This home has more rooms than listed in the Zillow listing. There are 12-15 bedrooms, three full kitchens, 5 1/2 baths and many bonus rooms. Third floor is bright with large windows and great loft-like space.
LISTING DETAILS
Historic Gates-Mayer mansion or Balloon Farm. This amazing, 20+ room mansion is ready for restoration to its former glory. Gorgeous historical details throughout, custom woodwork and moldings, lighting, hardwoods, 7 foot doors and more. Many improvements already complete including newer furnace, hot water tank, vinyl siding and more. Would make an outstanding Bed and Breakfast, apartment building or an incredible private residence.
BACK ON THE MARKET
128 Cemetery St, Frankfort, NY 13340
5 beds | 3 Full/2 Half baths | 5728 sqft | 1.2 acres
LINKS:
Listing Agent, Zillow, Wikipedia on Balloon Farm, Article on Balloon Farm as BnB,
Featured Photos
History and Additional Photos via Wikipedia and the Internet
Balloon Farm is an historic home located at Frankfort in Herkimer County, New York. It includes the Gates-Myers Residence, built in 1878. It is an imposing, nearly square, three-story eclectic Late Victorian dwelling built of dimension lumber above a cut-stone foundation.
In 1889, the property was purchased by Carl Edgar Myers (1842–1925), who established an aeronautical institution known as "Balloon Farm." His wife Mary, known as "Carlotta, the Lady Aeronaut", made many ascents in balloons in aid of his experiments. She is noted by a historical marker near the property.
In 1889 Myers purchased the Gates Mansion Victorian style house with five acres of property that was located near Frankfort, New York, previously owned by Fred Gates of the Diamond Match Company. Here Myers and his wife went into the business of manufacturing passenger balloons and specialty purpose gas balloons, many for the US government. The balloons that had just been assembled were partially inflated outdoors to test if they held the hydrogen gas properly. Because of the large balloons half inflated and laid out on the property grounds, it gave the impression they were growing large mushrooms or some unusual new farm crop. In time people figured out they were really making balloons and it became known as the Frankfort "balloon farm."
The three story mansion house was broken up into workshops and living quarters. The workshops were a chemistry lab, a print shop, a shipping room, a carpentry work area and machine shop facilities. The attic above the third story was devoted entirely for all the machines and associated tools necessary for the construction of airships. One first floor room was a large library with many books on aeronautics and science, where Myers researched often and brainstormed with his wife. There were out-buildings scattered throughout the five acres that contained gas engines, chemical labs, and furnace facilities.
Newspapers reported that Myers had a monopoly on the making of hydrogen gas balloons and was the only producer in the United States of these balloons for the government. A loft in the Myers house was made available for a sewing area of balloon materials to make the large balloons. The fabric material was patterned, sewed together into large strips, and made ready for varnishing. He had a patent of a fabric made from sea island cotton that was used for the varnish application. Myers' patented varnish formula made the fabric impervious to hydrogen. The varnish used to seal the fabric material for the balloon envelopes was prepared in a low pit outdoors in a ravine behind the house. This was below ground level so the fabric being prepared was sheltered from the wind. It also provided a fire-pit in case the flammable material caught on fire. There was a water-hose handy for putting out a fire.
The liquid varnish was made with a large iron kettle that had a cover on it. Fire was applied under the kettle for the "cooking" of the raw linseed oil formula. The oil mix "cooked" for four to eight hours to a consistency of gum. The gum material was thinned to the consistency of syrup and poured into a sloping vat that lead into a Myers' patented machine apparatus of various rollers, squeezers, and scrapers. They acted by pressure of springs and weights.
This same general area of the property was used also for the drying of the varnished fabric. This consisted of twenty foot high clothes line-type poles that were 100 feet apart and further protected by wind-break fences of canvas. Between the poles were strung wires for laying the wet varnished fabric onto for drying. After drying the fabric was then rewound onto rollers and varnished over and over again several more times to each side and thoroughly dried each time. Each application of new varnish added a thin layer.
