325 Clinton Avenue is part of the Clinton Hill Cooperative Apartments, twelve-building complex designed by Wallace K. Harrison (whose work has been featured on this blog before) and built ca. 1941-43.

A few blocks Tom Rinaldi away I visited the Pratt Institute Power Plant earlier that morning. There we spotted another Beacon relic. On the wall among other industrial artifacts was this wooden engine room gauge board from the Beacon-Newburgh ferryboat Orange.

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Speaking of Newburgh, I recently read this informative article about urban renewal and the “Battle of Newburgh.”

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In its Spring 2013 issue the Oswego Alumni Magazine ran a really nice spread of my ruins photographs. You can view the online version at oswego.edu.

Fred Rieck recently sent in these photographs of the demolition of St. Patrick’s Church in Watervliet (Albany County). Strictly speaking of buildings, this is about as heart-breaking as it gets. This perfectly good building served the community until September 25, 2011. The church then sold the building to a developer who announced plans to build a supermarket on the site. Over the winter of 2012-2013 the new owner stripped the building of architectural elements and then demolition began in April 2013.

The following photographs show the last of St. Patrick’s Church as it appeared May 4, 2013.

I’d be interested to hear the significance of the padlocks.

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Second Reformed Church, Philmont

A fire seriously damaged the 180-year-old Second Reformed Church of Philmont (Columbia County) on January 15, 2013. The church building was subsequently demolished. Fred Rieck took the following photographs on March 3, 2013.

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Central Hudson Gas and Electric Horton Sphere, Poughkeepsie

Sometime around the winter of 2012-2013 Central Hudson Gas and Electric demolished their Horton Sphere on the Poughkeepsie waterfront. The sphere stored gas for home heating.

Tom Rinaldi took the following photograph of the Sphere with the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge (Walkway Over the Hudson) in the background. (A fantastically-composed photograph of industrial-design goodness, if I may so so.) Matt Kierstead took the second photograph in June 2011 from the Walkway, and the third image is a Central Hudson Gas and Electric logo that suggests the sphere to be an iconic part of the company’s brand.

This 2008 article explores the architectural values and preservation possibilities of the Poughkeepsie Horton Sphere and other examples of domed structures.

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Also, the Saugerties Times published an article on April 25, 2013 about the plan to demolish Clovelea, the Sheffield mansion, and the debate about the cost to restore the house.

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UPDATE: MAY 12, 2013
The bell tower of St. Patrick’s Church is staving off demolition. Hm, maybe the contention that it was in bad shape was greatly mistaken.

Also, the City of Albany commenced “emergency” demolition of seven houses on Lexington Avenue.

The Hutton brickyard operated near Kingston Point from 1865 until 1980, according to George V. Hutton who wrote about the operation in his book The Great Hudson River Brick Industry. The Hutton Company was founded as Cordts & Hutton by Prussian emigre John H. Cordts and William Hutton. Cordts’ mansion, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, still stands above the brickyard. Its location symbolized Cordts’ role as the hands-on owner of the brickyard; Hutton was ten years younger than Cordts and was a resident of nearby Rondout where he tended to his lumber business.

Cordts retired from the partnership in 1887 and three years later the company assumed the Hutton name solely. For more than a half-century the Hutton Company persevered through market instability, consolidations, and changing technology. The Hutton yard supplied brick throughout the Hudson Valley and New York City and to many large projects including Yankee Stadium. Bricks marked “HUTTON” are frequently encountered during New York renovation and demolition projects today.

The Hutton Company was one of a dozen to resume production following World War II, during which regional brick works temporarily ceased operations. Although Hutton’s business prospered in the post-war years, a number of factors including loss of key personnel and the need for drastic modernization of machinery led to the family’s decision to exit the industry in the 1960s.

The Jova Company of Roseton (downriver near Newburgh, NY) acquired the Hutton yard in 1965, ending at 100 years the longest term of continuous ownership for a single yard on the Hudson River. Terry Staples, whose family’s yard upriver in Malden closed in 1958, acquired the Hutton site in 1970 – perhaps more as a sentimental gesture than as a sound business decision, according to George Hutton. In 1979, a new environmental regulation enacted by the New York State Department of Conservation required Hutton to replace its antiquated scove kilns, a source of air pollution, with modern, expensive, tunnel kilns. Unable to afford the upgrade, the Hutton Company Brick Works closed instead.

