Preservation Struggle Elsewhere

In nearby Greenport, "The Pines," a Gothic Revival house rich in local history, is to be demolished to make way for a new McDonald's.  

Photo: Paul Barrett

In July 2018, the State Historic Preservation Office determined that the house, which was the home of Joseph Farrand and later of his youngest son, Arthur, who helped to create the section of Hudson we now know as "the Boulevards" and the man-made, spring-fed Oakdale Lake, was eligible for listing in the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Alas, that judgment did little to alter the fate of the building. It is still slated for demolition, although the developer is required to create some sort of tribute to the house and its historic significance on the site.

Now, in Warrensburg, there are plans to demolish the Miles Thomas House, a house that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and believed to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad, to make way for a Dollar General store.

A report about the proposal and the opposition to it from the community appeared last Thursday in the Sun Community News: "Plan to raze historic Wbg. home for a dollar store riles local citizens." In the article, a member of the Warrensburg Planning Board is quoted as saying, "This is an extremely historic district in our community, and everyone is concerned that we'll be going from a historic district to a box-store zone." The code enforcement officer in Warrensburg responded by saying the town's historic buildings were "dinosaurs" because they cost a lot to maintain, and no one was buying them. He predicted, "This is just the beginning of their destruction."
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