Category: place

Titus / Conine / Palmateer House (c 1803)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

When historical research is undertaken it becomes obvious that many houses constructed in the 19th century manifest a blend of differing architectural styles. This fact is well illustrated in the stately red-brick residence of the Palmateer family. Located on the corner of Second and Warren Streets, the original section of the house was erected circa 1803, before the Village of Athens had even been incorporated. The symmetrical five-bay front was built in the Federal style. Yet the original section’s classic Federal front, with its symmetry and Georgian-style entrance, harmonizes perfectly with the late-1870s Greek Revival design used in the rear section. The blending of these two popular styles is seen in many structures throughout Greene County, and generally suggests the work of master craftsmen, as apparent in this attractive house.

The building was constructed on a raised basement with the front steps erected sideways, leading to the handsome center portico. There, a heavy wooden doorway with egg-and-dart molding is flanked by fluted Ionic columns and a pediment. A center Georgian-type hall, replicated on the second floor, once led from the doorway to the rear of the house, but the building of a first-floor powder room in the 1950s interrupted this space. The windows, made beautiful by dark shutters contrasting with the brick, contribute to the total historic picture. “Eyebrow” windows were built into the heavy cornice surrounding the attic area. A striking cupola with eight windows tops the handsome historic structure.

Fireplaces, many still working, enhance every room, including the attic and the basement. During cold winter days those working fireplaces provide a welcome aura of warmth. Three mantels on the first floor are of black marble, and glow with the flames reflection.

Original inner shutters, most likely used in earlier times to shut out the winter weather, grace the three tall French-style windows. Two sections of six-over-six windows brighten the splendid southwest interior. Four rooms on each side of the first- and second-floor halls illustrate the mix of Federal and Georgian design. Surrounded by heavy original crown moldings, the high ceilings and early plaster work have been carefully preserved. A carved medallion centers the northwest formal parlor. The pineapple, the colonial symbol of hospitality, along with an acanthus leaf, is carved into the corners of door moldings.

An original tin ceiling tops the attractive dining room just north of the kitchen. In the kitchen itself two large hearthstones, uncovered when flooring was installed in recent years, correspond with the antiquity of the building. One probably served as the base for a wood stove, while the other protected against fireplace ashes.

Late in the 1980s, a fire destroyed sections of the roof while workmen were repairing the area. Luckily, the cupola suffered only slight damage. The roof was subsequently restored and an elliptical leaded-glass window, centered in the west peak, damaged when firemen were forced to enter the attic, was skillfully repaired by Michael Black, a well-known local artisan. This historically significant window illustrates outstanding artistry. Black used antique glass, creating two new casts of rosette moldings to produce the elegant restoration.

The area on which the house is sited reflects the Dutch concept of building in a rural village along the Hudson River. That is, a house should be set on or very near the street, with an expansive ground area in the rear where family activities take place and gardens produce family provisions. In general this land was fenced to give privacy and safety from animals. In this instance the tall wooden fence, stretching for about 191 feet along Warren Street, encloses the large backyard and has illustrated this concept for over a century. The fence was completely restored in 2006. Within its boundary lie the flower/vegetable gardens and a rather unique building, the original two-sided privy; with three holes on each side. The sides sit back-to-back: one side for family, the other for servants.

The Palmateers have refurbished both the interior and exterior with careful attention to historical and architectural detail. As they have phrased it, “It is part of your job and your responsibility to take care of historic sites when you purchase them.” Nancy and Lee Palmateer have embodied that principle since purchasing the property on August 25, 2000, and have enjoyed the professional advice of popular designer Timothy Albright, Jr., Nancy’s brother. Together with their three young sons (Benjamin and twins Elliot and Samuel), Lee, an attorney, and Nancy, an educator, represent the fourth and fifth generations of a family who has owned this residence since 1930. To maintain a safe environment for their family of three young boys, extensive lead abatement was done on the interior in 2002 and on the exterior in 2004.

