Railroad Station: Near foot of Main St. for New York Central R.R.
Bus Station: New Market St. for Mountain View, Flying Eagle White Way, Mohawk, Twilight, Harlem Valley, Pizzuto, and Greyhound Bus Lines.
Steamboat Docks: Foot of Main St. for Poughkeepsie-Highland ferry, 25¢ per car; and Hudson River Day Line, daily boats to New York City and Albany, May–Oct.
Busses: Fare 10¢, 3 tokens 25¢.
Taxis: At railroad station, 25¢; other, 20¢ within city limits.
Accommodations: 5 hotels; tourist homes.
Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 57 Market St.; Nelson House, 28 Market St.
Motion Picture Houses: 6.
Golf: College Hill Park municipal course, N. Clinton St., 9 holes, 40¢–$1.
Tennis: Municipal courts in Butts Memorial Field, Church St. at Quaker Lane; College Hill Park; Eastman Park, South Ave. and Montgomery St.; King Street Park, Corlies Ave. and King St.; free.
Swimming: Wheaton Park, ft. of Mill St., children only; Greenvale Park, 3 m. SE. on State 376, adm. 5¢; Morello’s Pleasure Park, 2½ m. NE. on Smith St., adm. 10¢.
Annual Event: Intercollegiate Regatta, late June.
POUGHKEEPSIE (175 alt., 40,237 pop.), on the east bank of the Hudson River midway between Albany and New York City, is the seat of Dutchess County and of Vassar College, and the scene of the annual Intercollegiate Regatta. The railroad bridge, of cantilever construction, and the Mid-Hudson Bridge, of the long suspension type, dominate the river front.
The city pattern is set by the long Main Street, which climbs the steep slope from the river and, lined with offices, shops, homes, and public buildings, extends eastward for about two miles. At the crest of the slope up from the river, where Main Street intersects with north-south Market Street, is the center of the downtown district. As in other cities feeding on industry and a large agricultural hinterland, the streets and stores are busiest on Saturday evening, with Main Street east of Market Street carrying the heaviest burden.
Downtown Poughkeepsie is composed of crowded brick and frame structures of varied heights. An occasional old residence has kept its foothold, the lower floor pressed into commercial service. The residential districts reflect the tastes and styles of their periods. The finest dwellings of the pre-Civil War era have almost all been destroyed or have fallen into ruin. Along the water front, where the largest industries have occupied what was once the most pretentious residential section, the scene is a mixture of activity and dilapidation.
The economic life of Poughkeepsie is about evenly divided between industry and commerce, with no one trade or product predominating. It is an important retail shopping and lumber distribution center, and manufactures cream separators and oil clarifiers, ball bearings, clothing, and cough drops. Clothes for men and women are made in small but numerous establishments employing women almost exclusively. In 1940, 38 per cent of the industrial workers in Poughkeepsie were women, almost all of them employed in these shops.
The Intercollegiate Regatta, most famous of American shell races, has familiarized the Nation with the name of Poughkeepsie. For two days in late June the city is host to a multitude of visitors from all corners of the continent, come to witness this pageant of rhythm and color. The three races—Freshman, Junior Varsity, and Varsity—are scheduled at one-hour intervals late in the afternoon, the exact time determined by the tide. The race course, on the imposing ‘Long Reach’ of the Hudson, is bordered by flag-flying yachts, launches, and rowboats, and the shores are crowded with thousands of people on foot and in cars. A bomb, fired from the Mid-Hudson Bridge, signals the start. Followed by the boats of referees and coaches and by an observation train that skirts the base of the west shore bluff, the shells glide smoothly down the channel to the finish line. Three times the spectacle is repeated, lasting, in all, about three hours. Then bets are paid, and the exodus begins; within a few hours the river scene is quiet, and by morning Poughkeepsie has resumed its normal routine.
The date given for the first modern intercollegiate regatta at Poughkeepsie is 1895. But the local history of rowing and allied sports goes back more than a century. The first recorded rowing regatta was held in 1839. Ice yachting began in Poughkeepsie in 1807; it came to an end about 1920, when icebreakers were introduced on the Hudson; in recent years the river has been kept open for ships plying to the Port of Albany.
Poughkeepsie is a modified Indian name, the original probably meaning ‘reed-covered lodge by the little water place.’ The first record of white settlement within the city limits is a deed of 1683 conveying land from an Indian, Massany, to two Hollanders. Growth in the eighteenth century was slow. Of the 170 inhabitants in 1714, all were Dutch save 15 slaves and a dozen French Huguenots and Englishmen. Public records, however, were written in a hybrid phonetic English.
Poughkeepsie was not involved in Revolutionary activities. In 1777 it was made the capital of the State and Governor George Clinton made his residence here. The chief event in the history of the town was the ratification of the Federal Constitution by the State on July 26, 1788.
