USA > New York > Dutchess County > Dutchess county > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19
At this time the Pennsylvania Railroad, looking for an eastern connection, subscribed $1,100,000 of the total $2,000,000 required. Subsequent repudia- tion, caused by the panic of '73 and the death of the president of the road, resulted in delay. In 1876 the American Bridge Company of Chicago, accepted the contract, and built three timber caissons and one stone pier on the west shore. An accident to this pier proved so expensive that it ruined the company.
41
A Manhattan bridge company was subsequently organized to carry on the project, and the construction was sublet to the Union Bridge Company of New York City. The success of the cantilever bridge which this company had already built at Niagara Falls suggested the combined cantilever and deck-truss construction ; Arthur B. Paine was general supervisor. On August 29, 1888, the last pin was driven in the cantilever span between Pier 5 and the east shore. The approaches were finished a few months later, and the first train crossed the bridge on December 29, 1888.
In 1904 the bridge and the lines connected with it came under the control of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. Three years later it was found necessary to make repairs and reconstruction at a cost of $1,500,000. Since its period of greater activity, during the decade before the World War, traffic over the bridge has registered a gradual decline. It is now used for freight only.
18. Directly north of the Fallkill, within the enclosure of the gas and electric company, stands the old, neatly painted stone and brick HOFF- MAN HOUSE, which was bought by three Hoffman brothers from Col. R. L. Livingston in 1800. In its stone foundation and walls something may remain of the house of Col. Leonard Lewis, built in 1717. The interior has been completely altered.
19. Within the same enclosure, a few feet left, stands the OAKLEY MILL, a plain, gray-painted three-story building, a typical sturdy millhouse, built in 1810 by George P. Oakley. It is now used as a garage.
From the little bridge that spans the Fallkill (Dutch, Val Kil, stream of falls), there may be seen two of the conflicting sources from which the name Poughkeepsie has been traditionally derived. On the right, the mouth of the creek, which is said originally to have had three times its present flow, once afforded enough shelter to Indian canoes for the place to be named Apokeeps- ing, or "safe harbor"; on the left is the FALLS, called by the Indians Pooghkeepsingh. The old course of the stream has been diverted to the north by a factory building.
20. The mouth of the Fallkill (R) is the site of the old UPPER LANDING, at one time the busiest on the water front. This was the ferry dock from 1798, when the first regular service was introduced, until 1879. (From 1740 until the end of the century ferries also ran occasionally from Barnegat, 4 miles south of Poughkeepsie, to Milton). The first regular ferry, which plied from the Upper Landing to New Paltz, was a barge propelled by sail and oars in the hands of slaves. In 1819 a team-boat was introduced, which was propelled by four horses in a treadmill, making the crossing in 10 minutes. Strongly built and easily operated, the team-boat was considered a great advance over the earlier ferries. A lively expectation that it would prove commercially important to the town as a link in the route of the contemporary migration westward reached its peak in 1825 when an un- fruitful movement was started to make New Paltz Landing the terminus of a great State highway to Buffalo.
The place became known as the Upper Landing about 1800, when it had
42
become a center of freighting and manufacturing. For a score of years, sloops carrying freight and passengers sailed daily to New York. Barges, towed by steamboats, replaced the sloops in 1821, and in 1837 regular steamer service was introduced. Falling gradually into disuse through the mid-century, the landing became inactive after 1879.
The old mills gathered about the falls were razed by the New York Central Railroad to make way for its tracks, and the storehouses near the old landing followed in 1894 when the power plant was built on the site.
21. Just past the Fallkill are the huge brick buildings and yards of the ARNOLD LUMBER COMPANY (R), established in 1821, the only survivor of the many early industries of the Upper Landing.
22. The ARNOLD HOMESTEAD (L), 58 North Water Street, a weather-beaten frame house with central gable, was built about 1840 during the whaling boom. It rests on a terrace hemmed in by a brick retaining wall which is patched with stone where the stairway once descended.
23. Directly beyond, the yellow clapboard OAKLEY HOUSE (R), rooted on a bluff against the irresistible encroachment of industry, was built in 1807. Oakley was a local politician and businessman, best known as the chief promoter of lotteries in Dutchess County. The main entrance, with its original door frame to which a two-story porch has been added, now faces the north. Originally it was part of the western facade overlooking the river. This and the Arnold homestead, across the street, with all their dilapidation, still retain traces of their past splendor.