The Hutton Company yard also includes three connected steel frame kiln sheds originally erected in 1928 at the Excelsior brickyard in Haverstraw, NY and moved to Hutton in 1940. Not only are the Hutton kiln sheds an iconic example of Hudson River industrial architecture, they are significant in their rarity in the region. Below Albany, at Coeymans, the Powell and Minnock Brick Company was the last manufacturer of Hudson River brick until it closed in 2001. A marine salvage terminal opened at the P&M site but the new company demolished the kiln sheds c. 2007-8, leaving the Hutton sheds as the only surviving examples of their type in the Hudson Valley region. The Hutton sheds also include rare remains of “scove” type kilns used to fire the brick; the only other known Hudson Valley scove kiln ruins stand at the Empire Brickyard in Stockport, NY.

Today boaters on the Hudson River and curiosity-seekers on foot may find a few occasional standing relics of the brick industry, primarily in Ulster County and north, although discarded brick itself can be found on the shores as far south as Croton and Haverstraw. Chimneys still mark the sites of the Shultz and Terry yards, just north of Hutton, and at Malden the ruins of several buildings remain from the Staples yard. Two brick buildings at Glasco, near Saugerties, attest to the Washburn yard. At Coeymans a brick building for coal storage was renovated by the new owners of the Powell and Minnock yard; a structure similar in appearance believed to have been a mule barn remains abandoned at the East Kingston Shultz yard. The Rivers and Estuaries Center at Dennings Point in Beacon incorporates former brickyard structures, although at least one brick building was demolished in that recent redevelopment project. A narrow-gauge claypit railroad bridge still spans the Metro-North Railroad tracks at the Brockway brickyard site in Fishkill, NY.

Arthur Green operated a restaurant at the Hutton brickyard through the early 1990s. The buildings were abandoned subsequent to the restaurant’s closing, and in 2002 the property sold at a city auction for 2.5 million dollars. Two years later the new owners announced plans for a 363-unit housing project to be known as “Sailor’s Cove.” A realty office was established in a small brick building at the entrance to the property, and tours of the site were given to promote the proposed development. The City of Kingston Planning Board halted review of the site in 2010, but in September 2012, 771 Polaris, Ltd, the property owner, presented an updated plan to the Planning Board. The plan now calls for 383 housing units, and the complete removal of the kiln sheds. Additionally endangered is a Lidgerwood crane, also the last such brickyard relic of its type on the Hudson River following the New York State-sponsored removal of a gantry crane at the Staples yard in Malden ca. 2004-2005.

According to the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project, the Hutton property has been determined eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (pages 11-13) as an industrial archaeological district by the NY State Historic Preservation Office.

The Hutton Company Brick Works remains the last nearly-intact assemblage of buildings from the Hudson River brick manufacturing industry, a prominent presence on the river for 350 years but now extinct. Although no machinery survives, the Hutton landscape and buildings still clearly express the brick making process from the clay pits, through the plant and kilns to the riverside crane and transport barges. The Hutton site presents the last chance to study and interpret an industry integral to the Hudson River Valley and is worthy of HAER-level documentation. The chance to preserve the Hutton site’s kiln sheds, gantry crane and associated brick buildings and integrate them into waterfront development is a unique opportunity that the City of Kingston and proponents and supporters of Hudson River Valley heritage should embrace.

For more photographs of the Hutton Company Brick Works, visit my page at Hudson Valley Ruins and BrickCollecting.com.

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- An edited version of this post appeared in the Society For Industrial Archeology Newsletter. Volume 42 Number 1, Winter 2013.

- Thanks to Matt Kierstead for orchestrating the SIA Newsletter publication, and thanks to Fred Rieck for the boat tour of the Hudson River at Hutton’s.

- Information sourced from Hutton, George V. The Great Hudson River Brick Industry: Commemorating Three and a Half Centuries of Brickmaking. Fleischmanns, New York: Purple Mountain Press. 2003.

