Stone House, Cape Vincent - Renoir boating parties and cellar-phobia

Hallway of Stone House of Vincent Le Ray, 1815. These photographs of Stone House were taken on June 28, 1935 by the New York photographer Samuel Gottscho. At this point, Stone House was owned by John L. and Ethel Johnston. Photographs courtesy of Avery Library, Columbia University.

In the early 1980s, when I started doing research on stone houses in Jefferson County, I visited Drs. JoAnn and Robert Crisp-Ellert, owners of Stone House in Cape Vincent, both of whom held PhDs.  Mrs. Ellert was an artist whose “Renoir boating parties” on the St. Lawrence River sparked my imagination.

I never actually saw one of these parties happen but I imagine they involved St. Lawrence skiffs for gentlemen and very large hats for ladies. Mr. Ellert was assistant general counsel for science and technology in the Department of Commerce, serving under six presidents beginning with Lyndon B. Johnson and ending with George H.W. Bush.

Dining room of Stone House showing the architectural details of both the interior doorway and window.

At this time, Stone House was badly in need of maintenance work and the once glorious garden was a tangle of weeds. But the Ellerts, who “collected historic homes,” as they told me, did not have much time to work on it. Mrs. Ellert was afraid to go into the cellar to inspect the kitchen, preferring instead to eat at the Roxy in Cape Vincent village. There were cordons that prevented anyone from sitting on Stone House's armchairs and the interior felt more like a museum than the gracious home it once had been. Mr. Ellert seemed very shy and much more comfortable in the stable building next to the house when I interviewed him.

The Ellerts were adamant about their privacy and not unjustly worried about vandalism and damage to Stone House during their tenure. Since they discouraged tours and visitors, they alienated many Cape Vincent residents who regarded the building as part of their collective heritage.

Candle holders in the library, ornamented with quivers and agricultural implements, seem to celebrate the bucolic idyll that James LeRay hoped to achieve for his son Vincent in Cape Vincent.

Although the Ellerts’ connection with Cape Vincent was tenuous, they did much good elsewhere, funding scholarships and donating an art gallery, along with their own house, to Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, where they had retired. Both were buried after their deaths in 2007 in Arlington National Cemetery. An odd video film on YouTube of a rather stiff Mrs. Ellert offering a tour of her St. Augustine house reveals some of the colorful paintings she did while staying at Stone House. Stone House is now owned by the Slack family of Norcross, Georgia, who use it as did the Ellerts, as a summer home.

Dr. Claire Bonney, author of French Emigré Architecture in Jefferson County New York, 2015.