North Water Street continues between the railroad tracks and a vacant space which was once the site of the Matthew Vassar brewery. The approach to Main Street is of little interest except for occasional views of the Mid- Hudson Bridge.
R. from North Water St. on Main St.
24. The POUGHKEEPSIE-HIGHLAND FERRY, foot of Main St. on the river front. (Two alternate ferries operate on half hour schedule. Rates: car, driver, and one passenger, 40c; additional passengers, 10c; chil- dren 5c.)
25. MAIN STREET LANDING, foot of Main St. adjacent to the ferry slip on river front, is the only one of the four 18th century landings continuing in active use. Although noted under the name Caul (Kaal) Rock Landing on maps as early as 1744, it did not become important until 1811, when sloops were already sailing to New York from all the other Poughkeepsie landings. The landing proper is the chief public dock of the city. Adjoining it are the ferry slip and the dock of the Hudson River Day Line (R), and the office of the Central Hudson Steamboat Company (L). The last named occupies the old Exchange House built in 1834 and con- spicuous for its rounded shingles.
Backtrack on Main St. (a short block) to Front St .; R. on Front St. 26. The new MID-HUDSON BRIDGE (tolls: passenger automobile, including driver, 80c; extra passengers, each 10c; maximum fare, $1.00; trailer on passenger automobile, 20c; motorcycle with side car, 35c; children,
43
seven years and younger, free. Book tickets at reduced rates) unites the east and west banks of the Hudson River at a point midway between New York City and Albany. The eastern approach is from Church and Union Sts. Immediately west of the bridge the highway spreads to form a Y. Its northern branch connects with Highland and the southern with US 9W on the west bank of the river.
The official permit for the building of the bridge was granted June 6, 1924, and the structure was formally opened in August, 1930. It was de- signed by Ralph Modjeski and Daniel E. Moran; the steel superstructure was erected by the American Bridge Company of New York City. The bridge is of the long suspension type, with the two river piers 1,500 ft. apart ; each side span is exactly one-half the length of the center span; the entire length of the bridge is 4,530 ft. The west approach is by a highway 11/2 miles long. The cables are suspended on steel towers rising 280 ft. above the piers, and surmounting these are large oval lights, the rays of which are visible for many miles. The design of the towers produces an impression of strength as well as of grace and beauty of line.
The river piers supporting the two steel towers are massive concrete columns faced with granite to a point 35 ft. below water level. The bridge has a 30-ft. roadway and a 4-ft. sidewalk on either side. The bridge floor is of concrete slabs with expansion joints.
27. KAAL ROCK (R), Front St. (Park car just S. of bridge and R. of highway and walk 150 ft. (R) to top of rock. ) Both this bluff on which the Mid-Hudson Bridge rests, and the one a little north of it, are known as Kaal (older Caul) Rock (pr. call; Dutch, Kaele Rugh, bare back.) An erroneous tradition has it that passing ships were signalled or "called" from this eminence, and that the name was thus at- tached to it. In any case, one may well wonder in what way it is a rock at all, until considering the actual Dutch name "bare back," which describes the precipitous and naked fall to the river, and realizing that the present English name is merely a case of false etymology. In 1824 the visit of Lafayette to Poughkeepsie was celebrated with a great bonfire on Kaal Rock and salvos of artillery.
This, the highest point on the waterfront, affords a sweeping view of that part of the Hudson known to early Dutch settlers as the Lange Rak, or Long Reach, a straight sailing course of about 11 miles between Crum Elbow (see Hyde Park, p. 89) and a flat promontory called the Dannam- mer, on the west bank opposite the mouth of Wappinger Creek.
28. The UNION LANDING, a dead end at the foot of old, winding Union St. (right fork), was for 47 years after the Revolution the chief shipping point of Dutchess County wheat and other produce. In 1831 a steamboat still carried freight and passengers daily from this landing to New York, but soon afterwards it was entirely superseded by the Main Street and Upper Landings. The sequestered dock shows nothing of its old im- portance and activity.
In the hollow of Kaal Rock is a cluster of gasoline tanks, beyond which
44
the rock juts forth again, supporting the square, gray building of the old brewery. Here again is a close-up view of the strong, graceful suspension bridge and the cantilever trusses of the railroad bridge.
