Rub’s House

While I was over in the Matteawan section of Beacon last week I went to check on the status of a sort-of-famous little house that was featured in the the 1994 film “Nobody’s Fool.” I found this location quite by accident a few years ago but immediately recognized it to be the house of Sully’s pal Rub. The house hadn’t changed at all since appearing in the movie, and I wonder if the production crew performed any “cosmetic surgery” at all – the house number sticker on the mailbox is even the same.


Here is how Rub’s House looked on April 19, 2005.


In the film, Paul Newman’s character Sully is often shown driving past Beacon’s abandoned mills. In this scene Sully is looking for his pal Rub (portrayed by Pruitt Taylor Vince) with whom he has had a falling out since Sully’s estranged son and grandson have reappeared in his life.


Sully finds Rub sitting alone on the front step of his house, an asphalt-shingled beauty with green-and-white striped awnings over the windows.


Sully, wearing an Iron Horse hat, sits down next to a dejected Rub and conversation ensues, a heart-tugging scene in a movie full of them. In true manly fashion, Newman’s character doesn’t say much to convey much, and old times are back on.

Rub: “Know what I wish?”
Sully: “No. What do you wish?”
Rub: “I wish we were still friends.”
Sully: “We are, Rub.”
Sully: “Know what I wish? I wish we’d get up off our asses. Let’s go down to the Horse and play some poker. What do you think?”

Recently Rub’s House has been shorn of its asphalt shingle siding and appears to have been completely gutted and stripped down to its frame. The house looks old but not too old, maybe late 19th century, 1870s? I hope that this little gem is restored, though often I’ve seen these gut jobs turn into demolition sites. I wonder if the owner even knows that, not only was this house in a major motion picture but, Paul Newman of all people sat his ass down on the front step.

BONUS 1:
While Rub’s House and most all other locations in “Nobody’s Fool” easily identifiable, we do not know the location of Sully’s abandoned boyhood home. Whether it was an actual abandoned house or an inhabited dwelling simply dressed for the film is debatable, but it certainly would rank among the more notable Hudson Valley ruins if indeed it were one. I don’t recognize the setting at all, and if you, dear reader, have any suggestions, please pass them along.

BONUS 2:
Here’s a couple photographs of the now-renovated Roundhouse, also taken April 19, 2005.

Posted in Dutchess County | 2 Comments

Beacon, August 2013

On my way home from Rosendale I stopped in Beacon for what is becoming my post-explore dinner at Tito Santana’s Tacqueria. I usually get a couple of tofu tacos and a Mexican coke, and slice of vegan chocolate cake if I feel like splurging.


2013 is Beacon’s centennial. It looks like most celebrations have happened already but other festivities may occur throughout the year. The outdoors shop next to Tito Santana’s also had a nice display of Hudson River brick, most of which shown below came from Beacon-area yards. A small ruin exists at the Hammond brickyard, located in present-day Dutchess Junction-Hudson Highlands State Park.

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I perused a few of the shops on the west end of Main Street and then went over to Matteawan at the east end of Main Street to see what’s up. I don’t think I’d been over there since the Roundhouse building renovation was completed.

The project encompasses a number of other former mill buildings as well, some of which are still undergoing renovations.


Not every building on site was preserved. This is the foundation of an old wooden mill that Tom Rinaldi photographed in 2001. Inside the old mill was some awesome ancient graffiti written by mill workers.


Today some machinery can be seen within the foundation.


I stood across from the Roundhouse and observed a most curious sight. Where I formerly knew an abandoned, half collapsed mill ruin there was a crowd of people eating, talking, and laughing, and otherwise enjoying a perfect summer night above the Matteawan Falls. It was rather surreal in fact, and is further evidence that ruins are not “too far gone” for reuse and are not eyesores that need to be demolished.


The Roundhouse actually includes three different restaurants and a 14-room hotel. At left in this photograph is one of three “dummy lights” that still exist in New York State (and I’ve seen all three). A handful of these pedestal-mounted traffic signals exist in the entire United States.


This view of the Matteawan Falls was filmed for the opening credits of the 1994 film “Nobody’s Fool” starring Paul Newman. An historic postcard view can be found here. At far right in the postcard view can be seen a section of the wooden mill building mentioned earlier in this post.


Around the corner a paved sidewalk parallels the contour of the Fishkill Creek up to the dam.


In its March 1996 issue National Geographic magazine produced an article on the Hudson River. One image that has stood out in my mind was a photo of Matteawan with Mount Beacon in the background, photographed in the last glimmer of sunset glow. I was way too early this day to copy that scene. I should have stayed around for the rest of the evening but here is a similar view with not-so-good light.


Shadow portrait.


Across the street from the Roundhouse is another former mill, still vacant. Owned by the former owner of the Roundhouse mill site, there are plans afoot to demolish this complex which includes an historic stone mill building constructed ca. 1812-1814.


Perhaps the recent opening of the Roundhouse can spur interest in other vacant properties at the east end of Main Street.

Stay tuned for some more Beacon content which I will post in a day or two.

Posted in Dutchess County, Historic Preservation | 10 Comments

Rosendale, August 2013

Charlie, We loved thee.

LINKS:
The Century House Historical Society (Widow Jane Mine)
Snyder Estate Natural Cement Historic District


Rosendale Natural Cement Products

Walkill Valley Land Trust (Rosendale Trestle)
Daily Freeman article on re-opening of trestle

BONUS:


We stopped in the Alternative Bakery where I got a vegan cupcake and some raspberry iced tea (for a decent price too); out back is a hummingbird feeder and at least a couple of these little guys were buzzing about. Might have been the first time I’ve knowingly seen a hummingbird.

