HV-Rob

Burger-Matthews House, Kingston

Posted on November 28, 2011 by HV-Rob

It’s not too often we get to report good news, but here’s a developing story out of Kingston, New York.

The City of Kingston Planning Board granted Transart Services permission to operate an African-American cultural museum at the c. 1873 Burger-Matthews House on Henry Street.

The house, vacant since the late 1990s, appears to be a local landmark. Until the project moves forward, TransArt has enlisted local youths to create murals which are being installed on fencing surrounding the house.

Looking through my files today, I am surprised that I don’t have more than a few views of the house. (These photographs were taken on July 16, 2005.) There is all sorts of awesomeness going on here, between the architecture of the house and the ruinishness of its present-day appearance. The Queen Anne style house features one dominant gable facing Henry Street, two interesting turrets at one corner of the house, fish-scale shingles, and a rear section, perhaps an addition, with a mansard roof and a porch with intact arch details. The facades are a hodge-podge of boarded up windows, exposed windows, and windowless frames. The Burger-Matthews House is certainly one of the most visually spectacular abandoned houses in the Hudson Valley. Perhaps I’ll get a few more photos of it in its current condition, but I wish TransArt all the best in restoring the house. It’s the kind of place that easily could have burned or been demolished by now, and surely it has been considered by some to be an eyesore and a hazard. But this slideshow of the house shows that it has a lot of integrity and detail worthy of preservation, and that it should be brought forth as a beacon of changing fortunes in Kingston.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

On the flip side, school boards are at it again. A few months after the Yorktown Central School District demolished the Strang-Melbourne House, the Rye Neck School District plans to demolish the Gedney farmhouse, built in 1790. The school board will schedule the demolition of the home at a meeting on December 7. The house is located on Boston Post Road at North Barry Avenue in Mamaroneck.

It seems to be the start of a trend whereby perfectly usable buildings are vacated, left to sit empty for some time, and then deemed too expensive to rehabilitate, when they shouldn’t have been vacated in the first place.

Posted in Demolition Alert, Historic Preservation, Ulster County | 6 Comments

Memorial Field, Mount Vernon / Cross-Processing

Posted on November 21, 2011 by HV-Rob

Although photo labs have almost entirely stopped producing color slides in-store, you can still get E-6 film processed at local labs. By “cross-processing” the film, the lab will run it through the same chemicals used for developing color negative (C-41) film. The images will be high-contrast with some halo-y or vignetting effects. (Wikipedia, Lomography). The scanned or printed negatives will be interesting, but altering the scans might be necessary to bring the colors back to a more natural hue while preserving the dramatic effects of the processing.

These images are from Memorial Field in Mount Vernon. The site is undergoing complete reconstruction as a new athletic facility. The historic grandstand has now been stripped of seats (actually benches), light towers and about anything else that can be unscrewed or ripped out before its eventual tear-down. The actual demolition date has not been set yet. I’ve stopped by a few time since September, when work began, but I don’t think I’ll have many more chances to see this place.

The following photographs were taken September 2, 2011.

This is how the scans of the cross-processed film looked without editing.

A little adjusting and I determined this to be the ideal look for cross-processing.

BONUS:
After Mount Vernon, I headed over to the east side of Westchester County and over the border south into New York City, where there is an old stadium still in use. Van Cortlandt Park Stadium was also built in the 1930s, and for all the city’s financial crises and state-wide threats to public parklands, New York City has not chosen to allow this grandstand to decay or to be threatened with demolition like Mount Vernon is doing to Memorial Field.

Van Cortlandt Park is also one of the most historic sites (from the European perspective, of course) in New York City. It is one of the earliest sites here to be developed and inhabited by Europeans – lawyer and chronicler of the new Dutch colony Adriaen van der Donck built his home here in 1646. After his forced retirement (due to being officially branded a troublemaker), he was probably killed here in a skirmish with Native Americans in 1655. Russell Shorto elaborated on Van der Donck, Van Cortlandt Park, and the heady days of New Netherland in his book Island at the Center of the World.

After Van Cortlandt Park, I went down to Kingsbridge to get a slice of pizza. Kingbridge used to have a bridge that went over a river, but that river has been filled in and is now a street. Kingsbridge today is a few blocks away from the East River channel to the Hudson River. I parked in front of this old-school electronics-repair shop.

Next I met up with friends at Inwood Park, the northernmost part of Manhattan island. A public walking trail goes under the Henry Hudson Bridge, shown here. End of roll, and I think I’ll be doing this again.

