Two local sites nominated as historic places
A former Poughkeepsie department store and a parish in uptown Kingston have been recently nominated to the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.
The Wallace Company Department Store, located at 331 Main Street in the City of Poughkeepsie, was constructed as a retail store in 1875 as main hub to bring shoppers downtown. After the store closed in 1975, it was transformed into office spaces. Today, while a 187-unit affordable housing is currently being proposed at the site, the building has been nominated to the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.
“The Main Street façade is especially notable for its Modern redesign in 1941, when it received a covering of planar limestone panels broken by a three-story-high central window opening, transforming it into a smooth surface that served as a signboard. Today, the building remains a distinctive intact example of a nineteenth-century department store that was modernized in keeping with the new architectural trends that emerged in the 1930s.”
Located in the heart of uptown Kingston, St. Joseph’s Parish Complex is an ecclesiastical campus erected over the course of more than a century that showcases a rich variety of architectural styles and building types designed by locally (and sometimes nationally) prominent architects. The oldest building in the complex, the church, was completed in the early 1830s for the Dutch Reformed Church. In the 1850s, it served as a concert and lecture hall—hosting Susan B. Anthony among other noted speakers—and during the Civil War it was converted into a drill hall and armory for Kingston’s Ulster Guard. Following the war, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church purchased the property and updated the building to its current appearance during a pair of building campaigns in the 1860s and 1890s. As the congregation expanded, and as adjacent lots became available, St. Joseph’s erected a series of support buildings, including the parish house (1874), a school and convent (1913), and a second school (1963).