Rumor suggests that at one time this property was known as Goose Meadow, although the reason for this nomenclature has not yet been uncovered. While it is known that the house was constructed circa 1803, the history of owners at that time is vague. The first known owner was James Koster, who sold the house to a William Tolley in 1838. While it is possible that Koster could have erected the house 35 years earlier, it is probable that both Koster and Tolley were farmers. In 1866 a Fred Tolley sold the property to Epenetus Titus for the sum of $5,000, a hefty sum indeed for that day and age! Epenetus had the greatest impact on the early significance of the house, and it was most likely he who constructed the Greek Revival rear section of the house in 1870.

Born in New Baltimore in 1822, Epenetus married Catherine Miller, a Greene County woman. Together they birthed five children. George Titus, Epenetus’ bachelor brother, also lived with them in this beautiful house, and probably worked with Epenetus on their extensive farm. Various censuses describe Epenetus as follows: farmer (1850), boatsman (1855), and retired farmer (1870). In 1870 he recorded $5,000 worth of real estate and $45,000 in personal property.

George’s statistics are less varied until 1870. Listed as a farmer in the 1850 federal census, 1855 New York state census, and 1860 federal census, he reported $20,000 worth of real estate and $4,000 of real property. But by the 1870 federal census he regarded himself as a retired manufacturer, with $6,000 worth of real estate and $125,000 of real property. The Titus brothers were arguably the wealthiest farmers in Greene County at that time.

When Epenetus died in January 1903 his executors, daughter Emily Day Seymour and grandnephew Fred Titus, recorded the house—by then “very much out of repair”—at a value of $4,000; cash on hand was listed at $29.53, and total worth was $138,613.63.

By 1914 the structure was involved in the brick industry, which had arisen in parts of Greene County, notably Catskill and Athens. The Stanley Gladfelters, shipbuilders and major owners of the Athens brickyard, purchased and began to refurbish the house when, unfortunately, the brickyards folded. On September 22, 1930, Jennie Gladfelter, in payment for a large loan on the brick industry and house, transferred the property’s title to Eleanor D. Lassen, Annie Shufelt, and Dr. Alton B. Daley, the latter an Athens physician. Dr. Daley bought out his two co-owners.

Thus, in 1930 the modern family ownership began. With the approach of World War II, and during the war as well, the house was leased to several families as new industries supporting the war became an important economic feature in the Hudson River Village of Athens. In 1955 title was transferred through purchase to Frances Daley Conine, whose family had been dwelling in the residence for several years. Their daughter, Elizabeth Conine Albright, was raised in this home since she was a toddler. In 1987 Elizabeth and her husband, Timothy Albright – current owners of another historic house – received title to this house, which they sold to their daughter and son-in-law, current owners Nancy and Lee Palmateer.

If you are walking through Athens today, the Dimmick House is diagonally across the street at 64 Second St.

Matthias Van Loon / Palmer House (c 1900)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

Matthias Van Loon, who was a descendant of one of Athens’ earliest settlers, Jan Van Loon, owned the Athens Shipyard. Among other vessels, this shipyard produced the day boat Kaaterskill the largest boat constructed in Athens.

In 1872, Matthias had a house constructed for his personal use. This transitional house in the Italianate style, it incorporated the elements of large Doric columns of the Greek Revival period. The interior has ten-foot-high ceilings and wide, distinctive moldings.

Matthias Van Loon, born in 1822, was a direct descendant of Matthias Van Loon, the youngest son of Jan Van Loon. In 1871, with Peter Magee as a partner, Van Loon bought the shipyard that had been established in 1843. This shipyard of Van Loon and Magee became the most important shipyard on the Hudson River, building a variety of boats including a three-masted schooner, a steam yacht, barges, ice barges, tugboats, and the ferry boat the A. F. Beach.

The house was purchased in 1900 by William C. Brady, the founder of W. C. Brady’s Sons, Inc., funeral home. First based in Athens, it is now located in Coxsackie.

