A Tale of Two Newburghs

The house at 297 Grand Street is approximately 100 yards from the intersection of Grand and Clinton. Turn right or left and you will find two different worlds.

 

If you turn to the left, a very short block brings you Montgomery Street with its long stretch of historic architecture in varying stages of restoration and/or decay.  Glimpsed between the houses, stunning views of the Hudson.  These buildings are all that remains of what was once an expensive swath of 19th century architecture. The urban "renewal" wrecking ball, which arrived in the 1970’s and demolished entire blocks of such structures -- along with the community that lived in them. These historic landmarks were replaced them with bland-looking low-rise projects and grassy knolls affording no particular charm or utilitarian value. According to local folklore, the destruction would have continued down the entire street, but a local woman lay down in front a bulldozer and brought the demolition to a halt. 

 

When you first reach Montgomery Street, the building on your right is the elegantly neo-classical Captain David Crawford House, built for a wealthy sea captain in 1830.  It serves as the headquarters of the Newburgh Historical Society ( http://newburghhistoricalsociety.com/) and houses a lovely museum, chock full of 18th and 19th century furniture, Hudson River School paintings, and a host of artifacts and brick-a-brac, all managed by one underpaid, part-time staff person and a cadre of fanatically dedicated volunteers.  

 

Hidden away on the upper floors are a library, various collector's items, and a substantial archive of local and regional history.  It is a pristine, lovingly-maintained oasis of Anglo-American civilized values.  The scaffolding around the building indicates an ongoing repair project and continuing need for financial support.  

 

If we go back to the corner of Grand and Clinton, and turn right this time, we find ourselves in a very different place. Another short block leads us to Liberty Street, paved in brick and housing many old homes and churches.  I must describe all four corners of this intersection. 

 

Starting with the southeast quadrant, there is the charred ruin of a burned-down industrial building.  The city is apparently still struggling to clean up the environmental hazards at the site.  Long-time residents still recall the night the building exploded into fire and lit the sky for hours.  It was suggested to me that the company that operated there is still in business outside the city, but has not been made responsible for the cleanup. Whatever the facts, it is now city property and another millstone around the neck of tired Newburgh.  

 

Across Liberty St, on the southwest corner, there is a hodge-podge row of shabby-looking two, three and four-story houses.  In front of the corner building a group that was described to me as  "the Jamaicans" play dominoes at all hours.  They also throw parties on major holidays like the 4th of July, where for an admissions fee (somewhere between $ 10 and $ 20) you can share in the beer and barbecue.  Ganja is extra. Sometimes, they use yards behind abandoned buildings in the general vicinity.  I have heard the music, and once was even invited to attend -- my erstwhile pal and ghetto-guide Freddie needed help with the cover charge.  I demurred, suspecting my presence would cast a pall over the entire party.

 

Continuing our tour, the northwest corner is at the end of a row of once-stately brick townhouses all bestowed with stoops which teem with life, at any time of day or night.  Young women push strollers and cradle infants, kids toss balls, play tag and argue with each other, old women sprawl and look exhausted, and young men push drugs. 

 

Once, I managed to watch a large, complex deal go down.  The cash was passed out of a darkened car window while the party inside remained invisible.  Sentries on two corners exchanged hand signals, and then a cell-phone call was made.  At a house near the corner, a door opened and two men emerged with a large carrying case for a musical instrument, which was brought over and loaded into the rear of the vehicle. 

 

Mostly, it's a retail business.  White kids drive in from the suburbs, park their cars at a distance, and try to look nonchalant.  Middle-aged men cruise by in pickup trucks and make furtive exchanges.  The dealers look like overgrown boys, but they try to seem thuggie and tough.  They avoid eye contact with me.  When I recognized one,   a stepson of Freddie's, he ducked into an alley to avoid being tainted by a friendly gesture. 

 

I believe this is the image most of the world imagines when they read the less-than-positive coverage about Newburgh in the headlines.

 

This leaves me to describe my favorite corner of the intersection.  At the northeast portion, closest to my own Liberty St. driveway, sits a bedraggled bodega at the base of a slummy brick three-story building.  Hoodie types linger in the doorway, and trash is strewn in all directions.  Two young men from Yemen, with perpetually dazed looks on their faces, stock the pathetic shelves and man the front counter. Reigning over his small dominion, Abdul, grayish and closer to my own age, makes sandwiches and watches over the store from a rear counter.

 

Sometimes, I stroll over to the store for a diet coke, if I am hot and sweaty from the garden, or just bored.  At first, I always carried a sharp object, even it was just a garden tool, with a handle protruding conspicuously out of a rear pocket.  But no one messes with me.  If something happened to a respectable white guy, it would bring attention and be bad for the dealers' business. 

 

I have tried to describe two Newburghs -- a pristine preserve of preservationist perfectionism and a deep ghetto, with its vibrant, but lawless atmosphere.   Both within a few feet of the little corner of Grand and Clinton.  But I neglected to mention a small house along Clinton Street, directly across the street from the industrial ruin. 