The basement of the house was used for generating hydrogen gas and pure oxygen. The hydrogen making apparatus consisted of a tank half filled with water. This tank was also filled with iron filings from Navy cast-iron projectiles. Sulfuric acid was added into the tank of water and filings, which was slowly decanted. The acid separated the water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. The iron filings absorbed the oxygen gas which allowed the hydrogen to go up through a pipe into a wash-barrel, which had another pipe to the balloon envelope. The freed hydrogen gas then filled the balloon, which had a lifting ability of 60 pounds per 1,000 cubic feet of gas. The balloon was held down to the ground by sandbag weights so that when filled it didn't float away. A 50 feet (15 m) diameter balloon would hold 65,000 cubic feet of hydrogen gas giving the filled balloon a lifting ability of about 4,000 pounds.
Myers wrote in newspaper articles how safe his hydrogen balloons were to travel in. One example he often gave was that of encountering rough weather, like a rain storm. He pointed out that an airplane could not stop and hover in mid-air, whereas a balloon could. He pointed out that in a tempest or high wind a balloon was perfectly safe as long as the rider didn't make any deliberate opposing moves. He claimed that passenger trips would soon be as commonplace as buying a ticket for them.
The property was listed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1998.
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| Sign 2009 |
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| Historic Photo via Wikipedia |
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| Historic Photo via Wikipedia |
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| Historic Photo via Wikipedia |
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| Historic Photo via Wikipedia |
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| Historic Photo via Wikipedia |
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| Historic Photo via Wikipedia |
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| Mary "Carlotta", 1890, via Wikipedia |
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| Mary "Carlotta", 1903 - via Wikipedia |
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| Carl, 1903, via Wikipedia |
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| Carl, 1920, via Wikipedia |
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| Historic Postcard via Wikipedia |
The house was run as a bed and breakfast for a while. The last account I could find for it still running was for 2013.
This is an excerpt from an article on the property's history and use as a bed and breakfast.
A strange crop used to grow on the grounds of a mansion on Cemetery Street in Frankfort.
JoAnn Maneen, the current owner of the sprawling Victorian residence turned bed-and-breakfast, is quick to tell the story of how a passerby in the late 1800s believed the brown, mushroom-like structures sprouting from the yard to be an unusual agricultural experiment. A Frankfort resident corrected the man: "No, he's growing balloons; it's a balloon farm."
The couple who graced Frankfort with their unusual hobby were Charles and Mary Meyers, who both became fascinated with ballooning and decided to adopt the aeronautical aliases of "'Professor' Carl and Carlotta Meyers" when they began experimenting with their own brand of sky-bound innovations. The couple also performed locally and across the country.
While many of today's hot-air balloons are bright and multicolored, "Carl and Carlotta" used a special, monotone varnish for their hydrogen balloons to protect against the balloon catching on fire.
At one point, they were called upon to supply the U.S. Army with 21 balloons to be used for military missions in the Spanish American War, according to the Herkimer County Historical Society.
"The balloon era, the canal era and the train eras all were an important part of Frankfort's history," Maneen said.
Commercial balloonist Phil Jackson, of Adirondack Balloon Flights, said the Meyers' style of ballooning "doesn't really exist anymore."
"They kept alive a type of ballooning," he said. "It would have been keeping aviation alive, really."
Couple soared over Frankfort skies
Within the husband and wife team, Carl was more of the aeronautical engineer. He dedicated himself to perfecting his Sky Cycle - a hydrogen-balloon structure with a set-up similar to a bicycle - while Carlotta tested the various larger balloons, performed at events and occasionally raced other balloonists.
Over the course of her 30-year devotion to aeronautics, Carlotta made 1,000 ascensions, more than anyone else of her time, according to an article in The Evening Telegram.
Not much has changed in ballooning since Carl and Carlotta's time, according to Jackson.
"It goes back to the old days. It's still flying like they did in the 1700s, 1800s," he said. "It's the style of flight that makes it attractive; it's a very different experience than many people see flight. In a plane there's a sense of motion, but in a balloon, there's a lack of motion."
The Balloon Farm has been turned into a bed-and-breakfast, but Maneen has tried to preserve the Victorian mansion the way it would have looked in its heyday.
"I wanted to bring this place back so people could see how houses looked in the late 1800s," she said.
In the future, she hopes to have balloons soaring over Frankfort once again. "It's a great place for a balloon fair here," she said.
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| From Bed and Breakfast Days |
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| From Bed and Breakfast Days |
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| From Bed and Breakfast Days |
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| From Bed and Breakfast Days |
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| As it looked in 2009, via Wikipedia |
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