Kingston”™s waterfront boasts two museums, several galleries and an arts center, specialty shops, restaurants and cafes, and docks that are lined with pleasure boats in the warm weather. Despite these attractions, the Rondout, as the area is called, which fronts the Rondout Creek and is unique among Hudson River sites in offering a sheltered port, has struggled to achieve the critical mass that would transform it into a flourishing tourism center.
But this summer change is in the air, with a revitalized business association, new, energetic leadership at the museums, investment in waterfront property by an entrepreneur who happens to love old boats and is funding the creation of a historic boat restoration center, and a lively arts scene. The opening on July 7 of the Kingston Biennial Sculpture Show, in which 55 three-dimensional works placed in provocative outdoor and indoor settings conjure up the playful, poetic and sublime, promises to be the icing on the cake. It”™s a glorious way to showcase Kingston”™s appeal to the growing population of migrants from New York City.
One problem for businesses has been the seasonal appeal of the area, said B.C. Gee, co-owner of the Mezzanine Antique Center and Café. To bring people downtown in the dead of winter, Gee, who helped rejuvenate the Rondout Business Association (RBA) the past year ”“ it now has 26 members representing 80 percent of local businesses ”“ organized the city”™s first Mardi Gras last February. The event, which included an ice-sculpture contest, parade, story-telling and mask making at the Arts Society of Kingston (ASK) building, live band music in the restaurants, a female roller derby competition, and exhibits, was a resounding success, attracting a few thousand people.
The RBA and other business groups have formed BAK (Business Alliance of Kingston), to coordinate their efforts. BAK is also partnering with cultural institutions, such as the Maritime Museum, which collaborated with the RBA both on the Mardi Gras and the Shad Festival, held in May. On the First Saturday gallery openings, to help unify the city”™s three main business districts ”“ the other two are Uptown and Midtown ”“ BAK started the Art Bus, which provides transport to the galleries along with on-board entertainment. On July 7, a singer-songwriter duo from Saugerties serenaded riders, and a tour guide was on board to provide information on the galleries. Maps were handed out as well as restaurant menus.
The Beaten Path
Gee said the next big event the RBA is planning is the Italian Festival, on September 29 and 30, with vendor booths, fireworks, and a hoped-for appearance by an actor from “The Sopranos.”
Another challenge for businesses like Mezzanine, which is located a few blocks away from the waterfront, is that visitors tend to stay down by the water. Gee said her group is working with the city to erect more signs in the area directing people to nearby attractions off the beaten path.
The city has obtained $225,000 in grants to improve the streetscape along the waterfront, with a new median, landscaping, and more parking, according to Kingston director of economic development Steve Finkle. It plans to construct a new bulkhead next year, which would extend the public walkway along Dock Street all the way to the Hideaway Marina. The $1.04 million cost will be funded partially with a state Department of Transportation grant, with the city required to match some of the funds. Kingston also has acquired grant money to restore the brick exterior of the lighthouse, which it owns.
The Maritime Museum, which was on the verge of closing a few years ago, has found new life under executive director Russ Lange, a former IBM vice president and engineer who was hired a year and a half ago by a revitalized board of directors. Lange, who is not taking a salary, has been volunteering at the museum for years; his wife, Allynne, is the museum curator.
A stroll through its surprisingly capacious gallery space reveals all kinds of treasures, including an exhibit of recently discovered photos of the shipyards in Newburgh, a dozen historic boats, including a shad-fishing dory, an electric boat, and ice boat, and surviving artifacts from the regal steamboats that once transported thousands up and down the river, including the huge brass bell from the Mary Powell. “The museum is a time machine,” said Lange, whose job is obviously a labor of love. “This was the gateway to the West. The history of the industrial use of the river is the history of the development of New York.”
Utilizing $150,000 in grant money, the museum recently completed a restoration of its docks and bulwarks, including a new brick path. The $250,000 budget is up significantly from past years, and the museum now has a positive cash flow. It also has a dedicated force of 40 volunteers.
