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The first Cooleys started a farm on Ridge Road, Randolph Center. Anna (Hale) & Augustus Cooley, their son Harry Cooley center. Augustus's son Harry Cooley married Gertrude Small Harry's son Charles Cooley married Lois Rogers Charles's son Daniel Cooley married Sylvia Shepard Daniel's son Alex Cooley married Brittany Baumann Children: Harry Hale Cooley 1893-1986 Sumner Dewey Cooley Hollis Raymond Cooley Oscar William Cooley Emerson Frisbie Cooley Children: Idora Gertrude Cooley Tucker Ruth Hilda Cooley Demarest Godfrey (Marion) Marian Rogene Cooley Stouder Charles Henry Cooley 1926-2017 John Hale Cooley Children: Daniel Rogers Cooley 1952 (Charles) Peter Cooley Matthew (Marshal) Cooley Paul Andrew Cooley Children: Alexander Shepard Cooley 1985 Harry Cooley Charles Cooley Charles & Alex Cooley Dan Cooley

Supplied by Tim Cooley from his father John Cooley's slide collection

I can't decide if I am just obsessed with recreating a similar house or if I am truly inspired by the old house to get new ideas. At any rate the old kitchen got me thinking about wood cabinets (rather than an all-white kitchen), light countertop to contrast with the wood cabinets (and brighten up the kitchen) and white appliances (rather than stainless steel). The old kitchen: OK, so not exactly inspiring. Here's my playing around with these ideas- I like minimalist cabinets without all of the hoopla (of fancy edges, curved molding, added framing, or too many details). There is a cabinet company in Greenfield, MA near us named Boxco, https://boxco.studio/ that makes simple cabinets that I think would help make a new kitchen look older (surprising, since minimalist usually means modern). Compare these Boxco cabinets below to the original 60's cabinets above. Try to picture just these cabinets in a lighter color (not the green backsplash, not the black handles, not the black countertop). I could even try to replicate those 60s silver handles- One way to create an older impression (in a new kitchen) is to use upper shelving rather than upper cabinets. I love the wood cabinets above (simple lines, no extra framing) but too dark, grainy/oaky. I think I like Maple. I do like the countertop. But I would choose different handles (though these do look old.) Here's a kitchen with wood cabinets and white appliances: I like this wood of the cabinets above (but do not like the 'holes' substituting for cabinet handles). Instead of the half-wall separating the kitchen and dining room, I would just use more lower kitchen cabinets to create sort of an island like this (except picture wood cabinets and light countertop): You'd have to make sure the back side of it (towards the dining room) has a nice finished appearance, like this: I have thought about using white wooden shiplap or white wainscoting as a backsplash. Less modern than subway tiles. Still bright and light with a contrast to darker wooden cabinets below. And I do want the 3 windows over the kitchen sink. Should I do this? Or this? Thank you for letting me have fun here and thank you for your input!

These are very basic. I don't have all details on them yet. If you see the trim I drew on the front of the house (west side) imagine there is trim on all other windows and doors on other sides. Full of erasure marks, etc. But SO MUCH FUN! I will post them twice. Once without comments, then again with what is behind each window or door for rooms. It's important to me that the front of the house look as much like the original as possible. I have tried to capture the molding, the big front door with its side lights (but I'm sure Phil will help me capture it more accurately from photos.) The living room is located where it was in the old house. The downstairs bedroom in the same spot. I want to have the stairwell and that wide front hallway open to the living room, doing away with the wall separation.  There won't be the 3rd bedroom upstairs, but it will be saved as a Reading Nook/extra sleeping space (as suggested by Sara Tucker.). The south side (below) was always the 'usual entry' for most visitors. Here the difference will be French doors at the entry (let in as much light as possible). I left space along the wall in the dining room for Grampa Cooley's (Harry's) desk, so it can be in its usual spot. I have not drawn in the covered porch yet...I need help with that. Nice big deck area with room for company to sit out beside the dining room/living room and enjoy that view. Phil suggests a screened in porch for part of it (maybe along the dining room area?). Should I have the living room windows be French doors as well...a whole side of the house that opens to the deck/porch via doors? Or keep it more traditional with the living room windows as they were? There will be a 'new' dormer along the back of the house to allow for an upstairs guest bathroom. Here you can see new dining room windows (where the connection to the 2nd house/saltbox Fireplace room used to be on the far left of the drawing), the usual door into the kitchen area, the kitchen windows above the sink, then to the north of that- the matching 3-paned windows up high for the laundry and mudroom. (Note…I decided in a later post that this is not good aesthetically so see future changes.) We may have a garage along the north for entry into the mudroom. On the north side of the house you can see the mudroom entryway (that will lead past the laundry and into the kitchen). (Note…this gets switched to the back of the house in a future post.) High windows in the 'master bath' and the master bedroom north windows. Upstairs the other of two guest bedrooms.