Walter Brewster House, December 3, 2001.

In an effort to raise awareness for the plight of neglected historic sites, the book Hudson Valley Ruins offers a long overdue glimpse at some of the region’s forgotten cultural treasures. Many of these buildings are listed on the National Register of Historical Places, and a few are even National Historical Landmarks. But in spite of their significance, these structures have been allowed to decay, and in some cases, to disappear altogether. In addition to great river estates, this presentation profiles sites more meaningful to everyday life in the Valley: Churches and hotels, commercial and civic buildings, mills and train stations.

The Landmarks Preservation Society of Southeast is proud to host Thomas E. Rinaldi and Robert J. Yasinsac as they discuss their book and provide an interesting perspective on historic preservation in the Hudson Valley. Thomas E. Rinaldi grew up in Pleasant Valley, just east of Poughkeepsie, New York. Rinaldi holds degrees in history from Georgetown University and in historic preservation from Columbia University. He the author of the new book New York Neon.

Robert J. Yasinsac, a native of Tarrytown in Westchester County, has been photographing the Hudson Valley since 1994. His first book, Briarcliff Lodge, was published in 2004 by Arcadia as part of its “Images of America” series.

The Landmarks Preservation Society of Southeast welcomes the public to the Walter Brewster House at 43 Oak Street, Village of Brewster, NY on April 14th at 3pm and encourages all attendees to become members of the Landmarks Preservation Society of Southeast. The event will include light refreshments, a summary of the past year’s activities, plans for the future and guided tours of the Walter Brewster House in addition to the presentation by the authors.

Walter Brewster House, December 3, 2001.
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In addition to this Hudson Valley Ruins presentation, there are other HVR-related presentations coming up this year that will be of interest to readers of this website.

The Croton Friends of History will host three presenters beginning with Jessica DuLong on Thursday June 27. DuLong will speak on her book My River Chronicles and her experience working in the engine room of the fireboat John J. Harvey. I included My River Chronicles in my list of Hudson Valley Ruins-related book recommendations last fall.

On Thursday September 5 I will with share my photography of the demolitions of Shea Stadium and Yankee Stadium and my perspective of preservation and historic sports arenas.

Then on Thursday November 7 Tom Rinaldi will present his new book (by then nearing its first birthday) New York Neon.

All Croton lectures begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Ottinger Room at the Croton Free Library, 171 Cleveland Drive, Croton-on-Hudson, NY.

I hope to see all of you at one, if not all, of these lectures!

Thanks,

Rob

The last remaining building from the Anaconda Wire and Cable Company is again being considered for demolition. This weekend I was forwarded the following email which the mayor of Hastings-on-Hudson sent to village residents.

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This Tuesday’s (March 5, 2013) Board of Trustee meeting (7:30, Municipal Building) will focus discussion on two projects of some importance to our village. The first involves the future of the remaining structure on the waterfront (“Building 52″), and the second involves a proposed residential rental development on Saw Mill River Road (9A).

BP’s presentation is first on the meeting agenda (after a presentation to retiring Bill Finkeldey). We expect it to begin around 8PM. The public is welcome and can ask questions once BP has finished their presentation.

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Should Building 52 be demolished it would be very unfortunate that not one building will be preserved to celebrate the industrial heritage of Hastings-on-Hudson nor to provide an attraction or anchor for a redeveloped waterfront. As noted in the mayor’s letter many former industrial buildings have been adaptively-reused and have become important elements in villages that have successfully transitioned from an industrial-economy to commercial/tourism-based economies. Just two villages north, at Irvington, the nearly-identical Lord and Burnham factory buildings were not demolished after the greenhouse and boiler manufacturer left the village but instead the brick buildings now house offices, restaurants, and warehouse space. At Beacon the former Nabisco box factory now houses the renowned DIA : Beacon art gallery.

Questions have arisen regarding the new six-million-dollar figure to preserve Building 52. Since there are no immediate plans to redevelop the property and since the building is not in imminent danger of collapse and it poses no threat to the public, this request for demolition should be delayed in order to ascertain the true cost of preservation and to generate an interest and commitment to the preservation of Building 52.

