the house. Tessier also pointed to the dentils on the front porch of the Parker House.
Students researched the history of the buildings they chose at the Delaware County Historical Association, the county clerk’s office and by interviewing property owners. They learned how to research deeds of property.
Lawrence said there was a fight over who got to research This & That at 110 Main St. and his group won. He and Gonzalez both said they wanted to research the building because they liked the way it looked from the outside. The owner of the building gave them a tour so they got to see how it was renovated after a 2016 fire damaged parts of it, Gonzalez said. Lawrence said he was surprised to learn that there had been two smaller buildings that were joined together before the fire. After the fire, one building was torn down and the building at 110 Main St. was saved. The building used to house a furniture store and undertaker shop as the person who built furniture also built caskets.
On Friday, Touray and Maldini were able to have an impromptu tour of the building they chose, Parker House at 74 Main St. Jill Lehmann showed them that the knob next to the front door was a doorbell that she rewired to ring the bell in a different room of the house. They also got to see the staircase, fireplaces and numerous doors in the 200-year-old house. Maldini said he was surprised to find out how old the house was when he first started researching because he thought it looked pretty new.
Corces said he and his group researched Orchard Place, which was built in 1860. The building was owned by the Woodland Cemetery and he found out that the barn’s foundation was made from old tombstones that were probably either damaged and replaced or had a mistake and couldn’t be used as a marker.
The annual tour is free and open to the public.