hurley architecture

Roosa-Van Deusen House // 1744

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

For my last building feature in New York in this series, I feature the Roosa-Van Deusen House on Hurley’s Main Street village of old stone homes. This house dates to 1744 and was built upon land owned by Jan Alderts Roosa, who emigrated to New Netherland (New York) with his family on the Spotted Cow in 1660, when he was 14 years old. The house was likely built by Jan Van Deusen (Jan Roosa’s grandson), a blacksmith who worked in town. The Van Deusen House famously became the capital building of New York when in 1777, the newly formed New York state government moved here for two months while Kingston was being rebuilt after the British Army had burned it in retaliation for the creation of the state. It is thus the second of the state’s three capital cities, the present, Albany, being the third.

Hurley Reformed Church // 1854

Buildings of New EnglandLeave a comment

From about 1670 to 1801, the villagers of Hurley were associated with the Kingston Reformed Church, about three miles away. In those years, the minister of the Kingston Church met with the Hurley parishioners at least once every six weeks and conducted a Sunday service in one of the local homes. In 1801, they grew tired of not having their own place of worship, and they petitioned to establish their own church in Hurley, and succeeded. The original church building was a large, single room, stone building that seated over 250 people on the main floor and in three galleries around the side and back walls. A tall steeple atop the building boasted a large brass globe surmounted by a wrought iron weathervane in the shape of a crowing rooster. A large crack in the building was unrepairable and the structure began to shift, leading to its replacement with the current building in 1854. The old white church has been occupied by the congregation ever since.