The Dutchess Company Superintendent's House is a home located on Market Street in the western corner of the

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

Wappingers Falls Wappingers Falls is a village in Dutchess County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 5,522. The community was named for the cascade in Wappinger Creek. The Wappingers Falls post office covers areas in the tow ...

, New York,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It is a large brick residence that was built as housing for the manager of the Dutchess Company, a large local printing works, shortly after the plant was built in 1848. It is primarily in the

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but a ...

architectural style An architectural style is a set of characteristics and features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable. It is a sub-class of style in the visual arts generally, and most styles in architecture relate closely ...

, with some Gothic Revival

decorative Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, o ...

touches. In 1984 it was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

Building

The house is a three-story, five- bay brick building with a symmetrical front facade. The front entrance and its sidelights are centrally located on a shed-roofed

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

built in the mid 20th-century. It replaced an original

veranda A veranda or verandah is a roofed, open-air gallery or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front and sides of the structure. Although the form ''vera ...

that wrapped around all but the east side. A portion was left on the north side, along with its Gothic Revival posts, capitals and other trim. On the roofline, a steeply pitched central

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

, decorated with Gothic Revival

vergeboard Bargeboard (probably from Medieval Latin ''bargus'', or ''barcus'', a scaffold, and not from the now obsolete synonym "vergeboard") or rake fascia is a board fastened to each projecting gable of a roof to give it strength and protection, and to ...

, reinforces the entrance. There are two brick chimneys at either end of the roof. The inside floor plan is the standard Greek Revival central-hall style. The entrance's sidelights and full transom are also hallmarks of that style. There are no outbuildings.

History

The house was built in 1848, shortly after the Dutchess Company was incorporated. The first superintendent, a Mr. Radclift, was its first occupant. It remained in company ownership until the company failed in the 20th century, at which point it was purchased by the then-superintendent, William Bogle. It has remained a private home ever since.

Aesthetics

The house's design and location reflect some social considerations as well as aesthetic ideals of its time. Its Greek Revival scale and mass reflect the factory superintendent's superior position within the community's industrial hierarchy, as well as its location some distance away from the plant and worker housing in the center of town, echoing the superintendent's position distance from his subordinates. It was similar to the company owners' houses (none of which survive intact) in size, but unlike them it was located at the bottom of the hill, closer to the plant and the workers than they were. Its decorative touches, such as the piazza-style original veranda, pointed gable and scroll-sawn vergeboard, suggest an embrace of the

Picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

mode then being popularized by

Andrew Jackson Downing Andrew Jackson Downing (October 31, 1815 – July 28, 1852) was an American landscape designer, horticulturist, and writer, a prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival in the United States, and editor of ''The Horticulturist'' magazine (1846–5 ...

of nearby Newburgh. The house's placement in a wooded area near

Wappinger Creek Wappinger Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed October 3, 2011 creek which runs from Thompson Pond to the Hudson River at New Hamburg in Dutchess County, New York, ...

is also reflective of this ideal.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in New York Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Greek Revival houses in New York (state) Houses completed in 1848 National Register of Historic Places in Dutchess County, New York Houses in Dutchess County, New York Wappingers Falls, New York Company housing