MY CRAZY MANSION IN THE GHETTO

Over the next 12 months or so, a few things happened. Led by the decline in the housing market, the U.S. financial system and world economy teetered on the verge of collapse, with venerable firms like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers going out of existence. My father died. I bought a big old house at 297 Grand Street, Newburgh, NY.

Sometimes called The Fullerton Mansion, the building is over 7000 square feet, including a separate apartment on the third floor (probably carved out of attic space in the early 1900's). It sits on 1.3 acres, and has a circular driveway in front, which feeds into a longer driveway that runs the length of the property and through to the next street, which is Liberty Street. The carriage house/garage is of the same vintage as the house, and itself comprises over 3000 square feet, but is currently useable only for storage and dreaming of possibilities.

In 1868 Judge William Fullerton built the house as his second home. An Orange County native who became a successful New York City trial lawyer, Fullerton made his fortune and reputation in the service of the so-called "robber barons", whose incessant feuds over the ownership of railroads, manipulation of the still-evolving stock market and efforts to curry political favor required highly skilled and expensive legal specialists. Fullerton's methodical cross-examination technique was widely-admired and studied in 19th century law schools. In 1875, he achieved national and even international fame, heading the plaintiff's legal team in Tilton v. Beecher -- the adultery case against the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe), a central event in the social history of the era.



Fullerton's later years were marred by charges of corruption, the failure of his law firm, and the untimely death of his son, a promising young composer. He retired to live in the Newburgh mansion until his death shortly after the turn of the century.

During much of the 20th century, the house was a funeral home, run by three generations of the Walsh family, members of which lived on the third floor and also built a smaller home, which was eventually sold off, on the Liberty Street end of the property. This afforded some continuity, and probably explains the survival of some of the wonderful original details. But there were also some use-driven modifications which have unfortunately obscured what was there before. The main hallway, for example, now has a tile floor that would not be out of place in an NYC subway station.

But there also some special features dating from the early twentieth century -- the huge cast iron stove in the kitchen (patent date of 1916); the circular shower which I am told was the first shower in Newburgh; and the bright, glass-enclosed "solarium", with its oak-beamed coffered ceiling.

There have been several owners since the 1970's. At one point it was broken into several apartments but some renovation and restoration has also taken place. The immediate owner had lived there for seventeen years and added a number of features that made the property more attractive for me as a purchaser -- an artificial slate roof on both buildings, a grand chandelier in the dining room, wonderful cherub light fixtures on the stairway to the second floor. But there remained much to do, and the house has experienced serious deterioration, exterior and interior.

It is an extraordinary place, with commensurately large challenges. I often say to people -- and I have no idea what they think when I say it -- that I don't really have the time, the money or the know how for this project, but I am doing it anyway.I had been looking for something much smaller, and often wonder if I have bitten off far more than I can chew. The book title "A Bridge Too Far" sometimes resounds in my head. But it has provided me with a host of learning experiences, various new friends, and -- I hope -- personal starting point for helping Newburgh become great again.

The Bread Crumb Trail Part 2 (We Few, We Happy Few....)

Back to the Breadcrumb Trail. In the spring and summer of 2008 I had begun to seriously focus on Newburgh. I researched on the internet and returned to drive and walk around and meet people.

Much of the internet information was discouraging. Newburgh had the highest per capita rate of violent crimes in the State of New York for something like 18 years running. Municipal corruption was rife. One scandal really impressed me -- police officers had been chopping up towed vehicles for parts. If your car got towed for a parking violation, you would never see it again, it would have been disassembled and "fenced" like any stolen car.



The positon of City Manager had been a revolving door, with a series of short-lived tenures. City finances were near-desparate. There seemed to be a robust and noisy political process -- but I couldn't tell if that was a sign of health or of the parlous state of things.

Still, I recalled the way so many people had written off New York City in the 1970's, when the famous headline summarized the President's response to the city's request for aid -- "Ford to City, Drop Dead."

It was Newburgh's future that interested me, not its dismal recent past. And all the negative noise could mean bargain prices.

When I found a news item about a recently-opened art supply store, that became my next destination. What I found, directly across the street from Washington's Headquarters and a few doors down from the Macchiato, was a well-appointed and fully-stocked store, with proprietor Michael Gabor standing tall and erect behind the counter, surrounded by Newburgh memorabilia and greeting cards designed by a local artist, in addition to the assortment of brushes, pens, gels and other art-related supplies one might expect.