This was the Anaconda Wire and Cable site on October 12 2006. The southern half of the factory complex had just been demolished. Building 52 is the building at left with the “saw-tooth” roofline.

Research building, Building 51, and Building 52. October 14, 2006.

Building 51 and Building 52, later in the day. October 14, 2006.

The following on-the-fly photographs were taken December 19, 2006 on a tour led by staff from BP.

Photograph by Tom Rinaldi.

Photograph by Tom Rinaldi.

Photograph by Tom Rinaldi.

Photograph by Tom Rinaldi.

The following photographs are of the interior of the now-demolished Building 51.

Water tower and powerhouse:

Research building:

Observation room of the Research Building. I would liked to have taken more and better interior photographs here. I had hoped to return for a more thorough photography-oriented tour but that did not occur. My photographs from the December 2006 site tour here were taken with a now-ancient digital point-and-shoot camera. Some better images were recorded with a medium format camera but have not yet been scanned.

The Hastings Historical Society has uploaded some of their historic images of the Anaconda factory to their flickr page. Here are links to some of their images.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hastingshistoricalsociety/7197530246/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hastingshistoricalsociety/4907861635/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hastingshistoricalsociety/4128959488/in/photostream

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hastingshistoricalsociety/4907862197/in/photostream

For more images of the Anaconda Wire and Cable Company at Hudson Valley Ruins, please visit Tom Rinaldi’s page and Rob Yasinsac’s page. See it also on the cover of our book.

Frank Sanchis, in his voluminous book American Architecture : Westchester County, New York, wrote that the first small, localized, commercial shopping strips appeared outside of established towns in the 1920s. Previously affairs of commerce took place in the towns and villages proper. And in a rivertown such as Tarrytown the commercial district was along Main Street, Broadway to the east, and the area around the train station and the Hudson River on the west (many business were located along Orchard Street which was eliminated during Urban Renewal in the 1970s).

Large department stores began to appear in the 1940s but the first major regional shopping center in the county was the Cross County Shopping Center, located at the intersection of the Cross County Expressway (which runs east-west) and the New York State Thruway (which runs north-south). Sanchis even went as far as to credit the Cross County with spurring a “wave of construction of regional shopping centers across the nation in the 1960s and 1970s,” a claim backed up by New York Times headlines such as “Big Center Spells Store Revolution.”

The driver behind this move from localized commercial districts to destination shopping centers was of course the automobile, a now-common possession of the people of America in the 1950s. And the enabler of car-owning Westchesterites to travel to the new Cross County Shopping Center was the New York State Thruway which also opened for business in the mid-1950s. Just off the Thruway in Tarrytown a smaller commercial strip surrounded by a large surface parking lot appeared about the same time as the Cross County. It was called the Bridge Plaza Shopping Center as it was located across from the entrance to the Tappan Zee Bridge which had been under construction since 1952 and opened on December 15, 1955.

1. Bridge Plaza Shopping Center. Postcard c. 1950s?

The Bridge Plaza Shopping Center storefront faces consisted of brick and glass with a metal overhang that provided some cover to the pedestrian shopper below. The largest store was the First National Supermarket but the highlight of the center was the bonanza of neon signs.

In the postcard above First National is prominent. Adjacent to it on the west was M. H. Fishman Co., a department store which eventually surrendered its space to an expansion of First National (later Finast). To the west of Fishman was a drug store, now occupied by the Bagel Emporium. I cannot read the sign for the space between the Fishman Co. and the drug store, but that was where the Shanghai Inn was located. I also cannot read the other signs in the postcard but the stores in general, from west to east, have included a bank, the 3-hr cleaners, the liquor store, unknown original store (presently a Chinese restaurant), a hairdresser, a stationery store, and a delicatessen.

2. Northeast corner, Broadway (Route 9) and White Plains Road (Route 119). Scroll your mouse over the image to compare the 1953 image with the 1965 image. Prior to its construction the Bridge Plaza Shopping Center site was the west lawn of the Miller / Luke mansion. To the north are the low-rise Tappan Manour Condominiums. (North of Tappan Manour is the high-rise Washington Irving Gardens Apartments, visible in the postcard at top.)

