Built at the corner of Main and Partition streets in Saugerties, New York, this handsome 19th century commercial building is located next door to the Whitaker Block – featured previously. The Van Buskirk Block was built in 1895 for the Van Buskirk Brothers, who were pharmacists in town. The building has a unique rounded corner, inset brick paneling, and a bold metal cornice at the roof.
One of the finest commercial buildings in downtown Saugerties, New York, is the Whitaker Block, a landmark Second Empire style structure from the years following the American Civil War. The structure dates to around 1870 and was first owned by an E. Whitaker and was mixed use with retail at the street and offices above. Additionally, the building was home to the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) a fraternal social organization. The three-story with mansard roof building stands out for its architectural details and integrity which largely remain intact to this day.
Tucked away on a side street in Saugerties, New York, this Victorian Gothic chapel has recently been given a new life for the arts. The chapel was constructed in 1875 as part of the Reformed Church of Saugerties (1852), designed by famed architect James Renwick, Jr., the architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan and the Smithsonian in D.C. The architect of the chapel is not clear, but it retains similar detailing and materials to the main church. The structure was used for smaller religious meetings and a sunday school for decades until it eventually closed. The chapel was recently acquired by Isabel Soffer and Danny Melnick, co-founders of Hudson Valley Live, and has been restored and transformed into The Local: a year-round, multi-arts venue, breathing new life to the building and culture to the artistic town.
The former Sheffield Mill is historically and architecturally significant as one of the last remaining large-scale manufacturing complex to survive in the village of Saugerties, New York. The building was constructed in 1887 as the J. B. Sheffield Paper Company and was used for the manufacturing of envelopes and bank bookbinding. In the 1930s, the building was purchased by the Knaust Brothers, who grew and harvested mushrooms in nearby towns, making mushroom beds or trays in this building. The Knaust Brothers were at one time, one of the largest firms growing and canning mushrooms in the world. The former mill was vacant by the late 20th century and its future was uncertain until it was renovated at the turn of the present century into senior housing. What a great rebirth of a great old mill!
The Loerzel Beer Hall was built in 1873 in Saugerties, New York and is an important historical and architectural landmark in the Hudson Valley town. Operating independently as a brewery and beer hall by German immigrant Lorenz Loerzel (1821-1878), and later by his family for thirty years, the handsome Italianate style building became a popular meeting place for socialization and community for many immigrants who arrived to the town of Saugerties for work. The beer hall remained in operation until Prohibition in 1920. The building appears to now be occupied as apartments.
A landmark beacon on the Hudson River in New York, the Saugerties Lighthouse is a venerable aid to navigation and historically significant structure in the town of Saugerties. The first lighthouse here was built in 1835 and replaced in 1869 by the present structure, being the oldest lighthouse on the upper Hudson. The structure was important to the industry and later growth and development of the area as it provided aid to boatmen in trouble as well as providing a light and fog bell to warn ships of river hazards. The Saugerties Lighthouse was automated in 1954, making the light keepers obsolete. The building was closed up. Due to neglect, it fell into disrepair and decay and the Coast Guard proposed to demolish the structure in 1964. Local residents began to actively preserve and protect the lighthouse and funding was acquired to restore and recommission the structure, which occured in 1990. The Saugerties Lighthouse Conservancy today maintains and preserves this important historical asset and the lighthouse is even available for a short-term stay as a bed & breakfast, allowing visitors to serve as a lighthouse keeper for a weekend (without having to keep the lantern running.)
In 1892, this large summer “cottage” was built in the Land’s End section on the coast of Rockport, Massachusetts. The large summer residence was built for the Thatcher sisters of Roxbury and was named “The Billingsgate” after their mother’s maiden name, Billings. Caroline Billings Thatcher would summer here with upwards of her four other sisters, Lillian, Margaret, Mary, and Elizabeth, to escape from the city. The large summer cottage features a rubblestone first floor with stone columns supporting the shingled floor above. A large gambrel roof and dormers punctuate the façade and showcase the simplicity and elegance of the Shingle style.
The Turk’s Head Inn was once Rockport’s grandest getaway. For those uninterested in building their own summer cottage to spend the along the coast of Massachusetts, luxury summer resorts provided summer rentals for those escaping the hot and polluted cities in favor of cool ocean breezes. Once situated in the Land’s End section of Rockport, the Turk’s Head Inn, had sweeping views of the coast and islands in the distance. The initial portion was built from 1889 to 1890 by builder J. M. Wetherill of Rockport based on plans by architect H. M. Stephenson of Boston. It was expanded and became this rambling, E-shaped Colonial Revival structure with a seaboard frontage of two hundred feet and wraparound verandas over three hundred feet in length. Over the years, the Turk’s Head Inn suffered a number of fires, and its central and southeast wings were rebuilt, the latter in 1905 by then owner C.B. Martin. With a peak capacity of 200, the hotel, uncharacteristic of the regional hospitality industry, remained in operation for eighty years before it was closed down, partially destroyed by fire, and the remains removed in 1970.
Another great turn-of-the-century summer cottage in Rockport’s Headlands neighborhood is this c.1910 Craftsman house on Norwood Street. The listed early owner was L. S. Haskins who likely utilized the house as a summer residence. Architecturally, the cottage follows the Craftsman form with a low-sloped roof with broad eaves, shed dormer, exposed rafters, and rubblestone foundation and columns of stones taken from the site and nearby neighborhood.