Everything cohered to a central vision, combining art, small business, nostalgia and Newburgh's future. Further research would indicate that Mr. Gabor was an outspoken figure, who had run for city council, and been sued for defamation as a result of outspoken comments about alleged corrupt business dealings involving the city.

On a subsequent visit, I found Michael's amiable partner Gerardo, a painter, sipping his coffee in front of the store. We engaged in lengthy conversation about Newburgh, urban environments, the pros and cons of so-called gentrification, art and other subjects. It was a beautiful summer day, and the sidewalk was gently splashed with filtered sunlight working its way through the large maple and oak trees in the Headquarters Park across the street. I was amazed, once again, by the calm elegance of this little spot, hidden from outside world if the perceptions surrounding Newburgh were a giant wall and this the secret garden within.

Various other individuals happened by while we were talking; some joined in the conversation. There was Peter, a white-haired gentleman wearing a short-sleeved dress shirt, who turned out to be the landlord, as well as upstairs neighbor, for the art supply store. He had been smitten with Newburgh's potential, and bought and fixed up the building, many years earlier. A woman from the local historical society came by to post a sign about a forthcoming event. When I expressed interest in
Newburgh's beautiful old homes, she waxed eloquent about the annual December Candlelight Tour, when many of the older homes are opened for visitors. I imagined an orderly procession of candle-bearing, scarf-wrapped neighbors going door-to-door. I wondered if I would ever own a home that people would want to tour.

A woman came by to put a sign on the window of the storefront about an upcoming lecture on local history.

I couldn't believe all this -- a few blocks away, Broadway was as scary and depressing as ever, and the world thought of Newburgh, if at all, as New York's murder capital, but these people.... they were carrying on as if they were in a quaint old New England college town.




When I brought my wife Susan along on a visit, she commented that I seemed be a different person in Newburgh -- friendly, outgoing, asking people questions about themselves. Any possible negative implications about my personality in other locations do not need to be explored in this forum.

Gerardo from the art supply store had recommended Chris Hanson, a local real estate broker who specializes in homes in Newburgh's historic areas. Chris turned out to be a rocker-turned-broker with a hint of spiky hair. He had restored his own home, a tidy victorian in the Washington Heights neighborhood. His wife, Merle Becker, is a filmmaker, whose credits include a documentary called Saving Newburgh, which centered around Michael Gabor's unsuccessful campaign for a seat on city council.

In retrospect, I had a somewhat romanticized of everyone that I met. I did not see the weariness or stress lines. I knew nothing of petty jealousies, or other failings that one finds in people everywhere. I saw only a noble band of dreamers. I saw courage and vision. I wanted to be part of it. For once, a club I wanted to join.

Chris Hanson began showing me buildings.



This is the point where the bread crumb trail ends and my Newburgh adventures begin in earnest. I should explain that I call my strange meandering journey the bread crumb trail for two reasons. Besides the obvious fairy-tale reference, I was always running from one place to another, juggling work, family life and my exploration of the Hudson Valley and Newburgh, with little time to eat. Meals tended to be whatever I could manage to wolf down in the car -- quick sandwiches for lunch, buttered rolls or bagels for breakfast. So when I got out of the car, there would be a sprinkling of crumbs from my lap and shirt or jacket front. My personal trail of crumbs.

New Urbanism

We will return shortly to the bread-crumb trail, but I would like to jump ahead to another epiphany, this time conceptual. On the website of the Newburgh Preservation Association I was introduced for the first time to the principles of New Urbanism. The core idea -- that the combination of limitless suburban sprawl and the decay of our central cities is an environmental, societal and human disaster -- gave coherence to things that had been vaguely bothering me for years. In their words:

The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central
cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race
and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands
and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated
community-building challenge.

The solution -- vibrant, diverse, pedestrian-friendly cities. Cities that fully utilize their geography as well their history and architectural heritage, to become places where people from diverse backgrounds could live and work. Countryside is restored to forest and farm; people return to cities.

The course of my own life has been in the opposite direction. My grandparents were city dwellers, but I was raised in the suburbs, and then raised my two children even further out in exurbia. All the while, the cities where my parents' roots lay -- Newark, New Jersey and St. Louis, Missouri -- suffered race riots and then decades of neglect and decline.