The upstairs will be very similar to the old house except for no walls around the '3rd bedroom,' (keeping it open for light into the hallway upstairs while still providing extra sleeping space and a reading nook, thank you Sara for suggestion), and the bathroom will have a true dormer to not be so squeezed into the space. I have added lots of closets along the two window-less walls for storage and for guests to use, and figured the bedrooms do not have to be huge to be useful (but may have overdone it). I need suggestions for the most aesthetically pleasing and safe way to 'rail in' the stairs above (without that wall there). I don't especially like the idea of stair balusters lining the side (and it would have to be high enough for kids to not lean over the top)...but if there are especially cool ones or attractive ones or design-appropriate ones I'd like to see them. The downstairs (already shown in earlier post except the mudroom entry here has been moved to the back (east) side of the house and the two high windows in the mudroom/laundry has been replaced by one conventional window. Still pondering the porch/deck. I am with Sara...porches can darken rooms and I don't want dark rooms. But having the protection of a roof from sun or rain could be nice and cozy out there. Either way, I definitely want at least a deck for enjoying that view.

A reader/family member suggested changing the north side less (from the original house design) and to do that have the mudroom entrance on the east side instead of the north side.  Good idea. So now the only difference from the original house on the north side are the bathroom windows. On the east side (back of the house) I changed two of the little high windows in my design to one conventional window.  I didn’t like the little windows all in a row there aesthetically, though they would have allowed more wall space.  I kept the one above the kitchen sink as it was in the original design. This is what suggestions by readers can help with, thank you!

I got inspired to play my with house plan ideas after visiting Phil Godenschwager who does architectural drawings. I want to have some basic plans in place for him to work with when he is ready. It is so much fun to play with floor plans. It helps you see glitches and research things like "how much space do you need around a kitchen island? How wide should useful doorways/walk-through areas be? Can you put a refrigerator next to a doorway?" And to think about cozy vs. open space. Here is my initial plan at this point. It maintains the beautiful wide front door with sidelights (windows up both sides), the evenly spaced two windows to the right of the door, two windows to the left of the door...so the front of the house will look the same from the road. The sides just along the the corner from the front edge of the house will also be the same with those two windows on each side. Otherwise, from halfway along the side to the back, it will be slightly different from the original house (French doors into dining room on the south side, bathroom windows on the north side and a mudroom entry door). And all along the east side (the true back side of the house) it will have many more windows, but mostly matching those that were above the kitchen sink...the three smaller higher windows in a row letting light in from morning sun. Except the dining room on the east...where the door to the 2nd house used to be, it will have two windows that match the front window. More morning light there too with no garage in the way blocking light. The porch can be reminiscent of the same house in the 1800s that had a porch: https://www.ridgeroadhouse.blog/post/the-original-land-grantee Phil and I talked about the importance of the angle of the roof on a covered porch, the porch beam size and style and finial style. I want all of that to be appropriate to this house style (in the past).

