Stone Ruin Tour, 1967 Nancy Holt

All right. Thank you. I am here at the octagonal structure. Cement seems to go right up to the edge of the wall that surrounds the octagonal structure on four sides, the four sides closest to the drop of the cliff. There's cement that leaves the edge of the octagon at the center of the cliff and goes to the edge. There's some more cement to the left of that. Otherwise, there just seems to be earth between the slate, cement structure, and the wall that is there. From the top of the cliff here, when I'm standing on the central cement slab, I can see the highway to my... I could see the highway. I can see New York City in the distance. I can see many suburban homes. I can see high-tension wires. I can see business buildings, a square brown business building with slit windows with white strips along the windows.

Through the trees, I can see a diner to my right and a viaduct further in the distance, and a quarry. Even further to the right, you can see the steep edges of a quarry. [inaudible] parked your car by Texas Wieners and proceed up the road till... it's a paved road... until you come to a... just continue on the paved road, all the way around. Just continue walking on the paved road. As you walk on the paved road, you will see a sign. It says Westmont Mount in the distance, a white sign with blue letters. And then, on your left, there's a sign. Great Notch, Cedar Grove, keep right. Just keep walking. On your right will be trees, on your left, Route 3 with a lot of cars going up and down, also a Sunoco station and West Diner to the left across the highway.

Well, soon you will come to a dirt road going up to your right. It seems to have been paved at one time. There's a rope across the entrance, and there's a stone structure that narrows toward the top. It's square, and it narrows to the top. It's rectangular and narrows toward the top. Now continue walking up the dirt path. If you look to your left, you'll see rocks, loosely packed rocks that seem to form a wall, maybe twenty feet away. And to your right, you can look down at the road you just walked on. You will see also to your own right two metal structures that are sort of beehive-shaped on the top, rounded cylinders on the bottom and beehive-shaped on the top, and also a round steel sort of manhole cover in the ground about four feet, three or four feet, from the beehive-shaped structure.

Now, if you look up to your left, you will see a stone structure that has three cut windows in it, the middle one being larger than the two side ones. They're all rounded. They're arches, rounded, arch windows. And on top of the structure is a stone railing, like a turret. It seems to be a stone structure with repetitions of the arched grove windows up above, only very narrow. But there are rounded arches on the top, and. But they go down and form a square. They meet a square at the bottom. Around the structure are three, four, five large trees. Continue walking up the road. To the right, about maybe fifty feet past the castle-like structure on the left, you'll see an old walkway with walls on each side and a rectangular post, a rectangular stone post sort of maybe twice as high as the wall flanking each side. And there seems to be a step there too, right next to the road.

Now continue up. Again, to your left, you'll see walls, tall walls crisscrossing here and there. They seem to be retaining walls of some sort. Just keep walking. Keep going up the hill. You'll see further up along the left here a large boulder a rounded glacial boulder, light gray color, and a tree that is forked on the left, forked maybe 12 feet up. That seems to be surrounded by a stone wall. I keep continuing up the road. And I come, again on the left, to some more walls that are starting to border the road that I'm on now. Now, as the road turns, you will see to your right a garage, an old garage. Walk over to the old garage, walk over. By the way, the road you walk on is paved. It's a paved asphalt road. You'll see some more, two, retaining walls to the left tiering the land.

And you will see rocky cliffs to your left, very cubistically broken up, The rock is very jagged. It cuts along straight lines. And it's the kind of rock that they're quarrying in a quarry that isn't far from here, in the back of the hill you see on your right. Now, you are approaching the garage. And you'll see that one door is completely missing. And then the central door has one, two, three wooden squares missing on the top row, five and a half on the second, and four and a half on the third. And the sixth one that's still intact seems to be pushed in. And then the last row seems to be intact, along with the handle to the door. The door on the far left, on the second row, it has four squares missing. You may go over now to the missing door, the opening where there's no door, and you may look into the garage. You'll see that the roof has fallen through.

There's a hole, large gaping hole in the roof, with wooden boards hanging down into the space. And there are windows along the right side that are totally missing, and a couple of the windows are partially boarded up. The whole structure seems to be made out of cement with a wood beam ceiling. And the doorway at the far right seems to have lost its central part. There's a big, large, rectangular hole in it. Just the frame is left of the door, frame, and the handle. Okay, now you can turn around. By the way, I don't suggest going into the garage. Just look at it from the door because the garage looks very unsafe. All right. Turn around. Walk back down the driveway and down the asphalt driveway again. But you can see there are oak leaves piled against the sides of the driveway.

