TX BIOS:  Ostrander house
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   #19 no 19-I
   
   AUG 22 1938
   
   FIELD NOTES
   
   Taken on Interviews
   
   (Information given by a local architect)
   
   OSTRANDER HOUSE
   
   "A Mr. Tuttle was the contractor who built the Ostrander house. It was
   very unusual for those days.
   
   "I was building the courthouse at Paint Rock at that time and happened
   to go out by the Ostrander house. It was new - hardly finished. It was
   far ahead of anything that had ever been built in this section. The
   stones were native material but the lumber was brought in from
   somewhere else.
   
   "I was full of curiosity and persuaded Mrs. Ostrander to take me
   through the house, as I was an architect. When we ascended the stairs,
   there was a break - the stairway stopped, but there was a room still
   higher; it would not take an architect to discover the break. Some say
   the uppermost room was to be used as a look-out tower, or that a dome
   was to have been constructed; others relate different stories - who
   knows?
   
     NOTE: [C-12 Tex?]
     
   "Mrs. Ostrander and I went down the stairway, she explaining in detail
   each piece of art. When we were down I told her that I would like to
   see the kitchen I had heard so much about. She said, 'No, my cook is
   in there.' I told her that I would not hurt the cook. She hesitated,
   but 00012finally led me into the kitchen. It was a wonderful piece of
   art, [cabinete?], water secured from a cistern by means of a hand-pump
   which was built onto the kitchen sink. The cook - a good-looking lad
   with black, curly hair, (now a prominent ranchman of West Texas, J. C.
   Landon), who came with the Ostranders from Syracuse, New York.
   
   "I visited in the home several times, but I was more interested in a
   German boy who worked there, so I can not say how much is true of the
   stories that are told concerning the Ostranders. Anyway, they left
   hurriedly, leaving the piano standing open. It was not touched for
   years, and the house was not occupied for years afterward."

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