Early in the nineteenth century the increased cultivation of the hinterland and the establishment of local factories brought Poughkeepsie into prominence as a river port. Eight large sloops sailed weekly to New York, transporting Dutchess County grain to the metropolis and bringing back supplies and settlers for the provinces. With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, however, western competition caused a decline in the value of Dutchess County produce, from which it has never recovered; and Poughkeepsie turned to industry and trade.
In the 1830’s Poughkeepsie acquired a reputation as an educational center as a result of the establishment of more than a dozen private schools, but the most important educational advance came in 1861 with the founding of Vassar College.
In 1854, the year Poughkeepsie was granted a city charter, Henry Wheeler Shaw, the ‘Josh Billings’ of Yankee humor, took up his residence here and began his career as a writer under the pen name ‘Efrem Billings,’ which he soon changed to its classic form. Shaw contributed to local newspapers, took an active interest in civic affairs, and in 1858 was elected city alderman.
After the Civil War Poughkeepsie experienced a period of rapid industrial expansion, with a corresponding increase in population. Factories sprang up along the river front, displacing eighteenth-century wharves, warehouses, and residences. Families of wealth and social position, whose homes had occupied the picturesque slopes overlooking the Hudson, removed to the southeastern section of the city and developed residential areas on the eminences of Academy Street and along Hooker Avenue. With the passing of the years many of the new enterprises expired, but some of the wealth they created had gone into philanthropic institutions housed in various sections of the city. The most important economic development of recent years has been the establishment of numerous small garment factories.
POINTS OF INTEREST
The DUTCHESS COUNTY COURTHOUSE, SW. corner of Market and Main Sts., a three-story-and-attic structure of red brick with gray sandstone trim, built in 1902, stands on the site of four former courthouses. In the third of these, on July 26, 1788, the State convention, after warm and prolonged debate, ratified the Constitution of the United States by a vote of 30 to 27.
The new U.S. POST OFFICE, Mansion St. facing New Market St., was opened in 1939. The architect, Eric Kebbon of Washington, D.C., followed the design of the third Dutchess County courthouse, erected in 1785, in which New York ratified the U.S. Constitution. The style is therefore early Federal. The walls are of local stone, with white trim. The main block has a cupola, which holds the first bell to be installed in a post office. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took a personal interest in the plans for the building and laid the cornerstone.
The NELSON HOUSE, 28 Market St., a five-story red brick structure, stands on a site where, under various names and owners, an inn has been uninterruptedly maintained since 1777. Before the Revolution the Van den Bogaerdt farmhouse, which stood here, was used as an inn from 1725 to 1742. The central structure of the present hotel was built in 1875.
The VASSAR BROTHERS INSTITUTE (open 1–5 daily), 12 Vassar St., houses a museum of natural history, a natural science and historical library, and an auditorium. Fossils, Indian artifacts, and mounted specimens of fauna are exhibited. The red brick building, erected in 1881, is designed in the Victorian style characteristic of the several local institutional structures donated by the Vassar family, Poughkeepsie brewers.
The SOLDIERS’ FOUNTAIN, South Ave. and Montgomery St., an ornately figured fountain unveiled in 1870 to the memory of the soldiers of the Civil War, is an example of ‘folk art’ in cast iron. The square in which it stands, at the entrance to Eastman Park, preserves more mid-Victorian civic atmosphere than probably any other civic square in the State.
CHRIST CHURCH (Episcopal), Montgomery and Academy Sts., is a striking red sandstone structure erected in 1888 and designed by William Appleton Potter in the English Gothic style. The tower was added in 1889. The Tudor rectory was built in 1903. The church body was organized in 1766.
ST. PETER’S CHURCH, foot of Mill St., a brick structure erected in 1853, with later additions, is an interesting example of ‘folk Renaissance’ architecture. This was the first Roman Catholic church in Dutchess County. From it is a fine view of the bridges across the Hudson.
The SMITH BROTHERS PLANT (open 9–5 weekdays), 134 N. Hamilton St., built in 1914, is a two-story brick building painted white, in which the nationally advertised Smith Brothers cough drops are made. The business was established before 1850 by William Wallace Smith and Andrew Smith, the famous bearded ‘Trade’ and ‘Mark.’ The two well-known faces were reproductions from actual photographs. The cough drops were first made in a basement by hand; now hand labor is eliminated and they are manufactured by the ton in this modern factory.
The CLEAR EVERITT HOUSE (open 10–12, 3–5 weekdays), NW. corner of White and Main Sts., is a historic house museum under the direction of the D.A.R. Although dating from 1783, it is designed in the style of the early Dutch Colonial period. The attic section is built of wood; the foundations, two feet thick, are of rough field stone crudely laid; the walls are of the same material and workmanship. In the rooms are exhibited household implements and dishes of Colonial days, a number of original State documents, Revolutionary relics and weapons, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century furniture.