On the first day of spring, March 21, 2024, I visited with Phil Godenschwager at his studio in Randolph, Vermont on Weston Street (in the former Tewksbury Store). If you have never had a chance to tour his studio, you are missing an experience. As a life-long artist, it is filled with his creations. Even the building itself has been preserved and enhanced from his stewardship. Front porch posts with a whimsical design (preserved from a nearby house that was torn down) send a warm welcome to those who enter. Tucked towards the back of the building is an old door he found beside the road. With two long narrow curved spaces for windows, he completed them with handmade stained glass, gradations of pale yellow to gold. http://www.philgodenschwager.com/about-1.html He generously gave me a good chunk of his afternoon to talk about the plans for this Randolph Center house. I am excited to say he will draw up the architectural plans for us. I was so impressed with his work both artistically and professionally and at a reasonable 'Vermonters only' rate. He will help bring my ideas to life with floor plans and elevations that a contractor can use to build the house again. http://www.philgodenschwager.com/architectural.html In the meantime, I can dream (and ponder, analyze, research and brainstorm). The circular driveway as it comes up from the northern side of the property: The circular driveway as it passes along the back of the property: The driveway as it exits the south side of the property: I think of this short, strong guy as a sentry on the property:

As this video pans to the left, remember the 2nd house was located there, pushed out to the south a bit, connected to the far 'left' corner of this foundation. You can kind of see the rectangle where it was (the garage, the fireplace room).

https://www.ourherald.com/articles/historic-homes-demolition-helps-local-fire-depts/ Firefighters from Randolph Center, East Randolph, Randolph Village, and Brookfield train at a house on Ridge Road, which was scheduled for demolition and donated to the department for exercises by Dan and Sylvia Cooley. (Provided / Ruth Tucker)

I got the idea to share this site on Front Porch Forum from my writers’ group with Sara Tucker.  https://www.korongobooks.com/  Great idea! So far, I have heard from at least three neighbors, life-long residents of Ridge Road as well as newer folks, plus many more (maybe 100 visitors) have looked at this website because of that notice.  Thank you for getting in touch.  It makes me feel very welcomed. Thank you to Wayside Farm for reaching out. My husband remembers the Abbot farm well. We think this is a photo of Hartwell Abbot on one of his fields off Ridge Road. Followup- (Good questions in the comments below Sara. So, to answer those questions to the best of my ability, see below.  I really should just be asking Chet Abbot from Wayside Farm but I like trying to solve mysteries the hard way.) Dan Cooley says: this is from a slide (most likely in an older family collection of slides). The color is real (a Kodachrome slide), not colorized. Dan thinks either his grandfather Harry or his father Charles Cooley took it. Dan did a bunch of scanning of old family slides and saved this along with the others. We have it in our digitized collection of photos. Kodachrome was invented in 1935 and used for slides starting in 1936 (used by many Americans after WWII around 1945).  Maybe if I look for the original slide it has a date on it.  Or maybe I can see which other slides were scanned around the same time and infer a date from that. When I research Hartwell Abbot there was a Hartwell Brown Abbot Sr., which made me wonder...is this Hartwell Abbot Sr. or Jr.? Dan says Hartwell's son was Brownie Abbot (so maybe Brownie was Hartwell Jr.?  But Dan is sure this is not a photo of Brownie Abbot). Hartwell Abbot Sr. lived from 1912-1977. Most horse-drawn equipment was replaced by tractors in the 1940s. It could be a photo just before horses were replaced by tractors on their farm (except Hartwell looks older than his 30s in this photo).  Or it could be a photo of someone who had access to tractors but was very versed in horse-drawn farm equipment. So it's a photo taken via a Kodachrome slide film sometime after the 1940s (and before 1977 when Hartwell passed away). It's a field of corn with a beautiful team of white horses, one who is listening to the team driver, and one who has one ear towards the photographer, one ear to the driver. I can't imagine the team driver would be just doing this as a photo op, so real work was being done. The fields are open with a border of trees along the edges. Almost looks like a huge Elm tree in the left background. Many Elms were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease by the 1950s but a few were resistant. https://vermonthistory.org/vermont-elm-trees-history Now I hope Chester Abbot can comment and confirm or correct.