A few great coastal cities, New York being perhaps the most dramatic example, have prospered and grown, but become so expensive that a normal, middle class lifestyle is unaffordable -- a further driver of sprawl, with its attendant consequences, including the impact on families of long commutes, as well as the environmental ills focused on by the New Urbanists.

I had always been vaguely uncomfortable with all this, but it had never moved to the forefront of my thinking. I suppose I never believed that I could do anything about it. But the idea of revitalizing urban wasteland must have lain dormant, a seed waiting for the right conditions to germinate.

Something about Newburgh, so desolate, and so fraught with potential, had awoken both a sense of loss and a longing to make things better. I asked myself, why couldn't Newburgh be wonderful?

What better place than Newburgh to create a new/old city? Rooted in a rich history, grounded in a diverse community, with a remarkable architectural stock; located in a naturally beautiful area, with access to a variety of recreation and transportation facilities; all the elements are in place.

Two words -- "vibrant" and "diverse" -- stand out, as if the intersection of these two qualities were a point on the compass towards which our journey must be headed.

What had begun as a search for an investment property had become a mission.

Now we can get back to the bread-crumb trail.

The Bread Crumb Trail

This seems like a good time to thank my daughter Rebecca, who set up and edits this blog for me. I am especially appreciative, since most members of my immediate family, as well my small circle of pre-Newburgh friends, consider my Newburgh venture to be a complete folly.

Some worry about my safety -- my wife Susan's best friend suggested that I wear a "thank you for not mugging me" t-shirt. Others, more reasonably, suggest that I will never recover the vast amount of money that I have poured into the purchase and renovation of the old mansion at 297 Grand St.

So, before proceeding with my various ideas for saving Newburgh, I would like to retrace the daisy chain of my reasoning process -- I sometimes call it the "bread crumb trail".

I had been focusing on Kingston, another Lost City some 40 miles to the north of Newburgh. I had heard, via a Brooklyn grapevine, that it was the best turnaround candidate along the river. Many a weekend would find me crossing the Newburgh-Beacon bridge on U.S. 84, and heading north on Route 9W, which wends its way through a patchwork of smaller communities, strip malls, aging motels and other businesses, interspersed among stretches of woods and open space, along the western side of the river. Now and then, I would take a small detour through Newburgh, which I found dispiriting, although I had begun to notice the ornate Victorian mansions alongside the boarded-up buildings and small, wood-frame houses with crumbling porches.

A somewhat random conversation was the first step in changing my perceptions. Looking for an obscure piece of equipment, I had stopped in a woodstove and pool supply store on 9W, and had gotten into a conversation with the two middle-aged brothers who ran the place. While far from sophisticated, they had lived in and around Newburgh all their lives and we commiserated over its decline. When I asked if they had seen any improvement in recent years, one of them mentioned the changed waterfront. I was unaware that a few years earlier, an area of abandoned warehouses and loading docks had been transformed into a tidy row of new restaurants and bars, with a walking path and small park. Weekends during the warmer months bring large crowds from the surrounding suburbs, drinking and eating in pleasant proximity to the flowing waters of the Hudson.

The waterfront is sadly unconnected with the core of the city, but it indicated the possibility of revitalization.

As I circled to leave the waterfront, I noticed a sign for "Washington's Headquarters", with an arrow pointing up the hill to a neighborhood I had not yet visited. I am a history buff, and the possibility of a revolutionary war headquarters that was completely unknown to me was a thrill. It turns out that Newburgh was the last and longest headquarters of the revolution. The site includes the graceful Dutch-era stone cottage where Washington lived and worked, surrounded by a lovely park-like setting, including a large lawn with sweeping views of the Hudson. This under-visited gem would be remarkable anywhere; in Newburgh it is an serene oasis, blessed by location and sanctified by history.



But something I saw on the way there had a greater impact on my view of Newburgh and its potential. As I drove up the small hill at the base of Washington St, with the iron railing of the fence surrounding the headquarters on my left, I arrived at an intersection: the corner of Liberty and Washington. To my left the headquarters, to my right a boarded up brick building. Across the street on the right, a nondescript storefront. But across and to the left, a carefully restored nineteeth century brick building, sporting an elegantly understated wood sign -- I had found the Caffé Macchiato. A European style cafe, and not a chain, in the heart of the gritty, forlorn Newburgh. Looking back, I suppose that was my epiphany, the unmistakable message that someone else had seen possibilities that were invisible to the rest of the world.