When the funeral home maintained its office in Athens, it became the gathering place for retired old men and unemployed seasonal workers. In fine weather, they would sit on chairs outside; in inclement weather they met in the front room. They referred to these visits as “going to the morgue.” The rear room would contain the cadavers.

In 1910 the marriage of the Bradys’ daughter Edith to Benjamin Whiting was held on the front lawn. At William Brady’s death in 1938, the Whitings moved into the house to to care for their widowed mother. When Edith Whiting was widowed, her daughter Jeannette and her husband, Harry Palmer, came to be with their mother and to raise their family here. Since 1900, three generations have lived here.

If you are walking through Athens today, the Bedell-Nichols House is two houses north at 27 South Franklin St. The Haight-Gantley House is a block south at 38 South Franklin St.

Dernell-Clark House (c 1840)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

In 1854 Herman F Dernehl, age 18, arrived in the United States from Germany. Four years later he settled in Athens, where he began general blacksmithing. The rapid rise of the ice harvesting industry on the Hudson River caused him to concentrate on ice tools. Due to the quality of his work and certain inventions, he soon became a leading manufacturer of ice tools in the United States, with additional customers in Germany and Sweden.

Dernehl anglicized the spelling of his last name to Dernell and was locally known in Athens as Harmon Dernell, Harmon being the Dutch version of Herman. As Harmon Dernell, he served as the Athens Village president three different times: 1870-71, 1884-85, and 1902.

The present property was acquired by Dernell in three stages. The original oblong structure, built circa 1840, consisting of two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs, was purchased in 1861. In 1868, after buying the lot to the north, he added a wing to the house. In 1893 the lot and house to the south were acquired, and by moving the second house back he could add another “wing,” making the house T-shaped and allowing more room for a garden. The structure moved to the back housed his full-time gardener, and provided temporary quarters for the immigrants working for his ice tool foundry.

This Victorian house, with Stick, Queen Anne, and Second Empire architectural touches, was purchased in 1921 by William J. Clark from the estate of Emilie Dernell Lang, the deceased sister of Herman Dernell. William Clark was the owner of Clark’s Variety Store, and was the father of subsequent owners Harriet Clark Peloubet (deceased), and Franklin B. Clark and his wife, Winifred. For a number of years Harriet was the Town of Athens tax collector, with her office in this house, and Franklin, as a New York State Superintendent of Schools, had his office here for most of his tenure.

Herman Dernell also had his office in this house. It was located in the southeast room with a secondary front access. The room now serves as the Clarks’ living room, which still contains Dernell’s standup desk and his numerous built-in bookcases.

There are still a few Dernell plantings in the Clarks’ garden: deutzia bushes, cabbage roses, ribbon grass, tree peonies, and sweet woodruff. The huge Norway spruce planted by Dernell, which survived being struck by lightning in 1978, was pronounced unsafe in 1990 and had to be removed. Since the tower was now the tallest structure in the area, lightning rods were installed on the house.

If you are walking through Athens today, nearly across the street is the Nichols / Daley / Albright house at 7 South Washington.

Albertus Van Loon House (1724)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

This early-18th-century Dutch stone house was built by Albertus Van Loon, the fourth son of Jan Van Loon, the original patent holder of Loonenburg, the original name for the Athens area. An erection date of 1724 was established by two date stones, one in the lower southwestern corner of the house and the other, newly uncovered, on the upper southeast corner.

The southern half of the stone house was first erected with a very steep gable roof of 60 degrees, in the common urban Dutch style of the time; one entered the premises from the north wall side. About the middle of the 18th century, the northern half of the stone house was added and the orientation of the entire house was shifted west, to the road side. The English-style gambrel roof is original over the northern half, but the southern half of the roof is framed differently. The dormers were added in the 1830s.