Next are are the photographs that I took of the neon signs. The only signs left in the mid-2000s were 3-hr Cleaners, Liquors, Hairdressers, Stationery, and Delicatessen. The hairdressers sign disappeared not much after I took its photograph in 2006 but the other signs survived and prompted me to recommend the Bridge Plaza Shopping Center as a destination in my historian’s entry for “Westchester to Suit Every Interest,” a weekend itinerary for an out-of-town visitor to Westchester. Specifically I recommended lunch from the Tarrytown Delicatessen, and mainly because of its fantastic neon sign. Tom Rinaldi also included the Bridge Plaza neon signs in his October 2012 blog post Hudson River Neon – Part 1.

3. 3-hr Cleaners, Liquors. January 6, 2006.

4. Hairdressers, Stationery. January 6, 2006.

5. Delicatessen. January 6, 2006.

Well, as things often happen, this entry was prompted by loss. Last week I went to the Bridge Plaza to conduct some business and I nearly caused a car accident as I drove into the parking lot and I noticed that my cherished neon signs were gone and replaced. I went into a couple stores with a serious case of “WTF!?!” on my mind and I asked the shop owners about the vanished signs. They told me, quite nonchalantly, “Yes, we got new signs, they took the old ones down.” As if they could not understand for the life of them why anyone would be interested in their signs or why a person would be interested in keeping them. I was told the change occurred in November of 2012. That made me feel out-of-the-loop and like I dropped the ball. As a former full-time resident of Tarrytown I was probably in there two to three times per week. Now, not so much, though I find it hard to believe that I have not been in there since November. But in any event the deed occurred sometime this winter.

The removal and replacement of these historic neon signs coincided with the opening of a CVS in place of the former Stop & Shop / First National and a facelift of the storefronts. The brick facing and metal overhangs have been replaced with a cream-colored facade with non-functional arches above the CVS windows and a faux-historic cornice. This seems to be a sanitized, ill-proportioned, version of what present-day architects deem to be historically-inspired neo-industrial (think trendy converted lofts) design. The neon signs have been replaced by a variety of internally illuminated acrylic-covered signs. Only the original stationery sign remains. Bless the stationery store owners them for keeping their neon, however lonely and out-of-place it now looks.

I could understand the removal of the signs if entirely new businesses opened up and the old signs no longer advertised for the current shops, but no such changes occurred here. This was done purely for aesthetic reasons. But I seriously would like the owner and / or designers of the revamped Bridge Plaza to look at the following before-and-after photographs and explain how they think these new signs are a visual improvement. Especially in the case of the delicatessen sign. For lack of space due to the overhang the sign was angled from top left to top right with progressively smaller letters. I imagine that was a rare example of this style. Looking at its replacement I cannot fathom how such a change was ever considered.

6 A/B. 3-hr Cleaners. January 6, 2006 / February 26, 2013.

7 A/B. Liquors. January 19, 2012 / February 26, 2013.

8 A/B. January 6, 2006 / February 26, 2013.

9. Bridge Plaza with new signage. February 26, 2013.

10. Stationery, Delicatessen. February 26, 2013.

11. Delicatessen. February 26, 2013.

12. Stationery. The last neon sign left. February 26, 2013.

13. Stop & Shop (former First National). December 4, 2005.
The supermarket featured an immense projection that might even have been considered neo-mansard. This replaced the original simpler overhang and was probably added in the 1960s or 1970s.

I remember in the 1980s that, after checking out, a bag boy placed your bags onto a conveyor and rolled the bags out front where they could be picked up and placed into your car as you pulled up to the curb. I bet that was a novelty in the 1950s. The conveyor was removed, probably in the late 1980s or early 1990s, to provide space to park shopping carts.

14. Stop & Shop (former First National). February 9, 2009.

15. CVS (former Stop & Shop / First National). February 26, 2013.

16. CVS (former Stop & Shop / First National). February 26, 2013.

So steadily so much of old Tarrytown, and my Tarrytown, continues to disappear. One other thing that is certain is that I will not include the Bridge Plaza Shopping Center on any future history-themed itineraries.

