Library of Congress photo/Times Observer file photo/Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton An undated image of the stone house. Below, a sketch by Joanne Oviatt of the one of three stone houses built on the Irvine estate that survives. The sketch was included with information for Sarah Duncan Irvine Heritage Days and, below that, the current condition of the “Little Stone House in the Hollow,” built in the 1840s and located on Dunns Eddy Road.

Any building pushing toward its’ 180th birthday is bound to have some ebbs and flows.

Sometimes it will look like the day it was built.

Sometimes it will look like it is on the verge of collapse.

Such is the situation with the “Little Stone House in the Hollow.”

One of the last vestiges of the Irvine estate, the stone house is impossible to miss on Dunn’s Eddy Road.

Dr. William Irvine, the grandson of the Revolutionary War General for who the town is named, hired Robert Shortt — the same Scottish stonemason who built the Irvine Presbyterian Church – to build three stone houses, according to information in the Times Observer archive prepared for the Sarah Duncan Irvine Heritage Days. One of the stone houses was for James David, who ran the mill and was located adjacent to the grist mill while a second was on the “high ground” for farmer Christian Gross.

The third was built for an unknown farmer at the lower end of the estate property “in the hollow.”

That’s the one that survives.

“This original house contained four rooms, two up and two down, with fireplaces. Nothing is known about how long this was occupied by a farmer working for Dr. Irvine, presumably on a tenant basis; that is, a percentage of the crops went to Dr. Irvine. It is known that this house was last occupied about 1910.”

While farming declined on the estate, the stone houses were left vacant and fell into disrepair.

The grist mill house is “practically gone” while the Gross house has fallen in.

And the house the hollow needed work.

A furniture designer, Gordon Kay, decided in the 1970s that “they would restore the house for a family vacation spot.”

When the last descendant of Irvine passed away – Miss Esther Newbold in 1963 – the “property was purchased eventually by the National Forge of Irvine, who still own it.”

National Forge leased the house and five acres to Kay to restore the house.

Starting with cleanup, the work took three years.

Perhaps surprisingly, the roof remained intact resulting in most of the damage occurring on the first floor.

“For 60 years dust had seeped in through the broken windows and the north wall and settled on the first floor; moisture would set it up and this was repeated until first was caked as deep as three inches.”

So the first floor needed replaced.

The windows were salvaged from the Newbold barn as “they were the same size and pattern as the original windows in the house. With the north wall in a state of collapse, it was decided to board up that wall and use it as an inside wall for a new addition.”

The materials from the addition came from the Newbold barn, as well, specifically from the hayloft.

“One of the barn beams extends the length of the 32/36 extension. One end now is given over to floor-to-ceiling windows framing a beautiful view of trees and sky.”

The original four rooms were repaired and that’s when “it was discovered that no lath was used – just boards with ax slashes which had been nailed up and the cuts willed with old hair plaster.”

Modern hearing was installed and “the two-foot-thick walls have a six inch air space between them.”

The upstairs was converted into one large room with original windows

A porch was added and a new entrance “from this porch made it possible to close the old front entrance without marring the original design of the house. Great flat stones form the doorway just as they did in 1841.”

Family lived in the home into the late 1970s before renting it out.

The home fell into repair again over the ensuing 30 years at the Times Observer reported back in 2014 that some work had been completed on the house – wall stabilization and repairing a hole in the roof – and the corners were stable during a review of the building then.

A cooperative effort among the state Bureau of Forestry, the Forest Service’s Forestry Science Lab in Irvine, the Allegheny National Forest and the Warren County Historical Society was developed at the time.

“There are still interest and even occasional discussions on moving forward with some type of stabilization efforts but unfortunately due to limited funding and staffing not much progress has been made,” Cecile Stelter, district forester of the Cornplanter Forest District, said earlier this month.