(Updated on January 20, 2025)
Facing southeastward.
This is Fayette's Machine Shop. Like most utilitarian buildings of its kind, it was not intended as a major statement of architectural design. True, it was given one ornamental conceit, the pediment's octagonal oculus. But its stonework, which is mostly a random-set ashlar, seems to be about as artless as it ever could be without falling down five minutes after it was erected.
That stone, once again, is very locally quarried Regional Silurian Dolostone taken from the Burnt Bluff Group at the foot of nearby Middle Bluff.
As I've noted in other posts of this set, I've found reliable sources that state that the red brick used here and elsewhere in the settlement had to be imported, But from whence it came, exactly, no one so far has said.
Regardless, in the Machine Shop exterior the skillful use of that brick reaches its absolute nadir—or, if you prefer, its greatest quirky creativity. Just look at the structure's quoins (corner masonry). These seem to have been the work of a crew inspired by an abundant supply of distilled grain products.
Quoins can be made of stone, brick, and other materials as well. And they can be purely ornamental or play a vital structural role. When the latter is the case, as I suspect it is here, the quoins provide bracing for walls composed of inferior or badly mortared rock.
The brick quoins on view in this shot seem to want to form right triangles on both their faces, but are mostly deformed. I actually wonder if the walls were originally made entirely of the dolostone that started to crumble at the edges in a way that necessitated irregular, ex post facto brick patchwork.
Or it could be that the people who built the Machine Shop just weren't trained masons. In any event, I like the funky outcome.
To see the other photos and descriptions in this set, visit my Integrative Natural History of Fayette Historic State Park album.