 

An elderly couple maintain a postage-stamp size yard, with a neatly-trimmed lawn, and tidy borders of flowering plants.  They run a tight little ship, pulling weeds and cleaning up the trash that drifts down from the bodega.  They pay the city taxes which rise mercilessly year after year.  They do not attend the annual high tea or educational lectures at the historical society, nor do they party with the Jamaicans.  They cling to a tenuous, lower middle-class existence, their values enduring while their community erodes around them. 

 

Once I was standing in front of their little yard, looking across the street at the graffiti and trash around the collapsed building.   I felt sad and angry.  These people deserved better.  But how? 

 

My own Newburgh venture seemed like a terrible, hopeless mistake.  And then I had, for the first and only time in my life, a vision.   Not a heavenly visitation like Joseph Smith or Saul of Tarsus or Joan of Arc, but an image so clear I could see it, although I knew it existed only in my imagination.  I saw a gleaming new structure of glass and steel, with greenhouses and brightly-lit classrooms.  It even had a name -- The Andrew Jackson Downing School for the Study of Urban Horticulture.  When I try to describe it to people, they shake their heads and write me off as a nut job.  But the vision persists.  It requires further explaining. That's what the blog is for.  All in due course.

 

My heartfelt thanks to anyone who is taking the time to read my meager effort. 

Of Gardens and Ghettos

 Lately, I find myself sometimes telling people that I am a bit of a fraud. I don't mean it literally, of course. But since I began the Newburgh project, I often find myself running up against severe limitations. I spend endless hours in trying to landscape the property, and I believe that gardening -- for reasons I will get to eventually -- is the key to saving Newburgh; but when someone asks me the name of a particular plant or tree, I either can't remember or never knew in the first place. It’s the same when I talk to any of the local artists, city planners, historians, the carpenters and electricians who come to work on the house; I try to pretend I know enough to hold my end of the conversation, but I don't know all that much about anything, really. However, I think I know something about how to analyze and solve problems. And how to fix troubled situations. It all begins with the azaleas.

The house in Scarsdale

Nearly 30 years, my wife Susan and I bought our first home, on the outskirts of Scarsdale, in lower Westchester County, a 25-minute train ride from midtown Manhattan. The home was a 1920's Tudor, on a pleasant, leafy street, and had a small yard on the side, graced by an oak tree. We had been told that a couple of owners back, there had an English gardener lady, and the bedraggled bed in the center of the side yard had once held prize-winning roses.

Now and then, on the weekends, I made a small effort to clean up the yard and plant a few things. I didn't consider myself a gardener, it was just something to do. There were babies and then toddlers in the house, and my busy job as a corporate lawyer didn't allow for much recreation or vacation.

Along the edge of the yard, in front of an old slate wall, was a tangled jungle of vines -- Virginia creeper mingled with poison ivy and other things I never learned to name. Hacking away at these vines was sort of enjoyable, and at their base, I found some scrubby shrunken shrubs. I don't recall if I knew what they were, and the poor, miserable things were barely clinging to life, but they seemed to be evenly spaced and set into a straight line, so I cleared away everything around them, fed them a little holly tone, and waited for the next year.

The following spring they had filled out a little and showed a few flowers. I realized they were azaleas, of course. I had never really thought much about photosynthesis, until I saw how these little shrubs transformed themselves over the next few years. It seems like a miracle to me, the way invisible light is transformed into green, oxygen-producing leaves. But it's a miracle with a cruel underlying reality -- that one plant's existence was at the expense of another's health.

Once I had cleared the vines and the weeds, the azaleas could grow again. As they grew out (again) we were eventually rewarded with a remarkable show each spring. The English gardener lady predecessor had chosen and placed with care. The colors were brilliant and juxtaposed with each other perfectly, a blend of yellow and purple and pink, a wall of color every year. I would not have had the time or vision or knowledge to select the varieties that I found there, so I could not have created the wall of azaleas from scratch. But I was there to rescue them; I saw their potential and nurtured them back to health. I did not create the glorious display that re-appeared every spring, but my efforts had made it possible.

Over the course of my business career, I was occasionally confronted with messy situations. Once it was a law firm on the verge of financial collapse. Another time a client and friend had allowed himself to become mired in a disastrous real estate situation. Once I was invited to be Board Treasurer of a non-profit, only to find they were in crisis. This is not the place to belabor all the details; only the participants would care. Each time, there was a great deal of stress, hard fought battles, delicate alliances, uncertain outcomes and, in most cases, eventual success. Now I know this seems unbelievably corny -- but each time I thought about those azaleas.

Shortly after I acquired the Fullerton Mansion, I was talking to a young landscape architect. I explained that I needed to add some azaleas to the property. She didn't seem very enthusiastic. Maybe they aren't trendy any more. "But, you have to understand", I said, abusing a famous quote from Socrates, "life without azaleas is not worth living." I thought she would fine the line funny, instead, she looked at me as though I were stark raving mad, then regained her composure and changed the subject. I didn't have a chance to explain. I hope this blog makes everything clear, because we are going to save Newburgh, and the azaleas hold the key.

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.