Urban Rebewal Of The City Of Newburgh

The City of Newburgh, a small city of approximately 30,000 residents, on the western shore of the Hudson River about 60 miles north of the island of Manhattan, has a special place in this nation’s history. In the final 18 months of the Revolutionary War, it was the headquarters of General Washington, with his Continental Army camped out nearby in New Windsor. In 1850, the farmhouse where he stayed, known as Hasbrouck House, located on Liberty Street, was acquired by New York State and became America’s first public historic site. A bustling port city where ships and railroad met was built on steam technology, “the city had prospered in the mid and late 19th century manufacturing boilers, generators, train wheels and other components”, according to city historian Mary McTamaney( ). Through the early 20th century, machine shops were turning into garment factories, solidifying Newburgh as a working-class town. But as the city’s manufacturing base declined in the mid 20th century, Newburgh’s heritage was being threatened by urban renewal, which by its end destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, many of them historic. This destruction would completely change the face, and identity of the city for generations.

Newburgh became a showcase of Victorian architecture thanks to native Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), a national trendsetter who heralded and promoted the Romantic movement. From his mansion on Broad Street, he wrote a series of articles and best-selling books advocating for charming Gothic, Italianate, or Swiss style architecture. His widely disseminated house plans transformed wealthy estates and residential neighborhoods into the first suburbs; picturesque Gothic cottages sprouted up in every town and city. Downing had attracted top architects and craftspeople to his hometown, including Alexander Jackson Davis, who designed the monumental Dutch Reformed Church, which was modeled after ancient Greek temples; Calvert Vaux, who emigrated from England to work with Downing in his design studio; and Frederick Clarke Withers.

Newburgh’s wealth from the turn of the century dwindled in a few generations, with many of the large mansions of the 1800s broken up into apartments in the Depression of the 1930s and the post-war housing crunch of the late 1940s. Along Grand and Liberty streets, many of these large homes were occupied by doctors, lawyers and other professionals, who used the downstairs as office space.

In the 1960s local manufacturing included Sweet-Orr, the world’s largest producer of work clothes. pocketbooks produced at the six-story Regal Bag Company and in small shops around the city. A Dupont-Stauffer Chemical plant that made coated fabric for car seats employed 800, and Stroock and American Felt textile companies employed hundreds more.

People came from near and far to shop in Newburgh’s downtown, where one could find five movie theaters, two roller skating rinks, 15 auto showrooms, dozens of barbershops, 50 clothing stores including the family-owned Schoonmaker’s Department Store, 66 restaurants, 16 jewelry stores. The city was served by several modes of transport. There was a passenger railroad station on Water Street, ferry service across the Hudson River to Beacon, Trolley service until around 1925 and then regular bus service that precluded the need for a car.

Describe what one would experiencelandmark buildingsdid u know anyone who lived thereafterschoonmakers that was split in 2 (the store was spliced by the elevated railway tracks; you had to traverse a tunnel to get from one building to the other) “Water Street was called Little New York, because of all the stores, including a Grant’s, Penny’s, Kresge’s, an apothecary center, and quite a few markets,” Palantine hotelcity club ref photos

Cheaper labor and business costs in the South had begun eroding the manufacturing base of the North, and was collapsing by the late 1960s. The closing of Stewart Air Force Base in 1969 was another blow. The opening of the Newburgh Beacon Bridge and the construction of the New York State Thruway and Interstate 84 carried cars to exits in the suburbs rendering train and ferry service obsolete. Strip malls began popping up along the main roads outside of the city, taking business from the downtown stores.

In an attempt to halt the city’s decay, the Newburgh Urban Renewal Agency approved the Water Street Urban Renewal Program in 1959. This was a 26-acre area encompassing Water, Smith, and Montgomery streets between Second and Broad that would displace 323 families. A public housing project for the families was also proposed, but never built. The $3 million plan included garden apartments, an office complex, a shopping plaza, industrial park, and marina.

As the War on Poverty heated up in the mid 1960s, Newburgh became a poster child of the problems of the failing city. In stories in The New York Times and other national media, Newburgh was a symbol of the poverty that urban America had descended and the hopes for resurrection that city planners believed could be achieved only through leveling the “slums” and rebuilding from ground up. The overt racism of Joseph Mitchell, who served as Newburgh’s city manager in the early 1960s, heightened racial tensions: Mitchell had blamed the city’s bad economy on African American welfare recipients, claiming they were cheating the system, but a subsequent investigation evidence to the contrary of his claims. Mitchell resigned in 1963, after he was cleared of bribery charges. (evening news April?,1963. )

In 1964, a second, larger plan, the East End Urban Renewal Project, was approved. The project was set to level 102 acres at a cost of nearly $15 million, with more than 500 families displaced. A group of preservationists pushed back, claiming “Newburgh was sitting on a goldmine of a historically important American heritage, which we feel must be preserved,” according to the November 21, 1964 Evening News ( XXX). “It’s terrible that many of our beautiful houses have been ripped down without too much thought,” Newburgh historian Helen Gearn was quoted as saying in the article. “A group of mill houses with Moorish type brick balconies on North Water Street are interesting. ” Of particular note was “an old Regency house with wrought iron dating back to the 1820s and 1830s. ”

The destruction eventually stopped due to intensive lobbying and the lack of funding, which was eliminated in 1974 by President Nixon. The Dutch Reformed Church, which was scheduled to be torn down, was saved. In 1973 a group of preservationists were instrumental in having Montgomery, Grand and sections of Liberty Streets designated as the “East Newburgh Historic District”, one of the largest such districts in the state.

In the end, approximately 1,300 buildings were demolished, annihilating the downtown commercial district, which dated back to the 1820s. Nine streets were wiped from the map, including Clinton Square, a triangular intersection of streets, at the center of which was a bronze statue of native born George Clinton, first Governor of New York, and former U. S. Vice President.