At one point, along the right, perhaps 150 feet from the garage, you'll see an old pipe that comes out of the ground and twists at a 90-degree angle and then twists... a smaller pipe comes out of that and twists another 90-degree angle, and there is a washer on the end. Continue on down the asphalt driveway. You'll see on your right as you walk down a tree that's lost its top, just a tree trunk that sticks up in the air about ten feet. Just continue walking back to the road that we were on before, the wide road. When you get to the point where you turned off the road, turn to your right, and you will be in a large opening. You'll be able to see in front of you many walls, the beginnings of a staircase that goes up the hill, up the cliff. And there's ivy growing. Just keep walking at a normal pace. So, there's ivy growing along these walls, so.

But keep walking and you will see. After you've passed the... after you've passed the stairway leading up or passed the stairway leading up, past the stairway leading up, continue on the road. And you'll see on your right, ahead of you, a stone wall that comes out about four feet from a larger stone wall, which is somewhat built on a slant going up the hill. And you go over to it. You'll see that it's the remains of an old fountain. There's a rather weathered Cupid riding a... you will see the remains of a sea nymph and some wire sticking out, one of which still has a piece of the concrete that used to make up the bowl. The sea nymph seems to be riding a whale, a dolphin, a dolphin. And the waves are splashing behind it.

The cement has broken off, and the features are very weathered.

Water was coming from the mouth.

Yeah, from my mouth, yeah. Yeah, the water was coming from the dolphin. And can see the rusty pipe where the water spattered forth. And the fountain itself, the basin, is no longer there. The wall behind it has bushes that grow down or hang down over, almost, with some of the branches nearly touching the wall of the fountain, well, some of them covering the sea nymph and the dolphin. Now, turn around about-face. And in front of you, you will see the top of the structure that we discussed before, the turret-type structure. So, we will now walk over to that and pass the pile of gravel. To your right, you'll pass the pile of gravel. And here we are at the turret, at the outlook, lookout.

And you'll see that the wall, it's a one, two, three, four, five, sevensided structure, square as you enter and then becoming a little... it doesn't seem to be a regular octagon or a septagon. It's somewhat uneven. You can see that the stone posts are not evenly placed, that the fence in the middle is longer. It has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight openings. And whereas, the fences on each side have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven openings. The fence to the left on both the straight, both the one right at the entrance and the one slightly to the left, around the left side, the long left side... the right side is also very long. It has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14 openings. The one on the left has been demolished, except for a fence structure with the two openings and three prongs. There are stumps of the posts left.

By the way, the three prongs, I meant to say posts. There are stumps left. And there are about... well, one is about a foot high, and the others are maybe six to eight inches high. And there are one, two, three, four, five, six of them. That's on the left, the left side. And then, on the entrance side, the straight edge where the wall is missing, there's just a block, a square block for the entrance, a very large entrance post, which is about maybe two feet square around and then about four feet high. All right, so now, you should've been in the middle of the piece to observe what I've just said to you. Now you can go over to the edge and look down on the highway. You'll see the same little Sunoco station over there, and you'll see a Dairy Queen. And you'll see the path, the road that you walked up. And of course, you'll see the trees that we spoke of before as being in front of the lookout castle.

Now, I think you can turn around about-face and... oh, no. Now, when you turn, when you... no, no, I think maybe it would be best before you go to the front, when you're still standing in the middle, to go to your right because from your right, you can see that there's a wall that goes straight along and then dips down that's cracked or maybe three feet from its end. And it seems to be a dividing wall of some kind. All right, now turn around. And now is the time when I should have them go to the front and look at the highway, the sign on the left, Sunoco station, Dairy Queen, the trees, the road before them. And then have them turn about-face and, as you're leaving, look at the flagstone floor or the slate floor that has cement between.

Okay. And then walk away from the lookout. As you do, you can see, again, we're going to come towards the fountain. And when we get to and past the gravel... and turn to your right when you get to the road. And as you're walking down the path, the road at a regular pace, you will see some steps in the wall directly in front of you. They are not the steps that you're going to take. They are there in the wall. There seem to be three of them, and the wall is cracked to the left of the steps. But I want you to stop by the steps on the left, the entrance to the stairway that goes up the cliff. Now, turn left at these steps, which you can see on your left, and walk over to the steps. You'll have to walk over a pile of dirt and some pieces of cement.

And as you can see, when you get over to the steps that they're full of dead leaves and that the walls are of the same gray rough-cut, quarried stone, quarried from this region. And you can proceed. You'll see also ivy growing over the walls and green moss covering the rocks. Now you may proceed up the stairs. Let's see. There are quite a few. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. And at the thirteenth step, you'll come to a small landing. The steps, by the way, twist around almost 90 degrees, the first thirteen steps. Now, this is the very first tier. This small landing here, you can sort of stop here a minute. Look around. You'll see that there are old dead trunks that have been put along the wall. And a steel wire has been- - three lines of steel wire that have been set up. They're twisted around the steel nails that are put into the rock. And so, you may look at that.