BONUS:

My holy grail of lost Tarrytown photographs is now the Shanghai Inn. I don’t remember what kind of sign graced the storefront, but I seem to recall a large free-standing sign, perhaps neon, on Broadway. I am interested to see how correct my memory is of how cool that sign was. This matchbook cover is all I can find on the internet. As with the postcard of the shopping center, I am told that no other visual depiction exists at the Historical Society, serving Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow.

DEMO ALERT UPDATES:
I have been informed that the long-abandoned Public School 6 in Yonkers has been demolished.

At the other end of the Hudson Valley the demolition of St. Patricks Church in Watervliet is preceded by the removal of statues and architectural elements which are being sold by the diocese.

A new addition to the Demo Alert is the Jackson House in Fishkill, NY. Its construction spans many eras but the oldest part of the house is thought to date to 1741.

The Journal News has more information and 19 photos in an article published online February 12, 2013.

Reynolds House, January 2007.

Reynolds farm building, January 2007.

Reynolds farm building, July 2006.

Starlite Theater, Latham, NY
This theater-in-the-round was demolished in December 2012. I visited once before and returned for a last look just before Christmas. I recently posted a set of photographs from that December 2012 visit.

St. Patrick’s Church, Watervliet, NY
A preservation battle is being waged in the Albany suburb Watervliet where supermaket chain Price Chopper wants to demolish a historic church. A developer entered into agreement with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany to buy the church, which closed in September 2011, in order to build a 40,000+ square-foot supermarket. Neighbors protested the plan to demolish their cherished landmark and now a group has filed a lawsuit against the Watervliet City Council that calls into question the council’s procedures in approving development plans for the site.

The church property lies between 19th Street and 23rd Street, and 5th and 6th Avenues in Watervliet. Other buildings to be demolished include the church rectory, school, and three rowhouses on 23rd Street.

Photographs December 23, 2012.

Rectory.

St. Patrick’s School, detail.

St. Patrick’s School.

Rowhouse detail.

Beech-Nut, Canajoharie, NY
This is out of the realm of the Hudson Valley, but anyone who has traveled the New York State Thruway west of Albany has surely noticed the Beech-Nut sign in Canajoharie (Montgomery County). If you didn’t, well, you missed it for good. The sign was removed
about late January 2013. The factory closed in March 2011 and has been marketed for sale but no plans for the site are known.

More photographs of Canajoharie may be seen here.

Yonkers Power Station, Yonkers, NY
The owners of the Yonkers Power Station have filed a Special Use Permit Application with the City of Yonkers. The 41-page document can be downloaded here. A press tour with United States Senator Chuck Schumer visited the Yonkers Power Station in January 2013. The Journal News reported on the tour with photographs and video.

Photographs September and October 2007

BONUS:
This past Saturday Thom Johnson and I hiked through a foot of snow to the Northgate ruins in Cold Spring. Surprisingly we did not see anyone else all afternoon and no other footprints broke the snow before us. Here is one take from that day.

[I published this post two days ago but there seems to have been a glitch in the notification process, so I am reposting it.]

January
Bedroom? Or Office? Such nice light in here, it would make for a happy place.

February
Brandreth-on-Hudson.

March
Cold storage tunnel.

April
Not schockproof but deadly.

May
Richmond Firthcliffe

June
This Old, Old House.

July
Davenport, Delaware County, NY.
An honorary entry as I did not photograph any Hudson Valley Ruins in July, except for Prattsville on the western edge of Greene County (if that counts) but I have already presented those photographs here.

August
Northgate ruins from above.

September
Reverse ruin – the preserved members of the Solite barn under reassembly at the Saugerties Historical Society.

October
Lime kiln ruins, new to me and an accidental find.

November
Taconic motel.

December
Knapp House, Yorktown.

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Happy holidays, belated and present.

The Hudson River Valley is designated a National Heritage Area. We encourage visitors to see our nationally-significant historic sites and to stroll and shop on the Main Streets lined with handsome architecture in our picturesque river towns.

Thanks to Tom Rinaldi for the photograph above and for a few other images below.

Yet, developers and community governments continue to wage battle against our historic buildings. Millions of dollars in public money, and even more from private developers, were spent this year to remove significant buildings from the Hudson River Valley landscape. I cannot help but think how nice it would be if even a percent of some of that money was spent to preserve some of these now-lost structures.