Posted in Ulster County | 1 Comment

The Lion Gardiner

The National Railway Historical Society recently announced its first-ever list of endangered United States railroad landmarks. Included on the list are passenger stations majestic (Michigan Central Station in Detroit) and humble (Duffields Station in Virginia, believed to be the second-oldest extant station in this country).

The Hudson Valley is also represented on this list. A railcar known as the “Lion Gardiner“, located in Kingston, NY (Ulster County) is listed as “an exceptional representative of fine railroad dining” during the “Gothic period” of heavyweight passenger cars. The Pullman company built the car in 1914 for the New York Central Railroad. The Delaware and Hudson railroad acquired the car in the mid-20th century. Later it was sold to the Empire State Railway Museum which used the car on an excursion line in Connecticut in the 1970s. Although not widely known in the mid-2000s, the Lion Gardiner was considered significant enough to warrant inclusion in the book version of Hudson Valley Ruins.

Long neglected, the Empire State Railway Museum, the Catskill Revitalization Corporation, and the Ulster and Delaware Railroad Historical Society are a partnering to stabilize, assess, and eventually restore the car for display or operation. To make a donation, visit www.esrm.com or mail the Empire State Railway Museum at P.O. Box 455, Phoenicia, NY, 12464-0455 (indicate “Lion Gardiner”).

The following photographs were taken in June, 2005.

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The following photographs are of other railcars nearby.

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This week All Over Albany published a set of photographs of the interior of the Trojan Hotel in Troy, NY (Rensselaer County). The Trojan has new owners who plan to renovate the building. Best of luck to the O’Briens. Maybe they will restore and re-light the fantastic neon sign?

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On the subject of neon, Tom Rinaldi will deliver his New York Neon lecture on Monday July 22, a historical date of some kind I think, at the New York Public Library-Mid Manhattan Branch, at 6:30pm. Tom just posted to his blog a set of great photos of fantastic signage that we observed during a walk around Newark, NJ. this past March.

Posted in Ulster County | 1 Comment

Sunset After a Summer Storm on the Hudson

Peekskill, July 13, 2013.

Of course, there’s a painting too.

Posted in Nature Sites, Westchester County | Leave a comment

Gracemere – old photo unearthed

A great benefit of having a website like this is the stream of communication received from persons well-connected with our ruins before they were ruins. Occasionally we receive some piece of information or some photograph or two that adds to our knowledge of these not-so-swell documented sites. We’ve more or less hit the jackpot of previously unknown photographs already, but it was a thrill all the same to receive via email this week an unpublished historic image of a now-lost ruin.

Irvington resident Lou Lustenberger recently sent me the following photograph of the Browning-Green mansion which formerly stood on Tarrytown’s Gracemere estate. His father took the photograph in the mid-1960s when the Lustenberger family rented a section of the house. The Lustenbergers moved out of Gracemere in 1967; the photograph was taken no earlier than 1964, as evidenced by a detail on the Cadillac’s license plate. (Thanks to Tom Rinaldi for catching that detail!)

I can’t go back in time and take an identical photo and this is the closest angle I can approximate from my archive:

The following photograph was taken from the front driveway.

And for the record, here is a closeup of the license plate, which reads:
5V-122
NY WORLD’S FAIR 64

The Gracemere property was actually located within walking-distance from where I grew up, but I didn’t find out about the one abandoned house on the former estate until by accident in the winter of 2000. I visited it a few times, but perhaps not as often as I should have, taking its presence near my house for granted. I last photographed the abandoned house in late 2004 and took a set of photographs better than my first go-around which I added to the website. I never caught wind of any plans for the house or the land, and was surprised to find, on a 2007 visit, that an empty lot replaced the home of Adelaide Browning and Stuart Green.

Thank you Mr. Lustenberger for sharing this great photograph.

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Not only do we occasionally receive good news in the (e)mail but sometimes we read good news about actual buildings. In 2010, the former St. Peter’s School in Kingston (bing aerial) burned while undergoing renovation into a day-care center for the children of migrant workers. A blizzard soon thereafter, and a couple of tropical storms the following year or two, further damaged the building. Usually a burned-out building will be condemned and demolished right away, and a structure damaged in storms might be held in limbo for years due to insurance claims. So it was nice to read this morning that St. Peter’s School has finally been renovated successfully.

Posted in Ulster County, Westchester County | 4 Comments

Taking down Hudson River brick in New York City

I saw this somewhat-sorry sight in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago. Good-old Hudson River brick smashed up and tossed into a garbage dumpster. 325 Clinton Avenue is removing its historic facade of brick from the Dennings Point Brick Works and installing a new facade of brick from the Watsontown Brick Company, a family-owned brick manufacturer located in Watsontown, near the Susquehanna River in North Central Pennsylvania.

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.

Posted in Dutchess County, New York City | 1 Comment

HVR Demolition Alert Update May 2013

St. Patrick’s Church, Watervliet

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.

Posted in Albany County, Columbia County, Demolition Alert, Dutchess County | 2 Comments

Hutton Company Brick Works, Kingston

The future for a rare surviving example of a type of industrial operation once common along the Hudson River is in question pending the outcome of development plans for the site. The surviving structures of the Hutton Company Brick Works in Kingston, NY which include rare surviving kiln sheds, currently face the threat of demolition.

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.

Posted in Demolition Alert, Ulster County | 10 Comments

Hudson Valley Ruins presentation – April 14, 2013

Thomas E. Rinaldi and Robert J. Yasinsac, co-authors of Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape, will be joining the Landmarks Preservation Society of Southeast for a special event at the historic Walter Brewster House in the Village of Brewster on April 14th at 3pm.


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

Posted in Putnam County, Tours Lectures and Events | 1 Comment