Poughkeepsie Urban Renewal

The city of Poughkeepsie’s down-town urban area has come a long way in the last ten or twenty years after a long, hard fall into decay. After the second World War, three factors emerged that lead to this decline: industry changed and moved outside the city, people moved out into the surrounding town to be closer to work and their automobiles enabled them to travel farther to get the things they needed. Poughkeepsie’s once vibrant and bustling downtown area dried up and crumbled and by the 1960’s plans were enacted to raze or rehabilitate whole neighborhoods suffering from ‘blight’. The mural of by-gone Poughkeepsie was painted in 2002 by Franc Palaia who is pleased to see that the city is regaining some of its beauty in the the 21st century.

Plans to ‘renew’ these urban areas were implemented not just locally, but all over the country. In New York State, cities like Kingston in Ulster County and Newburgh in Orange County also had whole sections of historic buildings demolished and the most modern of dull-looking concrete blocks erected in their places.

Last year I bought a booklet at an auction that caught my eye, titled Illustrated and Descriptive Poughkeepsie, NY it was a sort of chamber of commerce booklet published in 1906. It features photos and descriptions of local businesses as well as photos of a handful of intersections. On flipping through I was struck by how busy and crowed the streets were not only with pedestrians, but chock full of prosperous business.

In the coming week, we will feature a selection of comparison photos from the 1906 booklet and photos I took on 11/11/11. The map I traced at right shows the locations from which I took the pictures. Click to enlarge all images.

First, something that hasn’t changed a bit: The Adriance Library on Market St. which has been recently renovated and restored.

And a scene that has changed entirely. Catherine Street, South from Mill St (Arterial Westbound).

Nearly all of the buildings in the earlier image are gone today. “The Mill-Catherine Street Project was instituted in 1955, in part, to increase parking…” as Poughkeepsie’s first foray into urban renewal. Though it was an expensive endeavor to raze the buildings that you see in the below image, the city employed federal grant money to get the job done. This project “displaced 20 families” among other things. As I walked up the street to Main St. from the arterial/Mill St. where I took the photo, a group of young men came across the nearly empty parking lot where I had parked my car (on the left) shouting and cursing at each other at the top of their lungs. It didn’t surprise me, and having lived in Poughkeepsie for five years I knew not to be afraid of everything, but I also carried several hundred dollars of camera equipment and smart phone and so didn’t waste time getting to the next shot.

•  “A Time of Readjustment: Urban Renewal in Poughkeepsie 1955-75” by Harvey K. Flad from New Perspectives on Poughkeepsie’s Past – Essays to Honor Edmund Platt. Clyde Griffin ed. Dutchess County Historical Society 1987 pp 152-180.
• Illustrated and Descriptive Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Enterprise Publishing Co, Pougkeepsie NY 1906.