The tale of loss is told year after year at the Hudson Valley Demolition Alert, but the losses seem to sting especially hard this year. The roster of the demolished follows in chronological order.

Mid-19th century brick mansion
Verplanck, NY
Demolition date unknown, but brought to our attention in 2012
A fine old brick mansion near the tip of Verplanck’s Point. Abandoned for some time, and then boarded up by 2009. I found its site to be an empty lot in early 2012.

Middle Hope Drive-In Theater
Middle Hope, NY
Demolished Winter 2011/2012
One of the handful of remaining drive-in movie theaters in the Hudson Valley survived with its projection building and speaker poles as well as its screen. Long after it closed in 1987 attempts to revive the Middle Hope Drive-In Theater were not approved, perhaps due to traffic concerns on this busy stretch of narrow road. Yet a huge gas station and food mart opened on the site in 2012 following the demolition of the concession building and screen, which could have been preserved as its site was not occupied by the new construction.

Fresh Air Home, St. John the Divine
Tomkins Cove, NY
Demolished 2011/2012
This Shingle-style building was allowed to decay to the point of collapse. It was entirely demolished in late 2011 or early 2012.

More Fresh Air Home, St. John the Divine

Lebanon Springs Union Free School
New Lebanon, NY
Demolished February 2012
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places and still owned by the New Lebanon School District, the Union Free School was demolished in February 2012. Admitting to not having any engineering knowledge, District Superintendant Karen McGraw nevertheless stressed a fear of the building’s collapse as the reason it should be demolished. It is a typical tale when a public or government agency refuses to spend any money for building maintenance, but when it seems like a brick is about to pop loose, there is money available for the building’s demolition.

19 Livingston Avenue
Dobbs Ferry, NY
Demolished April 2012
This ca. 1850 mansion recently was the home of the popular restaurant/catering hall known as Rudy’s Beau Rivage. Rudy’s closed in 2009 and it seemed that a new business, to be known as Windows on the Hudson, would open in the renovated mansion. The renovation project stalled and then it became a demolition site.

New York Central – Putnam Division Railroad Station
Millwood, NY
Demolished May 9, 2012
Originally built in Briarcliff Manor, this humble yet handsome wooden station was moved a few miles north to the hamlet of Millwood when Walter Law built a new station for his Briarcliff Lodge hotel in the early 1900s. Rendered obsolete when the Putnam Division ceased to operate, the building was abandoned and later was acquired by the owner of the adjacent lumberyard. Given an ultimatum by a Village Task Force to renovate or remove the historic station building, the owners demolished it. Perhaps ownership of the structure could have been transferred to Westchester County, which owns land a short distance away where the building could have been moved to and where it could have housed services for a walking and biking path in place of the former railroad right-of-way. About the same time the Millwood station was demolished, a similarly neglected and perhaps even more-rotted station in Hopewell (Dutchess County) was restored.

Rock Hill Lodge / Holland Sporting Club
Mohegan Lake, NY
Demolished July 2012
The Rock Hill Lodge was one of Mohegan Lake’s summer vacation resorts and later served as the waterfront athletic retreat for a club of New Yorkers of Dutch descent. After club members aged and membership dwindled, the Town of Yorktown acquired the property for passive recreational purposes. Instead of putting the site to public use, the property was closed to the public and the buildings were abandoned. The Town of Yorktown borrowed one-quarter of a million dollars to demolish the Rock Hill Lodge buildings in the summer of 2012. These newly unearthed photographs are from 2005, the year that the Town of Yorktown acquired title to the property and before the buildings fell into disrepair.

More Holland Sporting Club / Rock Hill Lodge

Kospa Farmhouse
East Greenbush, NY
Burned August 29, 2012
This ancient farmhouse escaped our attention and apparently that of Rensselaer County historians too. Last occupied about 2006, the vacant home, which appears to have suffered few modern intrusions and additions, was burned by three youths in August 2012.

