James and Mary Forsyth House
The James and Mary Forsyth House is a residential building on Albany Avenue near Upper City of Kingston , New York in the United States. The house, built in the style of an Italian villa, was designed by Richard Upjohn in the mid-19th century. Once completed, it was praised in the area for its lavish appearance. It has been modified slightly since its construction in the Colonial Revival style.
In addition to the Old Dutch Church of Minard Lafever this house is the only remaining building of Kingston from before the Civil War and the only house of that time, which was designed by a nationally known architects. In the 20th century it was used by a Masonic Lodge . Since 1986 it has housed the offices of a local construction company that has restored some of Kingston's remaining historic buildings. In 2003, it was inscribed on the National Register of Historic Places .
building
The house sits at the front of 1.3 acre lot north of Albany Avenue, across from the triangular Academy Green Park formed by Albany Avenue, Clinton Avenue and Maiden Lane. On the west side of the house is a four-story apartment building, also built in the Colonial Revival style, which was built in the 1920s as the Governor Clinton Hotel. To the east is other commercial property closing at the east end of Interstate 587 and New York State Route 28 at the intersection of Albany Avenue and Broadway. To the north of the house, i.e. at the back, there is a parking lot and a small pond.
The building itself is a two-and-a-half-story structure with three bays with load-bearing walls made of bricks , the raised base of which is made of processed limestone blocks. The gable roof has a cross gable in the center and is covered with panels made of roofing felt. The corbels of the modeled cornice support the eaves .
Exterior
On the south side facing the street, all three openings are covered by a wooden veranda . The appearance of this veranda is based on that of the house; It has a modeled, central gable with a gable roof, which is supported by Ionic columns , in between there are turned posts. The windows behind are designed as French French doors. The windows on the second floor are set in segmented brick arches, the hoods are made of wood and the window sills are made of stone. Above this there is a single round window in the central gable.
The windows on the east side of the house are designed similar to the front windows at the protruding gable section. Windows, as at the front, also the porch is similar in this area. The two outer bays have verandas under the French window doors, which are decorated with openwork woodwork and are supported by cantilevered wooden beams. In contrast, the front porch is designed like the one at the front of the house. The window in the middle part of the second floor has a round arch and is set back slightly, which gives it a Palladian look. The west side is designed accordingly, there is a bay window on the southwest corner. The windows on the north side are also arranged in this way, but there is an extension built in timber frame construction. A fire escape runs up the side. There are no French doors on this extension.
interior
The main entrance consists of a modern door that sits in front of the original painted doors with a rounded fighter window . They open into a small vestibule , which in turn leads through another pair of doors with stained glass windows, which may depict scenes from the Forsyth family history and are in the Romanesque style, into the L-shaped main hall, the floor of which is made of linoleum . The basement stairs are directly opposite, the main stairs to the upper floor are to the right of the entrance. The library and a salon are to the east and west of it, respectively. To the north are the dining room and living room . A bedroom and a dressing room are in the rear annex.
Both in the front salon and in the library the original parquet floor , the modeled skirting boards and the ceiling cornices made of stucco have been preserved. The door to the library is a wooden door with original silver fittings; likewise the shutters to the outside are unchanged. A series of wooden cabinets have a cornice with an etched frieze around them . The open fireplace in the salon has a marble fireplace surround in an Italian style. A wide opening framed by Corinthian columns leads into the dining room on the north side.
The floor and the walls in the dining room are designed similarly, and the fireplace is in the same style and also made of marble. A ceiling frieze carried by wooden beams runs over all the walls of the room at a height of almost two meters. The drawing room is the largest room on the ground floor and has a ceiling height of 4.5 m. Most of the decorative elements in this room are similar to those in the other rooms.
There is a wooden bench near the stairs to the second floor. The stairs consist of open steps that are covered with carpet. It is decorated with a turned stair post and corresponding balusters . The landing receives daylight through an arched window to the east, the stained glass pane of which dates from the 19th century.
The western part of the second floor is an open space supported by visible I-beams that reach down from the attic. The floor is covered with carpets. The original master bedroom is in the northeast corner. The marble fireplace surround is original here. The floor here is currently covered with a carpet, and sound-absorbing panels have been attached to the ceiling. The walls, skirting boards and the ceiling cornice made of stucco are original, as are the doors with the silver fittings.