The Poughkeepsie Yacht Club, tucked in at the south end of the old landing, is officially designated as the half-way point in the annual speed- boat races from Albany to New York.
Backtrack on Union St. to South Water St.
29. The GREGORY HOUSE (L), Union and South Water Sts., built in 1841, is stranded stepless on its high bare basement in the wired enclosure of a factory. Long abandoned, the weatherbeaten brick house designed in the Greek Revival style consists of a receding two-story center fronted by a Doric-columned portico and flanked by one-story wings. The fine doorway still bears the street number. The interior has been altered to serve as a factory warehouse.
R. (S) on South Water St.
30. The route passes through the deep shadow of the grim, deserted red brick factory buildings (R. and L.) formerly occupied by the MOLINE PLOW COMPANY, well known as manufacturers of harvesting ma- chinery. Inactive since 1922, it was at one time Poughkeepsie's largest in- dustry.
31. The old SOUTHWICK HOUSE (R), South Water St., just be- yond the Moline factory, stands among trees in one of the few early 19th cen- tury gardens remaining in Poughkeepsie. The large yellow frame house with its gambrel roof was built in 1804 or 1805 by John Winans. In 1807 he sold it to Zadock Southwick, an early tanner and builder of the first Hudson River ice-boat. The Southwick family still lives in it. The garden remains substantially as it was laid out by Zadock Southwick. In it is a thorn-locust tree more than 14 feet in circumference.
A short dead-end road (R) around the Southwick house leads to the old Southwick Landing. Here is an excellent view of the southern half of the Long Reach and of the two bridges to the north.
32. The DELAVAL SEPARATOR COMPANY (R) (visitors wel- come), at the end of South Water St. on the site of the LOWER LAND- ING, is the largest Poughkeepsie manufacturing establishment. The main product is the centrifugal separator used by dairy and oil industries.
The DeLaval property includes the sites of the old Henry Livingston estate of the 18th century and of FOX'S POINT SHIPYARD, where the Revolutionary frigates were built. (See p. 31.)
Sharp L. from South Water St. on Pine St.
Pine Street leads through a long underpass to the intersection with Tulip Street (L) and Prospect Street (R). The tour here leaves the water- front proper, although Prospect Street for almost a mile skirts the river behind long areas of factories and warehouses.
A pleasant route back to the Court House is by Tulip and Union Streets. The latter winds from the Court House down to the Union Landing. Laid out in 1767, it penetrates the heart of the old and picturesque south side of the city.
45
33. LINCOLN CENTER, Lincoln Ave. and Pine St., a stark yellow frame structure standing on a low bluff in a small recreational park west of Eastman Park, is the settlement house of Poughkeepsie. It provides recre- ational guidance and facilities to the underprivileged children of this crowded district.
The first floor of the building contains a gymnasium, a playroom for babies, and a child welfare clinic. On the homelike and friendly second floor are a dining room and kitchen for the use of members, a game room, a small club room and a larger recreational room, and a radio room, for the use of young people unable to entertain at home. On this floor are displays of the handicrafts of members. A small club room and a pool room are on the third floor.
In 1936 the Mayor and Board of Aldermen authorized a WPA project for a gymnasium for boys which will leave the original house for girls' and children's activities. Other renovations and repairs have been financed by the TERA and the WPA.
The center is open to all residents of the city, children or adults, with no discrimination as to race, creed, or color.
Lincoln Center was started by Vassar students in 1917 as a play group for children. A house rented on Church Street provided space for handi- crafts, games for little children, and gymnasium work for older boys, to- gether with quarters for a city health nurse. In the influenza epidemic of 1918 it was the only social agency in the district prepared to meet the needs of the sufferers and report cases to the Board of Health.
In 1925 the old Riverview Academy building, a city-owned structure, was assigned by the common council to Lincoln Center for an indefinite period, with the provision that part of it be reserved for use as a city clinic. The reconditioning of the large frame building, which had been abandoned for 10 years, was accomplished by voluntary labor supplied by the unions of Poughkeepsie. Neighboring families assisted in cleaning the grounds.
Three paid workers, aided by various Poughkeepsians and by 60 Vassar students under weekly assignments, direct the activities of the 1,100 mem- bers. The older boys and girls are trained to assist the younger groups.
