The Clark House at dawn.
Ruins of the old Clark house, ca. 1825. We went in this house back in 93, about 3 years before it burned. It had fantastic wainscoting in the hallways. The parlor room had incredible woodwork from floor to ceiling. There were strap hinges nearly three feet long on all the extra wide doors. The upper story had "earthquake bars", the long interlocking iron bars running just inside the outer walls for reinforcement. You could see them in the upper bedrooms and the big parlor. Many houses built in the two to three decades following the massive 1811-1812 New Madrid quake had these. The external anchor plates for these bars, one of which would have appeared in this view of the house before the fire, were very decorative. I remember them as a flower pattern, tinted green with oxidation and very beautiful.
When we first toured this house, we had the enormous advantage of having Bill Niceley with us. Old Bill may be quiet most of the time, but he's an encylopedia of knowledge on old structures and old furniture.
Next to the Clark House, thirty yards to the left as you see it here, is a permanent spring, and fed by that spring are the roots of what is probably the second largest Osage Orange tree in the world, second only to the Patrick Henry tree in Virginia. On our first tour, Frank Niceley, the politician of the Niceley clan, brought Bill over to the 7.5 ft diameter tree and said, "Bill, what is this red looking tree?" Bill said, "That there's an Osage Orange, and it's the danged biggest one I've ever seen."
The light here is deceptive. The lighter sky low behind the old mansion wall is actually a very reflective haze layer that hugged the valley just behind the mansion that morning. The early sun rays were actually coming from behind my right shoulder as I took the photo. This shot is the only landscape image I've ever made with the Nikon 85 mm 1.4 lens. I had to put the tripod, fully extended, on top of my huge Ford Econoline van and risk body and limb to climb up there for the shot, which could only be made through this one narrow window through the trees. Alone, I set the whole thing up in the dark, with the van covered in dew.
