Poughkeepsie's Architectural Styles 1835-1940 Anarchy or Decorum? William B. Rhoads
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ifty years ago students of Poughkeepsie's architectural history were told by the Federal Writers' Project that the only noteworthy buildings in the city belonged to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the period of the region's famous Dutch Colonial stone houses and the tentative efforts at introducing Greco-Roman classicism. From about 1835, when a stricter Greek Revival was introduced, the area "followed the popular fashions in architecture, few of which have any special merit." The best the FWP critic could say of "downtown Poughkeepsie" was that it "presents the miscellaneous collection of buildings characteristic of older towns which grew up before the days of city planning."' In 1987 such an attitude seems too narrow, for today many have come to appreciate the rich variety of architectural styles still to be seen in Poughkeepsie architecture from the century preceeding 1937, the time of the city's greatest growth during which the appearance of today's city was largely determined. Moreover, the ostensibly anarchic or miscellaneous collection of architectural styles was not merely a result of capricious changes in taste. It was rooted throughout the century in a sense of decorum which presumed that the meaning or symbolism attached to individual styles made their use appropriate in particular projects. In the 1830s and 40s the dominant style in Poughkeepsie, as in the rest of the country, was the Greek Revival: an 1889 Poughkeepsie publication observed that fifty years earlier the "preference for classical forms of architecture" had been "almost universal." As early as 1826 Presbyterians built a church* on Cannon Street with Doric portico and cupola, a formula widely adopted by churches over the next twenty years (for example, by the former Second Presbyterian Church [ca. 1835] at Mill and Vassar Streets).2 An 1834 survey of New York City architecture found "the Greek mania" so pervasive that "everything is a Greek temple, from the privies. . . through the. . . church. . . and state-house." In Poughkeepsie, too, the Greek style was applied to a wide range of buildings, from the diminutive primary school operated by Miss Tappen on Garden Street to the many larger, two-story, threeWilliam B. Rhoads (Ph.D., Princeton University) is Associate Professor of Art History at the State University of New York, New Paltz. His publications include studies of the Colonial Revival in American architecture and of the art and architectural interests of Franklin D. Roosevelt. *A star in this text indicates that the building no longer exists. 18
