Maybe dirt held it together?

The Dec. 6-10 edition of Vision Long Island’s always informative e-newsletter contained a small story about an 1824 dwelling in Coram, New York, that has seen better days. The historic Mott House, which is now being reconstructed with labor donated from the Long Island Builders Institute, was pictured lying collapsed, its timbers strewn about the ground in the Town of Brookhaven hamlet (see accompanying photo).

Reported the newsletter: “The house collapsed in September 2009 during a scheduled cleaning by the Town of Brookhaven.”

Just as we suspected: What keeps many an old building intact is decades of accumulated dirt. Clean it up and the whole thing may disintegrate.