​Boston’s First Skyscraper
In 1893 Easton notable Frederick Lothrop Ames constructed the first skyscraper in Boston. It is the second tallest masonry load bearing-wall structure in the world. It wasn’t replaced as the tallest building in Boston until 1915 when the Custom House Tower was built. The Ames Building is located at 1 Court Street and today serves as dormitories for Suffolk University students. 

 Anne Wooster Drury
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​Do stones feel?
Do they love their life?
Or does their patience drown out everything else? 
Do Stones Feel by Mary Oliver
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Once you start looking, they are everywhere. The stone walls. And more. All kinds of purpose-built stone structures. In early days in Easton, stone, dependable and relatively permanent, was used to mark boundaries and show ownership. As early as 1713 there was a boundary dispute over the northern line of the Taunton North-Purchase. The marker was “a heap of stones on a great rock.” (Chaffin)
Early colonists, everywhere in New England, acquired land, marked the land, sometimes with elongated upright stone or pillars. Root cellars like the potato cellar at Sheep Pasture and one (I believe) on the original Spring Hill property were built for storing root crops for human consumption or animal feed over the winter. These particular cellars were built relatively late (!890’s) and were part of planned estates but still represent the concept. 

Early mill industries needed stone and/or waste stone to create dams. A walk through certain woods today will reveal many small dams, or channels, created at various times to direct water. In the 1820’s and 1830s, in relatively prosperous times,“tossed walls were improved to classical double walls.” (Thorson) Large boulders were moved if necessary- blown up, buried, or moved with devices. 
In Easton, as elsewhere, graveyard walls were built with more care than farmyard walls. Here is a current photo of a bit of the wall and an entrance to the Washington Street Cemetery.