The original one-room stone house had a jambless fireplace and one or two garrets, but was renovated in the 1760s to the Georgian style, and retains its paneling and elaborate fireplace mantel. At about this time the clapboard addition on the south end was added. The Georgian room is known as “the Dueling Room.” A liquor license was obtained in 1774, and it is possible a tavern was operated in the southern addition at that time. The many pieces of pottery shards, musket balls, and coins attest to a great deal of activity in this area.

The wooden addition to the north end may have been on-site earlier than the stone building, as a reference to its existence in 1717 is mentioned in The Albany Protocols. That building used an even earlier Dutch construction type than the stone house, but shows evidence that it may have been moved from elsewhere. Connecting two wooden additions at the rear of the stone house, facing the Hudson River, is a Victorian addition from approximately the 1880s that enclosed what was originally a long Dutch porch.

The property descended down to the fourth-generation Albertus/Albert Van Loon, who died in 1838. According to his will the house was bequeathed to an adopted daughter, Cornelia. The will was contested by relatives and a lengthy trial ensued. The challenge led to an argument between Anthony A. Livingston, one of the executors, and the attorney James Byrnes. It is said that Byrnes stabbed Livingston in this house, so perhaps this is where the legend of the Dueling Room materialized. The lengthy 140-day trial ended on November 7, 1839, with the will being sustained.

The house then passed through several private owners, followed by the New York Ice Company in 1858, and the Knickerbocker Ice Company in 1867. After numerous years of deterioration, the house was purchased in the late 1990s by current owners Randall Evans and Carrie Feder of the Athens Architectural Workshop who have performed a great amount of preservation work to stabilize and restore the structure.

If you are walking through Athens today, the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church – the oldest continuously-active Lutheran Church in America – is two blocks north at 102 North Washington St.

Livingston / Coffin / Apfel House (1825)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

Built for Anthony Livingston in 1825, this high-style Federal brick building was designed by the “master builder” Barnabas Waterman, who also designed the House of History across the Hudson River, in Kinderhook, New York. Anthony Livingston was the kin of Philip Livingston, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The house, with its double-storied portico, four 22-foot Corinthian columns, and its Hudson River location, was a tribute to the Livingston’ wealth and prestige. The doors and windows are trimmed with Vermont marble. The interior has 12-foot ceilings, seven working fireplaces, a Dutch oven, 12-inch crown moldings, and three Bohemian crystal chandeliers.

In 1845 the house was sold to Judge Sylvester Nichols, a respected justice as well as the Athens town supervisor and Village clerk. By 1871 the property had new owners: Lydia and Reuben Coffin. Lydia was the daughter of William Coffin, the founder of Athens’ largest shipyard. The current door, which shows Lydia’s taste for the Italianate style, with its ornate detailing, was meant to impress visitors and announce the family’s prominence in the community. Lydia held a large wedding reception at her home in 1897 after her granddaughter married a nephew of President William McKinley.

Unfortunately, between 1906 and 1935 the house was not kept up to standards set by the previous owners. In 1935 James Hyer, a prominent lawyer, purchased the house. To provide ample living space for his growing family of a dozen children – eleven of whom survived childhood – and the need for office space, the original ell-shaped building was extended. Hyer’s law office, library, and insurance company were located in the basement (i.e., the ground floor). The kitchen was moved from the basement to the first floor, and central hearing and modern bathrooms were installed.

In 1972 the balusters around the portico and the four Corinthian columns were removed due to decay. The property was acquired in 2003 by Richard and Janet Apfel who re-created the portico to its former glory of Corinthian column supports encased by 19th-century-styled balusters. The current owners have maintained this appearance.

The property includes the bay area of the Hudson River adjacent to the Athens Riverfront Park.

If you are walking through Athens today, the Stewart House Hotel is one block north at 2 North Water St.

Black Rock Farm (c 1820) and Black Rock Site

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

Originally a tenant farmhouse, built circa 1820 with unusual barns, this house was part of the properties owned by General Samuel Haight. In 1812 Haight built a Federal-style mansion (see Haight/Gantley/ Van Loan House, page 21). At a later date, a carriage house, Black Rock Farm, and barns were constructed.

