Beautiful Article, “Vernacular Rocks”

Frank Raso wrote a beautiful article about local architecture in South Orange-Maplewood for the October 2012 issue of Maplewood Matters Magazine.

It’s a thorough piece that describes what the landscape was like before suburbanization, and how the architecture throughout both towns was built by “farmers building with materials they had excavated themselves”. Called vernacular architecture, farmers used local sandstone blocks and trap rock and were “amateur architects using natural indigenous materials for all sorts of construction”.

Pictures from the two towns included, Raso provides visuals of remnants of this architecture, including gates and cobbled streets, mixed with modern development. He encourages us to linger among, as he describes, architectural souvenirs, to appreciate the charm and historical significance.

Now, I love the play on words for the title of his article.

Vernacular rocks.

Get it?

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