Mamakating Park Historic District
The Mamakating Park Historic District is part of a former holiday resort on the highest point of the ridge north of the masts Lakes in the town of Mamakating , New York (State) and is located in the Catskill Mountains .
This includes several dozen cottages , which were largely built in the 1890s and are arranged around the location of a no longer existing hotel, as well as some buildings from the mid-20th century. These buildings show the basic ideas of the originally much larger plan. Mamakating Park was listed as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
Geography and buildings
The historic district comprises 40 acres and the horseshoe-shaped junction of Columbian Road, Mamakating Avenue, and Park Road. The area is largely overgrown with trees, with the former hotel in the center forming the only open space. The tennis courts are still available. A small elevation at the southern end of the district reaches a height of 503 m and is the highest point within the city of Mamakating.
The district comprises 48 buildings, with the exception of three from the time when the settlement was originally built. These buildings are because of their historical character as contributing . The site of the earlier hotel and some accompanying buildings, such as a chapel and casino, are also contributing. Much of the original landscaping has been preserved.
Most of the houses are built in timber frame construction, whereby the architectural style is typical of the late 19th century, for example in the shingle style , like the earlier hotel. They have some of the characteristics of Victorian architecture , such as extensive verandas , cross gables and the eclectic use of decorative elements.
aesthetics
The plan for Mamakating Park was laid out by William Henry Baldwin, an engineer from Yonkers . He may have been inspired by Tuxedo Park , the first gated community in the United States in neighboring Orange County . The plan included a few winding roads named after themes from the forest , such as Fox Trail or the undeveloped Maplewood Lane , but otherwise followed a grid pattern that was typical for camp meetings in nature from that time. The houses are grouped around buildings of common function, in contrast to the winding streets as in Tuxedo Park and similar settlements.
Like many other holiday resorts in the mountains, the location of the houses was arranged to take advantage of their Like location. The grid extended north and south along a ridge, so that many houses had to be built close to the street because the terrain slopes sharply. This created the view towards the Shawangunk Ridge over Wurtsboro or towards the Catskill Mountains in the north and west.
history
Mamakating Park began with the Sullivan County Club , a group of New York business people who wanted to build a resort similar to Elka Park and Onteora Park in Greene County , albeit smaller. For most of the 19th century, Masten Lake to the south was owned by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company and used as a reservoir for the canal. When the railways came up, traffic on the canal decreased and the lake became a destination for day trippers and summer vacationers from the big city who came here to enjoy the fresh air.
The County Club bought 4,600 acres of land, including the lake and ridge north of it, from a Yonkers family in 1893 to build a summer cottage settlement around a large hotel. The extension of the Orange & Western Railroad into Sullivan County at the time made the area accessible to city dwellers from New York City within a day's trip. After the land was divided into 2000 m² plots in the following year, these began to be offered at a price of 100 US dollars (1894). Since the demand was high, the price was soon raised to 125 US dollars (1894).
When 359 parcels were sold, the club hired the New York architects Delhi & Lawrence to design the hotel. The construction of a funicular up from Wurtsboro was considered to make the journey easier. However, the belated economic consequences of the panic of 1893 resulted in these plans being abandoned. At this point the hotel and about 20 houses on nearby plots were completed.
After the Sullivan County Club's property was foreclosed , the hotel and unsold parcels came into the hands of a new group of investors called the Mamakating Park Company in 1902 . The company aggressively advertised the resort in the New York newspapers. The advent of automobile traffic meant that garages were soon added to the cottages. The company's success enabled it to place advertisements in 1913 stating that " temperance priniciples will be adhered to" and that the presence of tuberculosis patients was prohibited.
The Great Depression in the 1930s meant that the Mamakating Park Company had to rent the hotel and the other properties to different operators. Towards the end of the decade, Jewish Americans began moving into the settlement, causing others to move out. This influenced the construction of the casino, a barber shop and a few other buildings in the hotel complex and after the Second World War brought about the establishment of the Mamakating Park Property Owners Civic Association .
The hotel finally closed in the 1950s. A holiday camp operator bought the property and used the building. The hotel itself was destroyed by fire in the 1970s. A few houses were built on the as yet undeveloped land in the 1980s, and in the late 1990s the operator began to reconstruct some of the earlier structures.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Kathleen LaFrank: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Mamakating Park Historic District ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . August 1998. Retrieved April 16, 2009.
Coordinates: 41 ° 36 ′ 44 " N , 74 ° 32 ′ 11" W.