The GLEBE HOUSE (open 1–5 Mon., Wed., Fri.), 635 Main St., built in 1767 as the rectory of the Episcopal Church, is a story-and-a-half structure of red brick laid in Flemish bond. The interior is planned with spacious rooms common to the houses of the period. The building was purchased for the city in 1929 by popular subscription, and the gathering of a historical collection is under way.
VASSAR COLLEGE (open; closed to automobiles on Sun. and holidays; parking at gate), Raymond Ave., Arlington, occupies a 950-acre campus landscaped with impressive trees and broad lawns crisscrossed by paths. The buildings are not arranged according to any regular plan, though the dormitory group, designed in the Tudor style with gables, bays, and battlemented turrets, form a quadrangle just north of the main entrance. The other buildings are of varied architectural styles. On the campus are an arboretum, a Shakespeare garden in which are grown the flowers mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays, greenhouses, and an outdoor theater. Adjacent to the campus proper are faculty dwellings, two small lakes, an athletic field, and a nine-hole golf course. To the south lies the 700-acre Vassar farm, which supplies vegetables for the college dining halls.
Between classes the campus hums with bicycles operated under a system of licenses and traffic regulations administered by the students. There are no student-owned automobiles and no sororities.
The 31 academic departments are divided into four groups: art, foreign literature and languages, natural sciences, and social sciences. The curriculum is of sufficient scope to provide the student with a foundation for a professional career, for business, or for home life and citizenship. The student body is limited to 1,150; the faculty numbers about 180. During the summer months the Vassar Institute of Euthenics provides six weeks of study for parents, teachers, and social workers in the problems of child-rearing and the conduct of the family.
The college was founded by Matthew Vassar (1792–1868), Poughkeepsie brewer, in 1861, but the Civil War delayed the formal opening until 1865. From the time of Harriet Stanton Blatch, ’78, through that of Inez Millholland Boissevain, ’09, until suffrage was an accomplished fact, members of the college played an active part in the campaign for the enfranchisement of women. Other noted alumnae include Katherine Bement Davis, penologist; Edna St. Vincent Millay and Adelaide Crapsey, poets; Elizabeth Howe, well-known fashion designer and author of Fashion Is Spinach; Jean Webster, author of Daddy Long Legs; Constance Rourke, critic; Margaret Culkin Banning, novelist; and three college presidents: Katharine Blunt, Constance Warren, and Mildred McAfee.
TAYLOR HALL (open 2–4 weekdays), at the main entrance, constructed of seam-faced granite with limestone trim, is designed in the English Gothic style, with a heavy, square, battlemented tower over the entrance driveway, leaded-glass windows, buttresses, and oriel bays. The architects were Allen and Collens of Boston. The building houses the art department and the art collection, which includes several Rembrandt prints, water-colors by Turner from the collection of John Ruskin, a number of the paintings of the Hudson River School, and three bronzes by Jo Davidson.
The FREDERICK FERRIS THOMPSON MEMORIAL LIBRARY (open 9–5 weekdays, 2–5 Sun.), N. of Taylor Hall, like the latter, is designed in the English Gothic style with a large, square, buttressed and pinnacled tower. The roof is set behind a battlemented parapet. The main entrance, with small octagonal turrets, is typically medieval in design. The architects were Allen and Collens. The library contains 200,000 volumes, including the Justice collection of material relating to the periodic press and the Village Press collection printed by Frederic W. Goudy, of Marlboro, New York.
The CHAPEL, S. of the main entrance, dedicated in 1904, is constructed of yellow Weymouth granite trimmed with limestone. The exterior is designed like an English parish church in the Norman style, with massive round arches, square corner tower, and ‘cart-wheel’ window. The interior has hammer-beam trusses. The architects were Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge of Boston. The stained glass windows are from the Tiffany studios, three of them designed by La Farge.
The MAIN BUILDING (offices open 8–5 Mon.–Fri.; 8–12 Sat.), facing the main entrance, was completed before the opening of the college in 1865. Designed by James Renwick, Jr., in the style of the French Second Empire, the five-story brick building is topped with a steep mansard roof. Until 1893 virtually all of the students and most of the faculty lived in this building. To it, especially in the eyes of the older alumnae, clings much of the tradition of Vassar. It houses the administrative offices, reception rooms, and accommodations for about 350 students and college officers.
The quadrangle enclosed by the dormitories north of the main entrance is said to have been the field in which the daisies were picked for the first daisy chain carried by sophomores on Class Day.
POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS
Crum Elbow, 4.7 m., Quaker Meetinghouse, 6 m., Margaret Lewis Norrie State Park, 7.7 m., Ogden Mills and Ruth Livingston Mills Memorial State Park, 8.7 m., Fishkill Village, 12.2 m. (see Tour 21).