Teaberry Port
West Nyack, NY
Demolished beginning November 2012
Colonial-era houses seemed particularly at risk in 2012. This stone house was owned by the United Water Company which rented it out as a residence until 2005. The house was abandoned and the company would not commit funds to its repair nor allow it to be offered for sale, nor would United Water continue to rent it to individuals or families. Demolition began the day after Thanksgiving.

More Teaberry Port

Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Restaurant
Yonkers, NY
Demolished December 2012
Not far from the site of another significant example of vanished roadside Americana, the first Carvel Ice Cream store (demolished in 2009), the third location established by Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs disappeared after closing on Thanksgiving weekend in 2012. I don’t know the fate of its amazing green-and-red neon sign but I doubt we will see it reappear above the new hot dog restaurant to be built on this site. Ironically Nathan’s was demolished the same week that Tom Rinaldi’s book tribute to the vanishing neon signs of New York City was released.

Nelson House Hotel
Poughkeepsie, NY
Demolished November-December 2012
Hudson Valley Magazine (or its readers, rather) voted Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro to be the Best Politician in the Hudson Valley. However he has proven himself to be no friend of historic preservation, which is one the things we claim to be proud of here in the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. Molinaro seems to have made the demolition the Nelson House Hotel, targeted for demo before, his personal cause. In October Molinaro signed an order that officially condemned the building and then the Dutchess County Legislature voted to spend nearly two million dollars on the demolition of the historic Nelson House. It was gone by mid-December. I wonder where was the outcry that surely would have prevailed in some quarters had a similar amount of money been granted to fix up a county-owned building.

Condemned without any official public documentation to support the claim, the loss of the Nelson House was the nadir of preservation in the Hudson Valley in 2012. It was not for lack of trying as concerned citizens spoke to the Dutchess County Board of Legislators on behalf of the old hotel, but the elected officials entirely ignored and dismissed their input. On accounts like this we wonder if a professional organization devoted to the advocacy of historic preservation in the Hudson Valley would have some impact in protecting future endangered buildings. It is time, long past due but better late than never, for such an organization to form.

Public School 6
Yonkers, NY
Demolished Beginning December 11, 2012
In the mid-1980s a United States District Court judge ordered the City of Yonkers to integrate its racially-segregated school district by busing students from schools near low-income public housing clustered in the southwestern part of Yonkers to schools throughout the city. The guidelines to implement this plan suggested the closing of a number of schools, including School 6. After two-and-a-half decades of neglect its roof recently began to cave in, and School 6, the target of previous area redevelopment projects, was demolished in December 2012.

Knapp House
Yorktown, NY
Demolished beginning December 20, 2012
The year isn’t over yet, but hopefully I won’t have to add to this list in the next ten days. Although the world did not end today as some say the ancient Mayans predicted, the Knapp House is coming down right on schedule. It is believed that the frame of the original mid-1700s house survived as this home was added onto throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Demolition began on December 20, 2012 and will continue through the weekend. The Town of Yorktown especially seems to have something against colonial-era homes, as the Yorktown School District razed a beautiful home in the summer of 2011, the Strang-Melbourne house.

In its December 2012 issue, Westchester Magazine presented a feature entitled “Westchester to Suit Every Interest” – six weekend itineraries from Friday night to Sunday night. Activities, events, sites, and tours are are included for outdoor adventurers, families, foodies, art lovers, and intellectuals. There is also an itinerary for the history buff, for which the magazine asked me to compile.

Brandreth Pill Factory, Ossining

My list actually touches on all of the categories above. Although I included some of the county’s most obvious historically-significant sites (some of which are seasonally open to the public and some of which may only be viewed via a self-guided driving tour), I also chose off-the-beaten-path places to explore and unique establishments to find food, drink and fun. I’ve also thrown in mention of some ruins too! Having been a long-time resident of the river-side of Westchester, my list leans heavily to that area I know best. (But I have recently begun to explore some other parts of the county previously off my chart!)

Armour-Stiner (Octagon) House, irvington

The list can be viewed online at http://www.westchestermagazine.com//Westchester-Magazine/December-2012/Activities-in-Westchester-County-for-Every-Interest/ or in print in the December 2012 issue which is on newsstands now.

Tarrytown Delicatessen, Bridge Plaza Shopping Center, Tarrytown