You can also see a pipe that's about a foot away from the wall, about maybe six feet away from you, a pipe protruding from the ground about a foot. It looks like a one-and-a-half-inch pipe. Okay. Now, proceed up the next group of stairs. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, and you got another small landing. You'll see a rounded post with jagged rocks that sort of make a turret. Go up the next stairs, one, two, three, four, and you're at the second level. The stairs that we just came up, the group of six and the group of four, twisted around about 90 degrees also. And so here we are at the second level. We can take a better look at the three lines of steel wire and the ivy. I think you can stop at the entranceway of the steps, which is about 30 feet from the other steps. There's more steps that lead up. And you can see just as...

But while you're walking towards these steps, you could see an ivycovered stone post at the end of the second level. Now, turn to your right and go up the stairs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, and you're at a square landing place, square resting place. And again, you can look around. You can see the posts, the maybe three-foot square post at the entranceway of the stairs you've just climbed. And they seem to be hollow in the middle, or there's a hollowed-out section in them. Perhaps bushes or plants once we're there. And now we will go further up, one, two. The one, two that we just took is to the right. You have to turn to your right to take the one, two. One, two, and there's a flat area. The bushes are much more overgrown here onto the path. The twigs and the leaves are just sticking out onto the path. And of course, the path is still full of dead brown leaves of various kinds, many oak leaves.

All right. Now when you get to the next group of stairs, there's one, two, three, four, and you're at another small landing. And ahead of you, you will see two enclosures, rock wall closures, that are about maybe five feet wide on each side that are a little lower than the walls behind them, about a foot lower. In one is a tree, a small tree. And they're full of dead leaves. Beyond that, a little further on, you can see two maybe four-foot posts with two smaller two-foot posts jutting out from the sides of them. And of course, you can see the steps also before you that you'll soon be working on. As a matter of fact, right now, you'll walk one, two, three, four, and you'll be at another resting place. From here, you can see a large piece of flat rock, which has a slightly greenish-gray... all these rocks are slightly greenish gray. I don't know if it's due to the moss or whether it's the light or what. They seem greenish gray.

And ahead of you, you'll see a flat rock that's about four inches thick. And it seems to have been cocked up on its side for some reason. Perhaps when the trees and back of it were uprooted, the very large trees that have been uprooted, maybe when they did that, this large four-inch thick flat rock was uprooted. Now you go up the stairs, one, two, three, four, five to where the flat rock is. And instead of stepping on that, it might be steady... well, before we even talk about that, you'll see once you get there that there are two stone benches on each side and that this was a resting place, two stone benches made up of... it looks like concrete and about an inch thick and maybe four or five feet long. The one on the left is a little smaller than the one on the right.

And we will step a little to your left. It seems to be an easier way, and. But then, cross over to your right, over to the right-hand stone bench, and walk right over that bench. The stairs are blocked because of the fallen tree, and we will now... once we stepped over the stone bench, look to your left. And on your left, you'll see a stone wall. There's a stone wall going... go to the bottom of the stone wall. That is, you have to walk up a path to your left, up the hill. Just keep walking to where the stone wall begins. Once you are there, where the stone wall begins, climb up the first four stairs, one, two, three, four. You will see two stone benches on the other side of you, on the right and left, similar to the ones in the resting area we were at before.

The difference here is that there's gravel, large pieces of gravel sort of stuck in the mortar on top of the rock wall, which seems to continue on. If you look up the stairs, up the walls and the stairs in front of you, this seems to be true all the way up. Here, also, the wind seems to blow the leaves to the left, clearing a small path up the stairs. Now we will continue up the stairs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and we're at a flat area, about ten feet long. We can stop here a second. Catch our breath. Look back down at the stone benches that we have just stood near. And I'll turn around and go up some more stairs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, and we're on another maybe 10-foot resting flat area.

And ahead of us, we can see that there are two more series of stairs, and we can continue right up those stairs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and we're at another flat area. And we will continue up the next group of stairs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and we are on a flat path, a flat stone path made of flagstones. And we will continue on that. From the last step, we will walk, and I'll count the steps. 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14, and when you look to your right, you will see that there's a roundish area. Actually, it's an octagon, but it's been broken up and overgrown. And it looks rather round from here. Walk over to that round area, round octagonal area. It's also made of the same material as the walk, flagstone, and mortar.

There's a wall going around half of it, or no. I guess at one time, it perhaps extended around half. But now it takes up one, two, three, three sides of the octagon. But there is a cement portion which comes off on the side of the octagon that should be directly in front of you. Walk over to that cement portion and look down the cliff. You can see the road that you walked up. You can see many trees. And then, beyond the trees, you can see the highway again, Route 3. And in the distance, the highway divides at one point. And there are many row houses, many of them painted white. But some are green and gray and red. But there are row houses on both sides of the highway. Also, it seems on the left, along the highway, there's a big bowling alley. You can see a chimney with pins, bowling pins on two sides, large bowling pins. You can see a rectangular industrial building directly in front of that. And let me finish the tape.

There are donkeys walking around.