The attic was extensively modified, but its earlier use as accommodation for the staff is still recognizable. The north-eastern room still has the original door and the beaded panel ends. The basement floor plan is unchanged. It serves as a storage room and to fulfill various supply tasks. An original cast iron kitchen stove is still there. The servants' dining room has its original doors and the fireplace here is neoclassical .
aesthetics
A few years before Upjohn was commissioned by Forsyth, he had designed his first villa in the Italian style. The Edward King House in Newport , Rhode Island is one of the earliest houses to be built in this way in the United States.
Andrew Jackson Downing praised it in his book The Architecture of Country Houses as "'uniting the beauty of form and expression with spacious accommodation, in a way that is not often seen ... It has dignity, refinement and elegance in all of its major features" .
For the Forsyth house, Upjohn decided to use the central pediment version instead of the tower version he proposed in Newport. His grandson Everard Upjohn, who wrote about the house in the 1930s, saw the similarities between the Forsyths and Kings houses and judged, "[It] shows the same tendency to divide the masses," but stated that "that The interior was so strictly divided that there were few opportunities to open it. "
The Forsyth House is also the JJ Johnson House in Brooklyn's Flatbush district , also designed by Upjohn, but which no longer exists. This house was also a villa with a central gable, divided arched windows and a cornice resting on corbels.
history
James Forsyth was born in Newburgh , New York , but moved to Kingston in 1840 at the age of 21, where he became a successful lawyer and politician and married a local woman, Mary Bruyn. In 1847 he visited New Haven (Connecticut) , Connecticut , which was then a center of contemporary architecture. He wrote to his wife in a letter about the "exquisite private residences [which] were in every way superior to those in Kingston."
The couple decided to build such a house in their hometown. After speaking to an architect in New Haven, they reached out to Upjohn, who was then taking the credit for Trinity Church in New York City . During the design phase, they were in close contact with the architect. Many of his drawings have survived and are archived in Columbia University's Avery Library . These drawings show that the Forsyth house was not significantly changed in the course of the planning. The roofing felt shingles replaced the originally planned tin roof; this change is the only significant change to the plan before the house was built. However, no records were found, which documented the actual execution.
When the house was completed in 1851, the Forsyths held a champagne and oyster housewarming party to which many of the city's influential residents were invited. Nathaniel Booth, a local merchant, picked up on the Forsyth's hope and wrote that the house "dwarfs everyone else in Kingston". He marveled at the lavish decor and stated that ës " would be quite a surprise to the honest Dutch who built Old 'Sopus if they visited the sites of their previous deeds".
Forsyth didn't have much opportunity to enjoy his expensive apartment. He had acquired around US $ 200,000 ( US $ 6,815,000 when adjusted for inflation) through fraudulent activities such as counterfeiting and selling illegal goods . He left the United States just before this fraud was discovered in 1853 . He then traveled through southern Europe for a while before settling in Hereford on the border between England and Wales, where he literally drank himself to death at the Green Dragon Inn in 1855 under the adopted name Edward Rashleigh .
After his escape and subsequent death, his wife and two children stayed at the house but sold it to William Fitch, a relative of Ezra Fitch's , in the 1870s . It later became the property of John Broadhead, a county's treasurer. During his tenure around 1900, the front porch was redesigned in the style of the Colonial Revival; the pillars at the entrance to the dining room were added. Broadhead moved to Connecticut after being accused of embezzling 80-200,000. At a public auction in 1907 the house was sold to Samuel Gray, a grain merchant from Saugerties .
The local Masons bought the house in 1939. Local architect George Low made some major changes, including adding an addition to the southwest corner and gutting the western half of the upper floor to create a conference room. A fire escape was also added to the back of the house to comply with building codes.
After the Freemasons left the house, it stood empty for a few years towards the end of the 20th century before it was acquired by Carey Construction, a local construction company, in late 2002. The company had restored some of the city's historic structures, including Persen House and City Hall .
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m William Krattinger: National Register of Historic Places nomination, James and Mary Forsyth House ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . Archived from the original on September 30, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 19, 2010.
- ↑ Teresa Masterson: History in the remaking (English) . In: Daily Freeman , Journal Register Company , January 13, 2006. Retrieved January 19, 2010.
- ^ Carey Construction - Featured Clients ( English ) Carey Construction. Archived from the original on February 1, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved January 19, 2010.
Web links
Coordinates: 41 ° 55 ′ 58 ″ N , 74 ° 0 ′ 51 ″ W.