BY ADAM ATKINSONNorth Country This Week

POTSDAM -- The village of Potsdam's Department of Public Works brought home its first shipment of Potsdam sandstone from the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center demolition project in Ogdensburg Wednesday, March 5.

Potsdam's DPW crews rolled a truck load of the material into Bayside Cemetery where the village will be stockpiling the sandstone for use on future maintenance projects for the community's vintage Potsdam sandstone architecture, much of which is in need of maintenance.

The material, once the quarried backbone of the village's economy in the 1800s is hard to come by these days and expensive.

But thanks to a grassroots effort – with help from state elected representatives, notably Assemblyman John Gray – that began last year, the village was able to salvage large blocks of sandstone from the demolition of the former state psychiatric center buildings in Ogdensburg.

“I’m very excited about this,” said Potsdam Village Mayor Alexandra Jacobs Wilke at the village board of trustees meeting Monday, March 3. 

“This has been long in the works, as you know a lot of stops and starts to receive the correct approvals to get over there,” said the mayor. “And then, frankly, the weather getting in the way of us retrieving a large amount of historic sandstone in winter.”

Wilke said the load of sandstone which did then arrive Wednesday would be the first of many hopefully. 

“We hope this is sort of the test from the state side to ensure that we can reclaim this for community use,” Wilke said. “And, thank you to the Bayside Cemetery Association that most generously offered to store this for us right now.”

Before arrangements were made to reclaim some of the now rare building material from the abandoned state psychiatric facility in Ogdensburg, the stone was originally destined for an out-of-state landfill.  The state, after years of inaction, had finally agreed last year to demolish the empty buildings in Ogdensburg. The structures had sat unused and had started to deteriorate.

However, a proposal by former Potsdam Museum director Mimi Van Deusen, a member of the Bayside Cemetery Association board, last summer was presented to the village board who immediately expressed support for the effort. 

The Potsdam town board soon also agreed to try to reclaim the material. And more support followed from Gray and other state leaders. 

Van Deusen’s proposal is to allow the stone to be used to help restore, repoint, and otherwise fix any future issues in the community’s 28 historic sandstone buildings, many of which feature prominently along Potsdam’s historic Market Street block. 

Currently the Bayside Cemetery Association has restoration work planned on the cemetery’s sandstone walls and gate lodge. Trinity Episcopal Church on Fall Island is also undergoing sandstone restoration. 

During her initial presentation, the former village historian said when the Potsdam Catholic Church recently did work on its towers, they had to ship sandstone in from Arizona to get the proper raw material to fix and point the old stonework because there was little available in the area.

Under the initial proposal, the newly arrived stockpile could be available to anyone needing the material for restoration work on the community's Potsdam sandstone buildings. 

Potsdam sandstone is a “well-cemented sandstone of nearly pure quartz, renowned for its reddish hues, ranging from salmon pink to orange-red, and its strength in construction,” said a resolution of support for the salvage passed by the village board last August.

The village and town have 28 buildings made of Potsdam sandstone which are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

The stone, which was quarried in the 19th century, was also used extensively around the community in various applications including in sidewalks and gravestones. It also was used to construct the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa and the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany.

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