Posted in Demolition Alert, New York City, Photography, Westchester County | 2 Comments

Dover Stone Church

Posted on November 18, 2011 by HV-Rob

It’s not a church, but it is made of stone, and it is located in Dover, NY. It could be a church, if your religion is nature. It is a pretty cool geologic formation, and I suspect it isn’t as well known as something as interesting as this ought to be. Still, there were many people there on the afternoon of my most recent visit.

The following photos were taken over two visits, October 13, 2006 when the Stone Church Brook was almost empty, and October 2, 2011 when it was full.

Town of Dover website

Oblong Land Conservancy Visitors Guide

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BONUS:
On the way back from the Stone Church, I passed through Pawling, also in eastern Dutchess County. I was reminded that I had read about an accident in 1972 at a nuclear research facility once located nearby at, appropriately enough, Nuclear Lake. The research buildings were abandoned by the early 1980s and demolished sometime after. A couple of blog posts here and here (with links to an LA Times article) tell the story about this plutonium spill near the Appalachian Trail.

Posted in Dutchess County, Nature Sites | 5 Comments

Home For Sale

Posted on November 13, 2011 by HV-Rob

This could be the home of your dreams.

Features mature landscaping;

Lovely historic windows;

A piano for the budding musician in your family;

This is just one of two TVs in the living room – never argue again about what program to watch;

Has a little problem with the roof, needs work (a handyman’s delight!);

And a fantastic view from the front door!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Polaroid

Posted on November 7, 2011 by HV-Rob

They took away our Kodachrome, but they gave us back our Polaroid.

Er, Fujiroid?

My latest camera is the Fuji Instax 210 Instant Film Camera. I seem to be a few years in most cases and a few decades in some to be behind current technological trends. I don’t own a smartphone or a GPS device, but I am happy to have this instant print camera.

I purchased it because I tend to shoot exponentially more images with digital cameras than I ever did with film, because it is easier and less expensive to do so, and therefore I have so many digital images to sort through and weed out that I almost never get any printed anymore. Now, I have instant prints. I am more selective in what I shoot with this, of course, but sometimes you really don’t need 200 photos of the same place.

The images are surprisingly sharp and they render color well. I seem to have some trouble centering the images, as it is a rangefinder camera, and wearing glasses sets me back from the viewfinder a bit too. It works best in fair to bright light, as the only “shutter speed” controls are Normal, Lighten, and Darken. A flash and a close-up adapter lens round out the effects-controls.

As long as it is acceptable to call mechanically reproduced documents “xeroxes,” regardless of the manufacturer of the copy device, I think we can call these photographs “Polaroids.”

Quaker Bridge, Croton-on-Hudson, NY. October 12, 2011.
A great transportation relic, located on a surprisingly busy road in the back woods of Croton.

Van Cortlandt Manor, Croton-on-Hudson, NY. October 12, 2011.
Decorated for the Great Jack O-Lantern Blaze.

Railroad tracks adjacent to vacant General Motors property, Sleepy Hollow, NY. November 3, 2011.
Before I owned a car, I took the Metro North trains up the river to visit ruins. I watched in awe as the train chugged out of Tarrytown past the GM factory, which closed in 1996 and was demolished by the end of the decade. I wish I had a digital camera with video capability back then, to capture those train rides. Some day I will scan my black-and-white prints of the demolition and post those to the website.

Painted Sign, southwest corner Marion Street at Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA. October 25, 2011.
I can’t make out what it says. KIT…?? There is a Kitman’s furniture store in Pittsburgh, perhaps this sign in theirs?

Penguins Hockey Ops & Locker Room, Civic Arena, October 25, 2011.
I shot this with the close-up adapter and flash.

Pittsburgh Civic Arena, November 4, 2011.
I have been following the ongoing demolition work of this mid-century marvel. This retractable-dome arena was built in 1961 for the Civic Light opera and later served as the home rink for the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey club. The Pens waddled across the street to the Consol Center in 2010, and now the “Igloo” is being torn down. The interior seating sections are mostly gone by now, and the roof may come down late this year or early 2012.

Abandoned Circuit City, Monroeville, PA. November 4, 2011.
Last Friday the Monroeville, PA, police must have been on quota duty, as they were pulling cars into this lot one after another after another, coming downhill on Route 22 westbound.

Bath house, Lyndhurst estate, Tarrytown, NY. November 5, 2011.
Some of the first ruins I ever photographed were on and near the Lyndhurst estate. The bath house has been stabilized and looks much as it did when I first photographed it in 1994, but it still awaits complete restoration.