A striking instance of the effectiveness of Lincoln Center is shown in the reduction of juvenile delinquency in the district, which formerly had the highest percentage in the city and now has the second lowest, standing next to the privileged area. This is believed to have resulted entirely from the introduction of these recreational facilities.
L. from Pine St. on Market to Court House (end of tour).
MOTOR TOUR 2 (5.5 m.)
From Court House, Main and Market Sts., E. on Main St., L. on N. Clinton St.
34. Largest and by far the best known of the parks of Poughkeepsie is the COLLEGE HILL PARK, with main entrance on North Clinton Street, a finely landscaped area on the highest eminence of the city (375) ft.), offer-
46
ing unsurpassed views of the city and the surrounding country in a complete panorama bounded by the Highlands, the Catskills, and the Berkshires.
Facilities for public amusement include a nine-hole golf course, open daily from 7 a. m. to 8:30 p. m. on the northeastern slope of the hill. The course is kept in excellent condition for play. A tennis court adjoins North Clinton Street Picnic grounds, with tables and fireplaces, overlooking city and river on the west slope.
The drive up the hill offers a succession of expanding views. Below, to the southeast, lies Poughkeepsie spreading around to Arlington on the east with the Gothic turrets of Vassar College just visible in the southeastern distance. East and north, the broad plains and hills of Dutchess County extend to the distant Berkshires and Taconics, visible on clear days, which form the natural divide between New York and New England. The giant Catskills are banked in huge masses 40 miles to the northwest. On the south stands high Mount Beacon, its inclined railway and casino visible on clear days, from which the long Fishkill or Breakneck Range runs easterly along the southern horizon.
At the summit of the hill stands a STONE SOLARIUM of conventional Greek Doric design, a monument to Guilford Dudley, a local financier, who left a bequest to be used for the erection of a shelter at this spot. Additional funds were provided by the TERA and WPA. The architect was John P. Draney, of Poughkeepsie, and the work was completed in 1936.
The solarium stands on the site of the famous colonnaded building, an imitation of the Parthenon, which for 30 years housed the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School. This school in 1866 was renamed the Riverview Military Academy, military instruction having been instituted four years previously, and in 1867 was transferred from College Hill to a new site on Lincoln Avenue (See Lincoln Center). The hill itself had already been sold to George Morgan in 1865 under the gavel of Josh Billings, auctioneer, (see p. 33), and the building was reopened, though unsuccessful, as the Col- lege Hill Hotel. The subsequent plans of John Guy Vassar to estab- lish posthumously an orphan asylum on the site were frustrated by the in- validation of the relevant clauses of his will.
South of the monument, on a large pedestal, is a bust of William W. Smith, cough-drop. manufacturer, who in 1892 purchased the College Hill property and gave it to the city.
Rock gardens and greenhouses, in which plants for all the city parks are raised, lie on the slope east of the solarium. The most noteworthy display is of dahlias in August and September. Below the main greenhouse, the Clarence Lown Memorial Rock Garden contains, besides many more or less rare European plants, a bed at the base of which is calcareous tufa, in which Alpine and rock garden plants flourish.
The open reservoir on the north slope of the hill was formerly the main water supply of the city but now supplies only hydrants. A new reservoir, higher on the slope, is concealed from view. Both draw their water from the Hudson River.
47
L. from College Hill Park on North Clinton St., L. on Oakley St.
35. The FENNER HOUSE, Oakley St. (L), one and one-half story Dutch Colonial homestead with gambrel roof and dormer windows, was built by Thomas Fenner prior to 1815. Though the walls are weatherbeaten, the house is well preserved; and the fine, simple lines of the Colonial style still give it a real distinction.
R. from Oakley St. on Smith St., L. on Main St.
36. The CLEAR EVERITT HOUSE (L), White and Main Sts. (open weekdays, 10 a. m .- 12 m. and 3-5 p. m., admission free), a historic house-museum under the direction of the Daughters of the American Revolu- tion, has been popularly believed to have been the residence of Gov. George Clinton from 1778 to 1783. Research by members of the Daughters of the American Revolution has failed to confirm the tradition, but it is said that original documents supporting it were destroyed by fire in Albany. Other sources indicate 448 Main St. as the Clinton residence.
