Luckey Platt & Co department store, open for business in 1906

“LUCKEY, PLATT & CO., 332 to 344 Main Street, Poughkeepsie. Dry Goods, Carpets, Furniture, Wall Papers, etc. This business was started about the year 1845. From a modest business that required only a small store, the years have brought with them a success that has more than justified the firm in occupying the immense space they now use in carrying on their extensive trade. The present large proportions of the store have made it the largest in Poughkeepsie, in fact, by far the largest store on the Hudson river. The main building, an imposing structure of brick and terra cotta, was erected in 1901, and when completed was joined to the building already in use. Since that date by adding more stores, the firm now occupies something over 60,000 square feet of floor space. Not only is this store prominent in size, but it is equipped with the most modern fixtures, has in use three hydraulic elevators, four delivery wagons, besides outside cartage service. Storage buildings are also used for the accommodation of stock. The present title of the company has been in force since 1869. It now consists of Messrs. Edmund P. Platt and Smith L. DeGarmo, these two gentlemen being the sole proprietors of the store. There are twenty-six different departments, and about one hundred and twenty-five persons are employed.” (I&DP, p.22)

Because the Luckey Platt building was a bit further east of the largest sections of ‘blight’ and did not go out of business until 1981, the building still stands to this day, seen above in November 2011.  “Numerous expansions saw the store swallow up several surrounding buildings in a drive to become the handsomest and most comprehensive department store between Albany and New York.” (DCHS p. 90) It was last expanded in 1923 by architect Edward C. Smith. This is the size and height the building still has today.

330-346 Main St, Poughkeepsie, NY today

Luckey Platt was in its day one of the largest and most popular department stores between Albany and New York City. After the 1950’s when people and industry started leaving the City of Poughkeepsie the store’s decline began. Other places to shop located closer to IBM popped up to compete with the downtown shops. Congestion from the explosion of automobiles on the scene also made it more difficult to find parking. One of the first malls to open in the area was the Poughkeepsie Plaza (Marshalls, etc) in 1958. Zimmer Brothers jewelry store which had a shop in the central business district moved just outside the city limits on Raymond Ave. and remained open but many other businesses closed for good. 41,000 people lived in the city limits in 1950. Today, there are just over 29,500.

Main Street looking West with Luckey Platt on the south side of the street

Luckey Platt’s patronage tapered off to 15 employees on the first floor of their massive building when it closed a day ahead of schedule with little fanfare on July 2nd, 1981. A few firms and individuals tried to make use of the space after Luckey Platt closed. In the late 1990’s there were many arsons in the area and the city had to raze a block of old Victorian structures just up the street. However, in 2001 the main mall, once thought of as the answer to the problem of urban decay in Poughkeepsie was ripped up and restored to a through street. I banked at a bank on the main mall before it was torn up and I can attest that in the middle of the day it seemed more like the set of a post-apocalyptic movie than a business district.

“A Queens developer (Astoria-based Alma Realty) has spent the past four years converting the massive former department store into a combination of apartments and commercial space.” (POJO). Luckey Platt closed in 1981 after 112 years in business. “The city sold the building to Alma for $1 after Poughkeepsie spent more than $1 million to stabilize the 19th-century structure, an effort to make it attractive to developers. Alma has spent more than $15 million over the past several years to refurbish it.” (POJO). In 2008 the building opened for business again, this time as a combination retail and residential space. “The resurrection of Luckey Platt has demonstrated the potential of what some might have written off as just another lost cause.” (HVR p.171).

• “Historic Luckey Platt ‘finally’ opens to tenants” by Michael Valkys, Poughkeepsie Journal Dec. 9, 2008
• Illustrated and Descriptive Pougkeepsie N.Y., Enterprise Publishing Co, Poughkeepsie NY 1906 p. 22
• “There Was Hustle But No Bustle” by Helen Meyers from In Their Own Words – Telling Dutchess County History, Holly Wahlberg, ed. Dutchess County Historical Society, Poughkeepsie, NY 2010 pp 88-93
• Hudson Valley Ruins – Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape. Thomas E. Rinaldi + Robert J Yasinsac. University Press of New England, NH 2006 pp 164-171
• Citi-Data.com, Poughkeepsie New York

Main Street West from Washington St.

The pole on the right of the 1906 image advertises “Burro’s Ladies and Gents Quick Lunch Parlor, Open Day & Night, Try our Mocha-Java Coffee 5 cents, Best in the City, Steaks…” The image is too small to make out the rest, but the most expensive thing on their menu is 35 cents. In 2011, just down and across the street from Burro’s you can go to Karma Lounge and  get the Karma Dog, a bacon-wrapped house-made knockwurst with tomato-onion relish and fontina cheese on a pretzel bun for $12. The site Burro’s Quick Lunch Parlor is now part arterial, part parking lot.

The plans from the 1960’s for the Rt 44/55 arterial were approved in 1974 by the federal highway administration. It is all I have ever known and cannot imagine how congested traffic must have been before it. Times change, and landscapes change as society progresses. When industry shifted outside the city limits and the workers moved with it, much of downtown Poughkeepsie was left to fester. These 1906 images and descriptions give a sense of closeness and community that seems impossible when you walk down the lonely city streets today. Well-kept and prosperous establishments like Karma Lounge, the Bardavon and others are testament to Poughkeepsie’s perseverance.  I wonder what someone looking at the 2011 images will think of this city in another hundred years.

Next time, the final post in this series… Luckey Platt, a survivor of urban renewal.

Today, two more views of downtown Poughkeepsie, NY. First, Main Street East from North Hamilton Street. I should note the modern image was taken on Veteran’s day which accounts for some of the desolation, but not all.

The November 2011 image on the left shows one building with 1871 on the very top of its facade (out of frame); the only structure that retains its character from the 1906 image on the right. Something I find interesting is the proliferation of wires in the 1906 view. Not only were there telephone/telegraph lines and electric lines running from pole to pole, you can also see the fine lines suspended between the streets which serviced the trolley.

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Below, Main Street looking East from Market Street. Beyond the non-descrip modern structure on the left in the 2011 image is an empty lot. On the wall of the structure beyond that you can see the ironic mural from yesterday’s post. Click here for the link.

PAGE 33 Sweet+Carman PAGE 30 Charles Hickock Music PAGE 29 Smith Bros

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Illustrated and Descriptive Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Enterprise Publishing Co, Pougkeepsie NY 1906.

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.