The New Baltimore Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.This honor recognizes the community as being both architecturally and historically significant as one of the few intact and surviving examples of a 19th century Hudson River hamlet.
The District includes 95 buildings, most built in the mid 19th century when the Hamlet was a center of local commerce and industry. The District is mainly comprised of buildings reflecting the residential development of this river front hamlet from the late 18th century to the late 19thcentury. It includes a rich diversity of architectural styles including Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. Also included are two notable religious buildings, (the New Baltimore Dutch Reformed Church, still a religious center of the community, and the former Methodist Church, now a private residence), a former school, and a cemetery.
History in and near the Preserve and HRIT
When you walk the Conservancy trails, you walk through New Baltimore history. The Hannacroix Preserve once was productive farmland, at one time spotted with trees bearing a multitude of fruits. Just south of the parking lot are the remains of a farm house and barn from that era.
Along the North Trail, a peek through the trees will catch glimpse of a home built on the foundation of one of the three paper mills that worked on the Hannacroix Creek. (PRIVATE PROPERTY – DO NOT APPROACH.) Near the beautiful falls on the Creek are the remains of the Croswell-Parsons paper mill that operated here for about three quarters of a century. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places. (NO DIGGING, MOVING OF ANY PART OF THE STRUCTURE, OR REMOVAL OF ANY ARTIFACTS OR OBJECTS IS ALLOWED.)
Toward the Madison Avenue end of the main trail, a tall foundation rises on the east. On one old map, this former building is marked as a cider barn. Nearly across the path, another foundation is thought to have been the Town’s poor house before those types of services were consolidated in a county home in Cairo.
From the agricultural experience on the west side of Route 144, the Hudson River Interpretive Trail (HRIT) exposes walkers to the River part of New Baltimore’s history. A short way from the boardwalk crossing, you can see a tall chimney (PRIVATE PROPERTY – DO NOT APPROACH) in front of you, the remains of an ice house, one of many along the Hudson that provided large frozen blocks to ice drinks and cool food in New York City and other locations.
Crossing over the world’s first recycled plastic bridge, you eventually come to the River.
Aside from times of highest tide, you can see long concrete, stone, and wood dikes that were part of a centuries' long effort to make the hudson navigable to albany. Shoals and other obstructions northward made sailing a chancy proposition. The dikes were an attempt to narrow and deepen the ship channel. Generally ineffective, the dike system was abandoned in favor of the dredging that still goes on today. At River’s edge, you can see Houghtaling Island (that’s not the other side of the River, there’s more on the other side of the trees), once several different islands merged together by the discarded dredged material. Some of that material also has helped form the lands around the HRIT.
- Cless Bush
author, Episodes from a Hudson River Town, SUNY Press, 2011