After the ownership had passed to Daniel W. Gantley, in 1913 Thomas Van Loan, the grandfather of the present owner, bought the property for his retirement from a thriving coffee, tea, and spice import business in New York City.

Upon Van Loan’s death in 1930, the property was divided between his sons: Eugene, who inherited the mansion and carriage house; and Schuyler, who inherited Black Rock, Black Rock Farm, and the barns. When Schuyler died in 1981 his niece, Jane Van Loan Erickson, the present owner, inherited his property.

Black Rock Site (1688)

Black Rock was a part of the Loonenburg Patent of May 25, 1667, and deeded in part to Jan Van Loon in 1688. The landmark mentioned in the Indian deed as Machawamick was called by the Dutch settlers “Vlught Hock,” or “Flying Corner”. It is now known as Black Rock; it projects into the river at the southern end of the Village of Athens. When Route 385 was straightened, the “new” – prior to I948 – road separated Black Rock from the rest of the properties owned by Schuyler Van Loan, the uncle of the present owner.

This was the site of a large Indian encampment in prehistoric times. The soil around this camp is black for 10 to 12 acres, caused by campfires burned there for a number of years. The site is believed to have been occupied first by Delaware Indians, and in later years by the Mohicans. Nearly all the relics, broken pottery, arrow heads, and other stone implements that have been found are of Mohican manufacture.

An original Indian deed shows five Indian names: Keesie Wey, Sachemoes, Papeuna, Masseha, and Mawinata – alias Schermerhorn – granting area lands.

EICHORN HOUSE (1880)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

This house was originally built in 1880 as a rectangular Italianate house, and a large Queen Anne turret was added at the turn of the 20th century. The front porch was deepened at the same time. This house could be described as an “in-law” house, one of those structures built by the upper-middle class that, in scope and comfort, is one step below houses built by the most prominent members of a community. Such “in-law” houses are often associated with sisters or daughters who are given a boost by their affluent families to ensure that once married, they can live in appropriate style and comfort.

In this instance, Charles Eichorn had married Leonora Dernell, the sister of Herman Dernell, the man who had established a major ice-tool manufactory in Athens. Mr. Eichorn worked in the Dernell plant. After the death of Mr. Eichorn’s wife his daughter, Laura, and son-in-law, Ben Hoff, moved into the house to care for Mr. Eichorn.

After a succession of owners, the house deteriorated. The back porch was removed, aluminum siding was used, and, at one point, the house was divided into a two-family structure. Recent owners have carefully restored both the exterior and interior. The Queen Anne turret and front porch have been painted using a turn-of-the-century original decorative scheme.

If you are walking through Athens today, the Bedell-Nichols House is across the street at 26 South Franklin St.

GABRIELE / MAHAR HOUSE (late 1770s)

This private residence is not open for interior tour.

Originally constructed in the late 1700s, the north wing was added in 1840 for use as a store, and in 1870 the south wing was added to the rear living area. In 1986 the entire brick surface was restored.

The earliest owner was Sylvester Nichols, who made large purchases of real estate in Athens for later resale. Subsequent owners maintained a general store in the upper village building, supplying the needs not only of the residents but also of the ship hands whose boats plied the Hudson River. In addition to food items, the store carried coal and livestock feed.

From 1926 until 1960, Rosario and Teresina Gabriele continued to operate the store. In 1973 the property passed to their son and his wife, Frank M. and Catherine Gabriele, and then in 1986 to Kathleen Gabriele Maher and her husband, William J. Maher. The bakery “Cakes by Kay” formerly occupied the first floor under the second-story porch.

If you are walking through Athens today, the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church is a few hundred feet south at 102 North Washington St. Two blocks south is the Albertus Van Loon House – built, in 1724, by the son of the original patent-holder of this region – at 85 North Washington St.