Pittsford Lumber has evolved over century

For well over a century, there has been a lumber yard in the village of Pittsford.

The current version, Pittsford Lumber & Woodshop, has been at 50 State St. since 1911. The place has been under different names and survived at least three major fires over the years.

Pittsford Lumber used to be more of a "typical" lumber yard, serving local home builders, but moved more into home improvement in the 1960s and 1970s, said Valerie Coushaine, one of the owners. The company still features home-improvement materials but has become known for other products, she said.

"We really focus on good lumber for furniture makers, cabinet makers, people who do high-end work," Coushaine said. "Our woodshop is very specialized … We hope to inspire and encourage the craftsmanship inherent in woodworking."

Pittsford Lumber sells hard-to-find hardwoods like ash, birch, cherry and walnut, Coushaine said. The customer base includes not only carpenters and furniture makers but also artists, craftspeople, boat builders and "woodworking hobbyists," she said.

Coushaine has worked at Pittsford Lumber since the late 1970s with the other co-owners, Sherman Selden and Steve Waddell. She said she answered a help-wanted ad, loved the business and has been there since. Waddell, who heads up the mill and whom Coushaine described as "a kid from the neighborhood," has worked there since he was 12, she said.

The history of the place is a bit fuzzy. Coushaine said the business started in the 1800s, but she wasn't sure when. The village of Pittsford website said the business was founded as Wadhams & Whitlock Lumber Dealers and originally located south of State Street between Boughton Avenue and the canal. The business was forced to move to the east end of Schoen Place — where it now is — when the Erie Canal was widened in 1911, according to the village website.

A fire in February 1941 destroyed the lumber yard, according to the Pittsford Fire Department's website. Pittsford historian Audrey Johnson remembered that blaze.

"I lived at 58 State St. as a child and the fire was almost in our back yard!" she wrote in an email. "It was scary."

The place was rebuilt, and John Mason bought Pittsford Lumber in 1951. He came from Albany, where he had been in the wholesale lumber business, said his son, Jef.

Until the 1970s, carloads of building materials were delivered via a railroad that ran behind Pittsford Lumber. Two more fires struck the business in 1974, Jef Mason said, adding that the place "was reduced to about nothing." His father renovated the remaining buildings and constructed new buildings to create the Northfield Common area, according to the village website.

John Mason sold the business in 1975 to Selden and a partner, Jim McDonald, who no longer is involved, Coushaine said.

Pittsford Lumber started transitioning from a "regular" lumber yard, Coushaine said, after a friend met a man in San Francisco who was importing Japanese fine-woodworking saws and hand tools. That was the time of an emerging American Crafts resurgence, she said.

Pittsford Lumber's website — pittsfordlumber.com — celebrates the work customers have done with photos of dozens of projects.

"We love what we do," Coushaine said. "We truly enjoy working with a customer base of talented, creative, detail-oriented people."

Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.

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