Greenhouse, Lyndhurst estate, Tarrytown, NY. November 5, 2011.
The greenhouse is another one of my favorite buildings to photograph.

Playground equipment, former Pinsly Day Camp, Tarrytown, NY. November 5, 2011.
This playground equipment is a great piece of design work that probably could have debuted at one of the two New York’s World’s Fairs held in Flushing. Pinsly Day Camp was located on the site of a 19th century estate originally known as Graystone. In the mid-20th century, the Bernarr McFadden Tarrytown School was located here. Pinsly shut down in the 1980s, and the abandoned estate buildings, fantastic ruins they were, were demolished in 1996. The story of Graystone and the rise and fall of the great estates in Tarrytown is told in the book version of Hudson Valley Ruins. Landscapers were busy clearing brush and downed trees from the site this weekend, as the property is being parceled into home lots, known as Greystone Estates.

Posted in Photography | 7 Comments

Tioronda demolitions, Beacon, NY

Posted on November 5, 2011 by HV-Rob

For the last couple of months, demolition has been occurring at the Tioronda Hat Works on the Fishkill Creek in Beacon. The c. 1879 mill became a warehouse in 1949 and was purchased by real estate developer William Ehrlich and his company Beacon Terminal Associates in the late 1990s. I’m not certain what will happen to the site in the immediate future. Ehrlich had seemed intent on creating an artists’ haven in Beacon, but properties such as the Beacon Theater and the “Roundhouse” remained vacant until other developers took over the sites much more recently.

Tioronda Hat Works, from the demolished Tioronda Bridge. Ca. 2005 or earlier.

Tioronda Hat Works, October 24, 2011.
Photograph by Matthew Kierstead.

Click here for more photos of the mill from 2005 and 2007.

Across the creek and uphill is the Tioronda estate. Frederick Clarke Withers designed the house, built in 1859, for Joseph and Eliza Howland. Richard Morris Hunt designed an addition built in 1872.

Tioronda mansion, April 2011.

It seems that in 1911, the estate became property of the University Settlement, a social services program for immigrants and low-income families, which later kept land east of present-day Route 9D while the mansion and primary estate grounds became Craig House Sanitarium, a private psychiatric hospital founded By Dr. C. Jonathan Slocum in 1915.

An institution known as the Putnam Center acquired the estate in the 1990s and closed down just a few years later. A 2003 auction emptied the house of its fine furnishings and antiques. Investor and art collector John L. Stewart bought Tioronda that same year and in this time the property has remained disused. Stewart’s company Tioronda, LLC, plans a “small residential development” on the estate. The mansion will be a single-family residence. In October 2011, two buildings, the carriage house and a workshop, were demolished.

Tioronda carriage house, April 11. Demolished October 2011.

Craft shop, April 2011. Demolished October 2011.

BONUS: “The dam fool.”
While conducting research for Hudson Valley Ruins, the book and the website, we’d often find accounts of accidents, mishaps, murders, and unusual occurrences related to our subject buildings and the people who occupied them. These vignettes as they may be, didn’t further the topics of history, architecture and re-use of buildings, but on their own might make an interesting collection of stories. One article that came up in a search on mills in Beacon was a 1925 New York Times piece entitled “Had to Drown Him, Says Hold-Up Note.” Mr. Isadore Weiss, president of the Weiss Straw Hat Works in Beacon, left his New York City home on a February morning with $1,500 dollars to pay the employees of his factory. Seems he never made it home but his wife did receive a note stating “We have been waiting for the payroll for the last three weeks. The dam fool put up a fight and we had to throw him in the river.”

Posted in Demolition Alert, Dutchess County | 33 Comments

New York Neon

Posted on October 28, 2011 by HV-Rob

Greetings all,

I’m passing on an email I just received from Tom Rinaldi:

>>>>>>>>>>>
Hello Friends,

As some of you know, I’ve gone off the deep end with another hobby: old neon signs in NYC. Over the past few years I have photographed every old (pre-1970) neon sign I could find in the five boroughs of NYC. A book of my photos along with some history on the subject is under contract and due out about one year from now. I have also thrown together a website and blog which you can visit at the links below:

www.nyneon.org

www.nyneon.blogspot.com

Please have a look when you have a free moment, your comments and feedback are welcome! All the best and hope this finds you well,

-Tom.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

One of the seeds of Tom’s new project was the signs page he created for Hudson Valley Ruins. Included there are fine examples of neon signs, painted signs, fabulous Fifties motel signs, signs advertising luxury homes and signs advertising trailer parks, signs on defunct department stores and drive-in theaters, and lots of other advertisement goodness.

