A History Of Garfield Place, Poughkeepsie

A HISTORY OF GARFIELD PLACE, POUGHKEEPSIE

by Dr. Susan Luskin Puretz

Historical research is time consuming and frustrating, but when the pieces finally fall into place, it is its own rare reward.

That statement recapitulates the year of 1971 for this author. it was during that time that the major portion of the research was done which lead to the authentication of Garfield Place, Poughkeepsie, New York, as an Historic District. This was a noteworthy accomplishment because Garfield Place is contiguous with an inner city area which will hopefully be protected by the legislation which resulted from the research. By this protection, a functioning part of the city would be allowed to maintain its Victorian residential character within the confines of the city. This would preserve a part of the city's heritage and prevent the area from becoming an anonymous city block, stripped of its uniqueness by the processes of attrition and creeping urban blight. Additionally, this project was a grassroots movement supported by the owners and residents of Garfield Place and is indicative of legislation which can be enacted with residential support and action.

On October 4, 1971, the City of Poughkeepsie Common Council officially declared Garfield Place to be an Historic District. In effect, it legalized a claim that began with the publication in 1969 of Landmarks of Dutchess County 1683-1867, Architecture Worth Saving in New York State by the Dutchess County Planning Department in cooperation with the New York State Council on the Arts, and was culminated on July 20, 1972, when the New York State Historic Trust officially nominated Garfield Place to the National Register of Historic Places. Finalization from Washington occured on November 29, 1972.

However, before the proposal ever underwent the legal processes involved in creating recognized historic districts and landmarks, literally hundreds of hours were spent in researching the history of the area. This work culminated in the publication of Historic Garfield Place: A Study of a Victorian Street in an Urban Setting, by Susan L. Puretz. The major primary sources for this research were the Deeds on file in the Dutchess County Clerk's Office, the Poughkeepsie City Directories (1843-present), and the City of Poughkeepsie Tax Records (from 1855).

From the Deeds, it was ascertained that Garfield Place originally was part of the Van Kleeck farm, c. 1760. In a 1799 map made by Henry Livingston at the time of the incorporation of Poughkeepsie into a village, the "White House" of the Van Kleeck's was indicated.

Beginning in 1805, some years after the death of Lawrence Van Kleeck and the division of his property among his five heirs, Bronson French, a Poughkeepsie resident, started acquiring title to this 533/4 acre tract. The land then became known as the "French Place."

French sold this property in 1836 to a group of businessmen, namely, J. Barnes, C. Barker, G. Conies and R. Varick, for the sum of $25,437.50. At that time additional maps (74 and 84 by Henry Whinfield) of the area

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#11. Dr. & Mrs. Donald Puretz #15. Mr. & Mrs. William Sherwood

#24. Tower, Mr. Hudson Fayell's house 63 Montgomery Street, Mr. Thomas Adair

were commissioned indicating streets and building lots where none had heretofor existed. However, it was not until 1851 that houses were actually built on South Liberty Street (Garfield Place's original name), "the intervening years being ones of recuperation and consolidation of losses which had resulted from the Panic of 1837, a panic which ended, for a while, the boom of the real estate speculation." By late 1881, when South Liberty Street officially became Ga,rfield Place, commemmorating President Garfield's assassination, much of the present significant construction had been completed.

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The oldest home on the street is #28, which George Conies, one of the original group of purchasers of "the French Place", had built for himself in 1851. It is reputed that Collies was responsible for planting the original trees on the street,2 now magnificent shade trees a century old. Later residents of that house were the Charles P. Luckeys of Luckey, Platt and Company, presently perhaps the leading department store of the MidHudson Valley.

One year later, in 1852, #24 Garfield Place was built. It was pictured, in 1879, in Martha L. Tmb's The Homes of America, as an exa,mple of a home in the "modern period". More recently it was one of three houses, in addition to number 11 and 35, to appear in Landmarks of Dutchess County 1683-1867, Architecture Worth Saving in New York State. The house is in the Italian Style, with flat overhanging eaves supported on brackets and a three story tower, two bays square, with a Palladian window on the third floor.3 22 Garfield Place has the distinction of being the house where, in 1872, the first water tap in the City of Poughkeepsie was installed.4 The fact that its resident at that time (Edward Storm) was president of the Poughkeepsie water board may have been more than coincidental.

Other notables who have lived on Garfield Place include Milo P. Jewett (1860-65), the first President of Vassar College; Hallie Flanagan Davis (1935-43), national director of the Federal Theatre (W.P.A.) Project, 1935-39, and the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship 1926-27; Judge Joseph Morchauser, 1924-1949, State Supreme Court Justice; John E. Adriance, 1886-1913, President of Adriance, Platt and Co. producers of the Buckeye Mower; J. William Schatz, 1919-1931 (at which time he met an untimely death — murdered by his butler) President of Schatz Federal Bearing Company, and many other names associated with the history and growth of Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County.

The architecture of the homes is as varied as the history of its occupants, varying from Classical Revival, Italian and Queen Ann to Georgian Revival and la,te Federal. Additionally of interest is a Gazebo (wooden kiosk, c. 1861) that was mentioned in an article by Clay Lancaster, "Indian Influence on the American Architecture of the XIX Century," that appeared in MARG Magazine Bombay, c. 1955.

The architecture of these homes has, because of the action of the Poughkeepsie Common Council, been deemed to be "almost" inviolable. The legal creation of the Garfield Place Historic District Commission, to serve as a watchdog agency, with jurisdiction over all proposed repairs, alterations, demolitions and new construction, tends to further insure the safety and perpetuation of these large, graceful and well-maintained Victorian homes.

And so, what started out as a suggestion by the Dutchess County Planning Board (pages 204-207 in their publication Landmarks of Dutchess County) and the Hudson River Valley Commission's Historic Resources of the Hudson (page 34, #59) has by dint of hard work, per-

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#8. Dr. & Mrs. Jacques Dolphin

# / 4. Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Tuman

#35. Mr. & Mrs. John Jenner

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severance, and dedication to historical preservation, resulted in the protection and recognition of Garfield Place as an area of historical, architectural and aesthetic significance. It is an inheritance to be passed on, hopefully, intact to subsequent generations.

#20. Dr. & Mrs. Kurt Holzer #22. Mr. Eugene Ruf

REFERENCES

1. Susan L. Puretz, Historic Garfield Place: A Study of a Victorian Street in an Urban Setting, (New Paltz: by the author, 1971), pl 5. 2. Edmund Platt, The Eagles History of Poughkeepsie from the Earliest Settlements — 1683 to 1905, (Poughkeepsie: Platt and Platt, 1905), p. 110. 3. Richard Crowley, "Architectural Review," Historic Garfield Place: A Study of a Victorian Street in an Urban Setting, Susan L. Puretz, (New Paltz: by the author, 1971), p. 19. 4. Platt, op. cit., p. 212.

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