According to early records, for a number of years the Clear Everitt prop- erty belonged to Udny Hay, an officer in the Continental Army, and the present house was built by him under remarkable circumstances. In 1780, Hay resigned his post in the army and, with his wife, came to Poughkeepsie as purchasing agent for the State of New York, buying at this time the Clear Everitt property from Hugh Van Kleeck, who had inherited it from Clear Everitt, his wife's father. A house then stood on it. Two years later this house was destroyed by fire, and the Hays rented the Glebe House (see below) while building a new one. Masons and carpenters being scarce during the war, Hay wrote General Washington for permission to use workmen from the army. This permission was granted and the present house was accordingly erected. In the cellar of Hay's rebuilt house as it stands today are huge hand-wrought beams, some of them charred; it may reasonably be assumed that these beams were saved from the original house built by Van Kleeck and used again when the army workmen reconstructed the building. A stone in the front wall marked "VK" doubtless also came from the older house.
Although dating from 1783, the Clear Everitt House is externally in the style of an earlier period. The attic section, like those of many early Dutchess County houses, is constructed of wood ; the foundations, 2 feet thick, are of rough field stone, crudely laid, and held together with a mixture of clay and gravel with a minimum of lime. The walls of the house are of the same materials and workmanship as the foundations, though pointed up recently on the outside; and the typical Dutch doors are also suggestive of pre- Revolutionary Dutchess County.
The first floor is divided by a broad central hall, with a dining room and parlor on one side and a large reception room on the other. One of the four rooms on the second floor is a museum-bedroom, which contains 18th century furniture, including a canopied bed and two heavy armoires. The downstairs rooms, though fitted out roughly as a museum, do not represent any attempt at a reconstruction of the actual period scene. A number of original state
48
documents and papers with signatures of both Governors George and DeWitt Clinton, pictures, Revolutionary relics and weapons, and 18th and 19th century furniture, are exhibited in the various rooms. The furniture includes Windsor, Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and Empire pieces, as well as two square pianos of early American make. There is also a large collection of household implements and dishes of Colonial days.
Probably the most notable piece in the collection is the south mantelpiece in the large reception room, saved from the pre-Revolutionary house of Henry Livingston (site of the present office of the Phoenix Horseshoe Works) when it was torn down in 1910. Slender double columns, narrower at their bases than at their tops, ornament each side of the mantel, and Greek urn designs are carved in the cornice board. The north mantel in this room, as indicated by the pineapple carvings, is probably from about 1800. The mantel in the east reception room is said to date from 1812, and that in the dining room has the oakleaf and acorn carving typical of American furniture of the period of 1790 to 1815.
The Mahwenawasigh Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolu- tion, chartered in 1894, obtained possession of the house in 1900 and trans- ferred it in the same year to the State of New York. The society has restored and somewhat altered the exterior, installed and arranged the collection, and maintains the museum.
37. The GLEBE HOUSE, 635 Main St. (admission free), built in 1767 as the rectory of the English Church, later Christ Church (see p. 38), is probably the most charming house in Poughkeepsie. The simple story-and- a-half structure of red brick in the usual Flemish bond reveals indoor room and hall proportions that give an illusion of spaciousness common to the houses of its period but later lost. Two fine, large, cheerful rooms flank a broad central hall, well lighted by large window sashes with finely made and inconspicuous wood mullions, each with its ample fireplace. The rear room and the large square kitchen show an equal regard for space and freedom. A Dutch oven in the kitchen lies in the large chimney above an- other Dutch oven and firehole in the cellar. Upstairs a four-room attic split by a broad hall-landing presents a variety of floor levels and wall propor- tions due evidently to the numerous additions and remodellings to which the house has been subjected.
Under the custody of the Dutchess County Historical Society and the Junior League, much interior restoration has been carried out and the be- ginnings of a historical collection undertaken. Of the few pieces of furniture at present in the carefully painted and papered rooms, the most important is a large and very beautiful Hepplewhite sideboard. An equally beautiful hand- rail, strikingly suited to the gracious simplicity of the hall, though it dates probably from about 1810, borders the stairs.
The exterior of the house, showing at close view many restorations, con- forms generally to the original. The lean-to in the rear and a small ex- tension on one side, both of frame, are evidently later additions. The re- cessed front door and its porch, of Colonial design, are part of a recent restoration.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.