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The Evolution of a Project
| Lucretia understood the hydraulic engineering aspects of the project. She wrote to her son James: This tank 11 ft. in diameter and twenty-feet high holds between four and five hundred barrels. You must know just how high your cascade closets are above the level of the well that no mistake be made. I have estimated for twenty feet. |
Design
Problems with the main well at Lawnfield prompted the 1894 project to replace an earlier windmill. The project included a new well, a tower with a tank to store water, and the larger windmill to pump water into the storage tank. Lucretia was involved in the fine details of the project from start until finish, working with her sons to plan and execute it. In the first letter to her son James R. Garfield, February 10, 1894, she set the tone for the project:
...if it is to be a permanent structure we should make it mean as much as possible and sufficiently artistic to be in keeping with any future improvement we hope to make... Whatever we do now is of consequence to the grove as well as to the old home, and I want you all to be pleased.
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Money Matters
With the design in, Lucretia became involved in the details of execution, with the goal of keeping costs down. Again Lucretia wrote to her son:
Can you explain why a tank 15 ft. by 15 ft. and holding 600 barrels costs not half as much as one 11 ft. by 20 ft...and holding less than 500 barrels? The former would be put up for $195.00, the latter with only a few steel beams and window guards added, for $440.00. Again, is not Mr. Reough's estimate too large? I really cannot see how he can make such a simple structure cost more than or as much as, he would build a summer cottage for...I can not afford to build an expensive tower, either will I consent to put up a stupid, inconvenient unsightly thing !! Everything you wrote about yourself and the home affairs made me happy, except the estimates for the tower. They were simply ridiculous. Architects and contractors all seem to conspire to get the most money for the least work. I think I will go home and oversee the whole thing myself. I built a home once, bought all material and hired the workmen and although it was in wartime, I have never done anything so cheaply since, nor ever had anything better done.
Final Construction
After cost estimates were revised several times, construction began. Lucretia stayed involved in the project, consulting with her son Abram, an architectural student at M.I.T., about trouble engineering a stone arch at the base of the windmill. With this help the project was finally completed. Lucretia was pleased with the project, if a bit chagrined at the final price: $2,196.00. In a final letter, Lucretia could not resist penning a moral about the value of schooling:
The arches are finished after one had been taken down three times, and a second twice. Finally they are not noticeably bad, and (the contractor) has learned a lesson. It may not have cost him as much as a year at Technology [M.I.T.] but the mortification of failing to understand such a simple principle in mathematics and thereby to have so blundered, more than offsets the cost of a little more study.
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Lucretia's project successful, the windmill tower graced Lawnfield until it was taken down in 1930 after extensive wind damage. The structure was rebuilt after a generous and anonymous gift was donated for its reconstruction in 1998 and is standing once again in all its glory today.
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