ABSTRACT
Technologic, economic, and political changes influence a site’s purpose and use. Most all historic places have changed in some way through modifications to meet the evolving needs of their owners. Features were regularly altered, added, and removed. Land use and architectural spaces were often redefined in dramatically different ways. Obsolete landscapes and buildings risk abandonment and removal. Folklore says that timbers from the fortification are in the Dr. Merchant Huxford House, a residence constructed decades after the military abandonment of the region following the War of 1812. Over time, the city expanded beyond the house, and the residence became part of a gridded, late 19th-century urban neighborhood. In the late 20th century the house was divided into apartments, and in the 1990s the roof was completely replaced. The forts, were built on the same general plan, because of the most convenient material at hand, with lines of high pointed and contiguous pickets.
