Give the man room : $b The story of Gutzon BorglumCasey, Robert J. (Robert Joseph)
General
Give the man room : $b The story of Gutzon Borglum
Casey, Robert J. (Robert Joseph)
Borglum, Gutzon, 1867-1941
The old farmhouse was completely rebuilt, partitions pulled down and new
rooms added. The house stood on a slope, and one large living room was
dug out of the bank after the master bedroom, above, had been finished
and was being lived in. The barn, which had been close to the house, was
hauled a thousand feet and placed beside a brook. The brook was dammed
to make a pond. Gutzon took an active part in all the digging, trimming
of trees and laying out of roads.
Road building had always been one of Gutzon’s hobbies, and in later
years he was to become associated with national highway-building
projects. On his place in Stamford he built a road, cutting the arc on
the Wire Mill Road, which until that time had passed close to the
Marshall House, the new home. The town accepted the sculptor’s changed
road and thirty-five years later it was still in use. After the passing
of those years a local highway engineer located and unearthed an old
drainpipe, placed there by Gutzon. “Well,” he said, “Borglum was known
throughout the town as a good builder.”
Filled with the old Town Meeting spirit, the sculptor quickly organized
the neighbors living along the main road leading into Stamford as an
association to beautify and improve their grounds bordering on it. Next
he managed to get lighting for the road from the town electric company
and a similar gift for the Long Ridge Road, which was equally important.
By studying the town, county and state road-building and bonding
regulations, he discovered that the town could borrow money against the
stipulated return to it of the same amount from the state or county,
thus securing funds for the building of improved roads at once. The
matter was taken to the Town Meeting, of course, and it caused much
debate. But eventually it passed, and both High Ridge and Long Ridge
roads were benefited.
Then, presently, he had a new and interesting idea. He founded a bus
company “so that,” as he said, “the farm women might have a chance to
come to town when their husbands are using the horses in the fields.” He
was very happy in the designing of bus bodies to be fitted onto Reo
Truck chassis and in arranging a suitable pageant to celebrate the
beginning of the service.
There is a lamentable lack of detail in available information about the
bus company. One doesn’t know if the farm wives were able to ride into
town on it more frequently, or if Gutzon was able to pasture his horse.
He got out of it after a while and turned his attention to new and more
stirring projects. The general belief is that he operated it until it
needed rewinding.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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