The Hoornbeek Store Complex is a Registered Historic Place in the

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

of Napanoch,

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. It consists of several buildings located on a one-acre (0.4 ha) parcel on Main Street between Clinton and Church streets. They reflect Napanoch's transition from its original settlement into the Delaware and Hudson Canal era and the move from Federal style to

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 ...

as the dominant

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Buildings

There are three main buildings in the complex, erected over a 30-year period. The oldest is the William Doll House, built around 1810 in the Federal style house by a local physician and his family. It boasts five bays and an unusual eight-panel door. The interior features some of the original fabrics, as well as later renovations, such as the staircase, that reflect Greek Revival fashions. It remains in use today as a private home. In 1833, the Hoornbeek Store was constructed to the south by Richard and George Southwick. They had been buying land in the area to take advantage of business from through traffic on the canal, which had opened five years earlier to carry coal from

Northeastern Pennsylvania Northeastern Pennsylvania (NEPA) is a geographic region of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania that includes the Pocono Mountains, the Endless Mountains, and the industrial cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Hazleton, Nanticoke, and Car ...

to Kingston, where it could be loaded on boats traveling down the

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for

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. Its Greek Revival features include the front porch with five heavy

pillar A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

s, massive

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

, and tall

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

. Four years after it was opened, it was connected to the Doll House via a small addition when Doll bought out the Southwicks during

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proceedings. Later owners in the 20th century added the second-story porches. Today it is vacant. The last main structure, the Napanoch Female Seminary, was built in 1841 by Gabriel Ludlum, who had leased the store from Doll. It is a simple two-story

clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of these terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'' in modern Americ ...

frame house, with unusual window locations due to its original use as a girls' school, with the schoolmaster's quarters on the ground floor and students housed upstairs. At one point, it, too, was connected to the store, probably in 1856 when Ludlum bought out Doll and became the sole owner of the complex. That connection was demolished in the 20th century. Scattered around the property are several outbuildings. These fulfilled service functions for customers and residents, such as an ice house,

stable A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; the ...

s, wagon, and feed shed.

History

Ludlum leased the store and house to John Decker and Eli DuBois, who operated the former as a combination of shops and

tavern A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food such as different types of roast meats and cheese, and (mostly historically) where travelers would receive lodging. An inn is a tavern that h ...

and the latter as a

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

. In 1864, they bought the property from him, refurbished it, and then sold the house and store to the Hoornbeek family in 1867. It would remain in their hands for over a century, giving it its popular local name. Calvin Hoornbeek operated the complex as a combination of shops and apartments and willed it to his son L.D.B. when he died in 1890. He continued the business, living in the house and running the store, and in 1925 became the first person since Ludlum to own the whole complex when he bought the seminary building, which had passed through several owners since then. He rented it out as a single-family residence and continued to operate the store until his death in 1940. Various sons and daughters continued to live there until the last died in 1975. A subsequent owner, Amy Plummer Hoffman, got the property listed on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places in the early 1980s.

References

{{Registered Historic Places Buildings and structures in Ulster County, New York National Register of Historic Places in Ulster County, New York