Here’s a couple of my favorites.

The Iron Horse Bar, Hudson, New York.
Blown out by early generation point-and-shoot digicam, January 8, 2005.

Some blustery, snowed-in day this winter, watch the 1994 film Nobody’s Fool. Set in a fictional upstate New York town, the movie stars Paul Newman as an older laborer fighting for worker’s compensation and facing eviction while trying to reconnect with a son he has long neglected. The vacant mills at Matteawan in Beacon provide an appropriate backdrop, along with scenes shot in Poughkeepsie and Hudson. Newman’s character even dreams of restoring his boyhood home, then abandoned and eyed by his boss for parts salvage.(Brownie points to anyone who can identify the location of the actual house, which may have been “dressed” for the movie.)

The Iron Horse, one of the main settings in the film, probably doesn’t appear on the list of places frequented by urban expatriates who hang out on Warren Street; it’s strictly a “local flavor” kind of place. We like the fact they “don’t charge New York City prices” for beers. They’ve got a pool table and a jukebox, and since we stopped in on this guy’s birthday, Tom played some tunes.

Actually, one of those blustery days back in 2005, Tom and I forged out into the snowfall and photographed sites in Troy, including the Burden Iron Works office, the coke plant, and the Gasholder Building. We topped off the day with a greasy meal at the South End Tavern. (Ladies can use either door today.)

South End Tavern, Troy, New York. February 21, 2005.

BONUS:
Be careful out in Sleepy Hollow Country this weekend. Age-old rumor has it that some guy is looking for his head, and he might take yours instead!

Venture if you dare to the Horseman’s Hollow or Legend Day Celebrations at Historic Hudson Valley or to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery for some authentic Hudson Valley spookiness.

Happy Halloween!

Posted in New York City, Photography, Tours Lectures and Events | Leave a comment

A visit to Cementon and Saugerties

Posted on October 22, 2011 by HV-Rob

A few weeks back , Tom Rinaldi and I made a trip up to Ulster and Greene counties. We stopped for lunch in Saugerties before embarking up to Cementon in search of a ruined school we had only become aware of through aerial photos.

The Alsen School, north side.

The area familiarly known as Cementon was and is again primarily a village named Smith’s Landing, north of which were built three Portland cement factories. Near one of the factories, built by the German firm Alsen’sche Portland Cement Fabriken, was a small hamlet known as Alsen, situated between the factory and the Hudson River. Almost no trace of the hamlet of Alsen remains today. The school was built in 1907 and closed in 1953. In its last year, one student attended the school. A couple of photos appear in Alsen, New York, A Cement Plant, A Railroad Station, A School, A Post Office, A Community, edited and self-published by Joseph Pavlak. The school ruin would have merited attention in our book too, if only we knew of it before October 2005.

Chalk tray for blackboard. How will smart boards age in ruined schools of the future?

The school had two classrooms and a large central hall. This is the western classroom.

Alsen school, east side.

The school is now a ruin and the factory is abandoned. Further north, another German firm, Holcim, “mothballed” their cement plant in June 2011. Theoretically they could resume operations at a moment’s notice, but it seems this era of big industry in “Cementon” is at an end.

Following five images: Alsen’s American Portland Cement Works.

Smith’s Landing today is a quiet community. Crowds gather for dinner on Saturday nights at the Sportsman Club, and fine old homes still stand along the water. A few other relics of bygone industries survive here as well. We spotted two more mushroom farm buildings in the village, on a hill above a couple of houses.

I think Tom actually took this shot with my camera.

Cementon Sportsman Club and lone smokestack.

Cementon Common School.
A sign below the historical marker protests the proposed hydrofracking industry. The hydrofracking process could seriously pollute the environment, ruining communities forever in return for a few quick bucks (money that will go into corporate pockets, not local pockets). High risk, small reward. Let’s not find out the hard way.

My kind of house on the Hudson.

Mushroom farm building.

Other mushroom farm building.

We returned to Saugerties for celebratory drinks at the Exchange Hotel bar, and admired the Orpheum Theater (where I’ve still yet to see a film) and other great buildings in town. Saugerties, like Beacon on the east shore of the Hudson, is seeing something of a legitimate revival these days. Instead of developers coming into town and promising a glorious future of several thousand condominiums on the waterfront (ahem, Haverstraw, Yonkers, Tarrytown, Kingston, anyone?), hoping they will lead to other, more relevant projects magically appearing out of thin air, growth here is starting small with projects that neatly fit the existing character, infrastructure and needs of the community.