I wrote this as an assignment from a prompt for a writers group run by Sara Tucker https://www.korongobooks.com/ An Empty Building Comes to Life February 25, 2024, 462 Ridge Road, Randolph Center, Vermont Smoke was oozing out of cracks in the house.  I wasn’t surprised.  I knew the firefighters would have started training first thing in the morning and it was already 10 a.m. when I pulled into the driveway of the Ridge Road house.  Poof, a giant cloud of smoke obscured the front of the house and traveled across the road towards the farm fields below. Soon, very orange flames were flowing out of downstairs windows (but flowing out and upward, defying gravity).  Orange flames started emerging from a gap where the two houses are joined together on the south side.  I don’t think I have ever seen anything that orange.  More orange than a pumpkin.  More orange than the most orange fall leaves.  Oh!  I know!  It was as orange as those close-up pictures I’ve seen of the sun spewing up solar flares.  I hadn’t expected this much fire until about noon.  But I’ve never been to a controlled burn of a house before, so how would I really know what to expect?! Suddenly there was an eerie sounding alarm…almost like a fog horn at an ocean lighthouse.  I somehow knew this meant “everybody out!” As I passed Chief Williams, he said, “the fire got away from us a little faster than we’d hoped.”  But it’s a house with wood over 200 years old.  Dry, thin, friable, lighting up like dry twigs in a campfire.  They would have liked to have conducted even more inside training (they’d already done 3 hours), but safety is their top priority.  Everybody out. You might expect all of the pumper trucks with hoses on all sides of the house would spring to life, shooting out gallons of water at the house in giant arcs.  Many firefighters were surrounding the house.  Helmets on, labels on the back of khaki coats RCFD (Randolph Center) or BROOKFIELD, or black coats with ERFD (East Randolph), or finally, some red/some black coats reading RVFD (Randolph Village).  But no, this was not a firefighting situation.  This was just a let-it-burn-but keep-the-fire-under-control situation.  In fact, the chief wanted it to burn hot, the hotter the fire, the less smoke is produced.  And it was hot.  The February day was 19 degrees with snow on the ground but you could feel the heat all the way across Ridge Road almost 100’ away. There were some streams of water, firefighters aiming hoses up at trees near the house, helping the old Maples make it through this.  We’ll know if they leaf out in the spring. As I watched and took photos, I could start to see the insides of rooms I had gotten to know so well in the months before the event.  It was surreal to see these intense orange flames now filling the house and shooting out of windows.  Rooms where I could imagine the contents, the sunshine coming through windows while standing inside, looking out at the view.  It was especially weird to shoot videos and zoom in on the house…almost like traveling into the fire and into the rooms with flames.  You could start to see the structure of beams and supporting rafters. The main house was now all lit up, the roof a general mass of orange flames, with the upstairs windows seeming to direct flames out of the openings. The 2nd house, the saltbox house with the fireplace room and its two upstairs bedrooms, caught last but when it did, it became an even bigger conflagration than the main house. I could see right through the main house to the other side- from south bedrooms to north bedrooms which were once separated by cozy walls.  From time to time a section of the house would collapse with a beam left over, tilting at a strange angle.  Like snapping photos at a basketball game I’d “awwww” when my bad timing missed catching an especially dramatic event. It didn’t take long, after being there a little more than a couple hours, only the barest of frames of the bottom floor was standing, charred gray and black corners posts that had been huge beams back in 1790.  Most of the leftover fire was in the cellar hole.  The excavator driver started working on pushing everything into the hole.  Firefighters helped him by dousing his shovel with water to protect the electrical connections. Was I sad?  Yes, a little.  But this didn’t seem real, despite all the planning and reading and imagining.  It was like watching a movie; yes, it was really hot, but you wouldn’t get hurt.  One firefighter smiled at me as I took his photo so he could send it to his mom.  People were casually standing around, starting to eat burgers that one of the younger volunteers was cooking on a gas grill. And when I think of the house, it is still there.