The coastal towns of Gloucester, Manchester, and Beverly on the North Shore of Massachusetts often are known for their historic summer “cottages” but great examples can be found right here in Rockport! This is “Windswept”, the W. W. Blunt cottage, located in the Headlands section of town, just south of the harbor. Walton W. Blunt worked as the Treasurer and General Manager of the Boston Journal newspaper and resided in Boston, later purchasing multiple adjoining house lots in Rockport for a summer residence. The two-and-a-half story house was designed by a Rutherford Smith, who sought to utilize fieldstone found nearby for the foundation and chimneys and shingle siding above. Detailed descriptions of the new house were featured in a local newspaper in 1909 and mentioned tennis courts on the grounds, an apartment for servants, and a billiard room in the third floor. It is not clear when the house got its name, “Windswept”, but the name is just too fitting!
Reverend Ebenezer Cleveland (1725-1805) graduated from Yale College in 1749 and would move to Rockport (then a parish town of Gloucester) accepting the call as the village’s pastor for its Congregational Church. By around 1755, he lived in a house on this site next to the church before becoming a chaplain in the French and Indian War, fighting at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and helping to establish Dartmouth College. The property here was later owned by Jabez R. Gott, a deacon of the Congregational Church and the original cashier of the Rockport National Bank until his death in 1876. Sometime in the next decade, the Cleveland House was converted to a summer hotel, known as the Granite Shore Hotel. The original Georgian-era structure was heavily altered and expanded to provide new rooms and amenities for seasonal guests. An 1905 book showed rooms available at the Granite Shore for $2 a night. By 1919, the rates were $3 a day or between $15 and $18 a week! The hotel closed sometime in the 1940s and the building is now home to art galleries.
This shingled house in Rockport may look like an ordinary 1880s residence, but it was actually built as an important piece of infrastructure! This is the Commercial Cable Company’s Relay House, built in 1884 to serve as a terminus to a transatlantic cable providing communication across the Atlantic Ocean. Up until 1884, a French company, the Atlantic Telegraph Company, was the sole provider of transatlantic telegraph cables. James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, was dissatisfied was the 50 cents per word he had to pay for transatlantic telegraphs. Seeking to break ATC’s monopoly, he convinced millionaire John W. Mackay to create the Commercial Cable Company. That company put down two cables from Ireland to Nova Scotia with two other lines to the United States, one to Rockaway Beach, Long Island, and the other to Rockport. This building housed offices on the first floor and a billiards room for employees on the second floor with machine shop in the basement to service equipment. Cable operations continued from this building until 1935 when newer international communications made cable lines obsolete. The Relay House was converted to residential use, and while it has been altered, it still maintains its significance architecturally and historically.
Levi Sewall (1805-1880), a native of Maine, built this stunning granite Federal style house in Rockport, Massachusetts in 1832 in preparation for his marriage to Mary Ann Robards. The granite blocks used to build the house were hauled by oxen from Sewall’s own quarry in Pigeon Cove, which is said to have produced stone of excellent quality. Sewall was one of the towns earliest entrepreneurs in the granite business and did quite well, supplying the building material to many of the region’s buildings in the mid 19th century. The property was inherited by Levi and Mary’s son-in-law, Frank Scripture, who took over the family business. Levi Sewall’s descendants occupied the Sewall-Scripture House until 1957, and ever since, it has been home to the Sandy Bay Historical Society and Museum.
Located seven miles by boat from downtown Boston, Georges Island is a must-visit location for history-buffs and those looking to see the city from a new vantage point! The island in its early days was used for agriculture for 200 years until 1825, when the U.S. government acquired it for coastal defense. Fort Warren was first-dedicated in 1847 and is named for Revolutionary War hero Dr. Joseph Warren, who sent Paul Revere on his famous ride, and was later killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Fort Warren is a pentagonal bastion fort, made of granite, and was constructed from 1833 to 1861, overseen by Col. Sylvanus Thayer, and completed shortly after the beginning of the American Civil War. Fort Warren defended the harbor in Boston, Massachusetts, off-and-on from 1861 through the end of World War II. It’s highest use was during the Civil War, where it served as a training facility and as a prison for Confederate officers and government officials. Unused after WWII, Fort Warren was acquired by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Federal government and is today maintained by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation as the centerpiece of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area.
Have you been to Georges Island?
The Peep Toad Mill (also known as the Elliottville Lower Mill) was built in Killingly, Connecticut, around 1850 by the Elliottville Manufacturing Company, whose larger main mill was upstream from this complex. The Elliottville Manufacturing Company was formed in the 1830s and later acquired by Albert Elliott and Nelson Eddy, who expanded operations here. This structure, the lower Mill was used for spinning and preparing the warps for cotton sheetings, the firm’s principal product. In 1870, the two mills employed 18 women, 18 children and 13 men. The business closed in the 1880s, and the building was vacant for some time before being converted to a residence and artist studio. The old mill is a rare surviving example of a wood-frame textile mill, many of which were built but few of which survive, due to fires and/or later expansion of the premises. The present owners have done an amazing job restoring and maintaining this rare treasure!
Buildings of New England 