Exchange Hotel bar, Saugerties.

Exchange Hotel bar men’s room.
Nice mirror, but not the coolest bathroom I’ve been in this week.

Orpheum Theater, Saugerties.

Under the marquee.

I used to visit Saugerties and eat at Miss Lucy’s Kitchen in another lifetime…

A small hotel is being built in downtown Saugerties on the site of a long-gone mill. This project has aroused ire in some quarters, with critics pointing to reduced access to the Esopus Creek, shady political connections and misuse of public funding, and ugly architecture. I don’t know enough of the matter to comment on the first two claims, but visually I was pleasantly surprised as I had been expecting the worst. The northerly building that is mostly complete looks quite handsome on the exterior, looking quite a bit like a mill building. The “boutique” room rates planned for the hotel are probably out of my reach (though I did splurge for a night at the Saugerties Lighthouse B&B in 2003, that was a treat), but I feel this place will work as there aren’t many fine hoteliers along this stretch of the river and a good number of folks with money to spend do come to Saugerties.

One of the new buildings under construction at the Partition Street Hotel. Looks quite handsome to me.

Maybe some people don’t like change and don’t like new trends and fashions coming to town, but there are still lots of cool old buildings in Saugerties like this one where old timers can sit on the stoop and watch the world go by.

Posted in Greene County, Ulster County | 57 Comments

Demo Alert – Meads Mountain House; Millwood Station

Posted on October 4, 2011 by HV-Rob

Sorry, the original entry for this post got published too soon. Here it is in full form.

Here’s a couple of Demolition Alert updates – one that happened already and one that is only a threat but a threat that seems more dire than ever before.

I found in my weekly perusal of the Woodstock Times online edition that the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, the North American seat of “His Holiness the Gyalwa Karampa,” demolished the historic Meads Mountain House. Located on Meads Mountain Road, at the foot of the trail to the Overlook Mountain House, the 1863 hotel predated the Overlook by seven years, and outlasted it too. This demolition seems most needless as the building was in active use and still retained much of its original appearance including broad gables and dormer windows. The Buddhist Monastery has sensed financial opportunity out of the demise of the old Mountain House; they are selling pens made from authentic Meads floorboards for 218 dollars. That’s good karma there.

All photos below taken on October 5, 2009.

Also last month, the owner of the New York Central – Putnam Division railroad station in Millwood responded to a challenge by the Town of New Castle to restore or remove the abandoned station building by saying he will tear it down. The abandoned station has been a source of contention in Millwood for years, but time may be running out at last. Here’s a nice rendering from the Chappaqua-Mount Kisco Patch showing what the restored Millwood station would look like.

From June 9, 2006:

From November 3, 2007:

Hudson Valley Demolition Alert

Posted in Demolition Alert, Ulster County, Westchester County | Leave a comment

“Washington’s Headquarters” (Miller House), White Plains

Posted on September 27, 2011 by HV-Rob

UPDATE NOVEMBER 15, 2019
The Miller House has been restored following years of neglect. The Westchester County Board of Legislators approve plans championed by County Executive George Latimer to replace the roof and make structural reinforcements as well as to construct a new classroom and visitor center, and the Miller House will once again open to the public. The Daughters of Liberty Legacy are hosting a public program on Sunday Nov. 17 at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. to highlight the life of Anne Fischer Miller.

Original Post from 2011:
One of Westchester’s oldest historical landmarks stands in peril in White Plains. The colonial home of Elijah and Ann Miller, presently a Westchester County Historic Site, is prominent for having briefly hosted George Washington at the time of the 1776 Battle of White Plains. Another White Plains house, the Jacob Purdy House, has been documented as Washington’s primary headquarters during nearby battles in 1776 and 1778. Nevertheless the c. 1738/1770 Miller House is listed with the Purdy house on the National Register of Historic Places.

ABOVE: The Miller House as it appeared c. 1886 (History of Westchester County, ed. Scharf)

The County website lists extremely limited hours of operation for the Miller House. The building has been left to nearly fall into serious disrepair by the county executive, who has taken a hard-line stance on this kind of government spending, and legislators who have over-ridden the executive veto in order to provide funding for the house and to relocate it to a site with better public access.

Until then, the Miller House looks a little forlorn with a ragged green tarp hanging off its roof, and fenced off from curious visitors.