Building

The building consists of two connected two-story sections: a square warehouse and rectangular stable. They are built into a slight slope and only the west (main) elevation is fully exposed. It has a stone foundation giving way to brick laid in common bond rising to a low- pitched tin

hipped roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downward to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope, with variants including tented roofs and others. Thus, a hipped roof has no gables or other vertical sides ...

with an unusual brick-

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal keyed into and projecting from a wall to carry a wikt:superincumbent, bearing weight, a type of bracket (architecture), bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in t ...

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

and a few arched

dormer window A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the usable spac ...

s. Inside, both sections are almost intact. The warehouse's floors are both open, with its upper floor supported by randomly spaced

joist A joist is a horizontal structural member used in Framing (construction), framing to span an open space, often between Beam (structure), beams that subsequently transfer loads to vertical members. When incorporated into a floor framing system, joi ...

s supported by heavy beams at the center. In the stable, the tack room and stalls have been removed to make space for contemporary automotive uses but other than that there have been no changes. There are no outbuildings related to its original use surviving. Shay's house is also on the parcel, but it has undergone considerable change since it was built and is not considered contributing.

History

Shay bought the Main Street-Point Street corner property around 1863. His house is shown on maps of the village from the next decade, but not the warehouse. It probably existed as it was not the custom of mapmakers of the time to show outbuildings. He used it for storage and

transshipment Transshipment, trans-shipment or transhipment is the shipment of goods or containers to an intermediate destination, then to another destination. One possible reason for transshipment is to change the means of transport during the journey (e.g. ...

of rags and cotton waste from the mills in

Wappingers Falls Wappingers Falls is a village in the towns of Poughkeepsie and Wappinger, 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 Wappin ...

. In later years it would see other uses as New Hamburg changed due to the decline in commercial traffic along the

Hudson River The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...

and the later rise and fall of the railroad over the 20th century. It would be a

cooperage A cooper is a craftsman who produces wooden casks, barrels, vats, buckets, tubs, troughs, and other similar containers from timber staves that were usually heated or steamed to make them pliable. Journeymen coopers also traditionally made w ...

for apple barrels and a brass

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

. The stable was modified as cars replaced horses. At the time of its listing on the National Register it was a boat-repair shop, reflecting the nearby

marina A marina (from Spanish , Portuguese and Italian : "related to the sea") is a dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina differs from a port in that a marina does not handle large passenger ships or cargo ...

s that now dominate the hamlet's economy. More recently it has been used just for storage. It is today the only intact surviving commercial or industrial building from New Hamburg's days as a river port.

Aesthetics

Like the nearby duplex Shay built, the warehouse (stable) is very ornamented for a

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

industrial or related building from that period in the

Poughkeepsie Poughkeepsie ( ) is a city within the Town of Poughkeepsie, New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsie is in the Hudson River Valley region, midway between the core of the New ...

area. Unlike the duplex, built five years later, its basic style is

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

, as evidenced by the blocky forms and arched windows. But the decoration, particularly the corbeled brick, suggests an attempt to interpret 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 popularized in mid-century.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shay's Warehouse And Stable Commercial buildings completed in 1865 New Hamburg, New York Buildings and structures in Poughkeepsie, New York National Register of Historic Places in Dutchess County, New York Stables in the United States Agricultural buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Warehouses on the National Register of Historic Places