A couple of years later, after I had sunk much of my net worth into one of the largest old homes in Newburgh, I jokingly told Barbara, the owner of the Macchiato, that it was all her fault. She did not smile -- in fact her eyes took on a hard look. Running a small business is difficult anywhere. Doing so successfully in Newburgh takes a very special person. She has unflattering things say to say about the way the city is run. I will return to this subject in later posts.

Barbara is an urban pioneer, a determined and courageous soul. I salute her. And if you haven't visited Washington's headquarters or the Machiatto, I suggest you do so soon, before the crowds find these places. Which I believe they will.

The Lost Cities

I call them the The Lost Cities of the Hudson Valley. Strung out like tarnished gems on a long necklace, they dot the banks of the Hudson, from Yonkers to Kinderhook on the eastern side of the river; from Nyack to Saugerties along the western. Each has its own quirky charms, centuries of history, and modern problems.

Some years ago, I began thinking about buying a piece of real estate in one of the lost cities; it was to be an investment -- everyone knows the profits that can be made when a community turns around its fortunes for the better -- and also a project to occupy my spare time. I am just not any good at golf.

At first, I did not consider Newburgh a candidate. It just seemed too scary and hopeless. Just driving through the city on Rte. 9W had a surreal quality. Whether going north from Newburgh to Kingston, or south to West Point and below, 9W was generally a smooth ride; but not while passing through Newburgh, where the road became rutted and filled with potholes, and I wondered if I wasn't risking serious damage to my car's suspension just trying to get through.

Once I ventured to drive down Broadway, towards the river. In the distance, a breathtaking panorama of Mount Beacon on far side of the Hudson.




More immediately, to the right and left, along what had once been a prosperous shopping boulevard, there were classic signs of decay. Boarded up store fronts; drug dealers and shivering crackhos on the corners.

In its prime, indeed for the better part of 150 years, Newburgh was arguably the crown jewel, the diadem at the center of the tiara. Perhaps there had been a great hubris, or some evil so vile as to bring about a curse; none of the other lost cities fell as far, from apogee to nadir, as did Newburgh.

Bud Light and Butterflies

August 23, 2011


Today I planted a butterfly bush on Liberty Street. The one I planted last summer did not survive, probably because of the ice-melting salt that had been used on the sidewalk and street over the winter, but this time I tried to choose a safer location, set back a few feet from the sidewalk, in a corner of the property where two privet hedgerows meet. The privet had been overgrown, leggy and covered with vines, but a little pruning and weeding has done them much good. Something that produces flowers seemed called for.

The house next door seems pretty much deserted, and its yard overgrown, so the privet corner with the buddleia represents a border in more than one respect.

The plant's blooms are a deep royal blue. I gave an identical plant to my friend Stu, to be planted behind his place on Lander Street, in a small yard that is abuts a large vacant lot, both surrounded by an eight-foot chain link fence. The formal name of the plant, buddleia, sounded to Stu like "BudLight", which seems like an appropriate name

Lander Street is even tougher than Liberty Street. Newburgh needs butterflies.

The book I Never Saw Another Butterfly first appeared when I was a teenager. It was a collection of poems and drawings by children in the Teresienstat concentration camp. Since then, my mind has always connected butterflies with the holocaust, as though the eternal war between good and evil could be reduced to these two ideas.

To me, the conditions inside America's most blighted cities are tantamount to a holocaust. There are a great many children trapped in these modern ghettos. They are surrounded by rampant drug use and alcoholism, and violence is an everyday fact of life. Prostitutes ply the corners; physical abuse of women and children is taken for granted. The fathers, or "baby daddies", tend to be frequent guests of the state correctional system. In fact, a man who has not done his "bid", as a term of incarceration is called, has limited cred on the street.

There is a mistaken impression that ghettoes are all black, but my observation is that the colors are mixed, and while African-Americans are the dominant group, the culture of despair and hopeless disaffection cuts across a wide swath of ethnic backgrounds.

It may not seem like much to plant a butterfly bush on Liberty Street, but if the plant survives, perhaps a butterfly or two will drawn there, and then perhaps a child will have a moment of wonder and hope.