Schooner and steamboat
Lange and the board are putting together a strategic plan, which includes moving the large steam-powered tug on the property to another site on the grounds and making it a showpiece exhibition, with cutaway displays showing the powerful steel engines and access to its high decks. Lange said the museum also has implemented a very successful education program for school kids. The two educational directors invented a game in which teams, dubbed schooner and steamboat, compete against each other amid the museum displays. An interactive education center with scale models is planned.
Across East Strand, the Trolley Museum of New York, which was launched in Brooklyn in 1955 with the rescue of four trolleys slated for the junk heap, is also waking up. Steve Ladin, an artist and arts administrator, was hired a few months ago as the museum”™s first-ever paid director. Ladin said the museum has a budget of $150,000, and he is writing grants while building up the force of volunteers. Several artists who live in the area recently underwent training to become qualified motormen to drive the working trolley that takes visitors on the 45-minute ride to Kingston Point Park and back.
There is a small exhibit space near the entrance to the museum, along with a large cinderblock car barn that houses the jewels of the 26-car collection. They include a one-of-a-kind prototype for the new, streamlined design that the trolley industry came up with in the 1920s as a way of competing with cars. (The Conference Committee Car, as it was called, was manufactured in the thousands for its run between 1935 and 1955). A 1910 wooden car from Brussels, Belgium, is outfitted like a café, and an Oslo, Norway, trolley car from 1897 looks like new. The museum also has trolley and New York City subway cars sitting outside in the yard, which are in various stages of disrepair ”“ money is desperately needed for restoration ”“ including the sole survivor of the trolley systems of Long Island and Atlantic City.
Evan Jennings, president of the museum, said the institution recently obtained a $50,000 grant from the state Department of State to hire an engineering firm to design an electrification system for its 1.5 miles of working track. The current working trolley uses diesel, and by electrifying the track more trolleys in the collection could be put back in working order.
In the meantime, Ladin said the museum does a brisk business renting out the working trolley to groups. School groups also make scheduled visits. One weekend in June, the Hudson Valley chapter of the Cadillac LaSalle Club filled the parking lot with 50 vintage Cadillacs.
Up the hill on Broadway, ASK is restoring the second floor of its handsome 1920s-era building, a former community center it obtained from the city a couple of years ago with a $50,000 grant. A second $50,000 grant and loads of sweat equity from volunteers have resulted in a stunning restoration. Besides its monthly gallery shows, ASK also sponsors a playwriting lab, offers artists”™ workshops, and features an open mike for emerging and established singer-songwriters.
On Abeel Street, the Kingston Museum of Contemporary Art regularly gets press coverage for its cutting-edge shows of photography, painting, and small-scale three dimensional works. In June, it showed Chad Hunt”™s photographs of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which gave a chilling glimpse of hardship and danger. Gallery co-founder Adam Snyder, an accomplished singer-songwriter, also shows alternative films in the space, along with hosting musical performances and readings by top authors. A few doors down, Ben Wigfall has reopened the Watermark Cargo Gallery, which shows high-quality African art as well as works by individual artists.
Much of the waterfront has been abandoned, but Robert Iannucci, a lawyer and businessman from Brooklyn, has been buying up land with ambitious plans to construct a mixed-use development. His purchases include Island Dock, a verdant peninsula originally built to store coal brought by barges from Pennsylvania that juts into the creek, and a junkyard that requires an environmental cleanup.
Iannucci also purchased the Cornell Steamboat Building, an enormous cathedral of industry dating to 1901 that once was the leading maintenance facility for tugboats on the East Coast, according to Huntley Gill, a New York architect and preservationist. The building is currently housing Iannucci”™s four World War II PT boats, along with a mishmash of old engines and other vintage craft.
Historic boats
Gill was hired by Iannucci to restore the exterior of the building and design an interior exhibit area and other facilities. (He spends half his time in an enchanting apartment in the Cornell that overlooks the water.) The first exhibit is scheduled for later in the summer and will feature photos chronicling family life aboard an Erie cargo boat barge in the 1950s.
Along with Ann Loeding, a Kingston resident and professional tugboat captain also hired by Iannucci, Gill is overseeing the creation of a historic boatworks yard at the Cornell building. “Our mission is to reclaim the mix of relationships with the water and the creek. They tie people together,” said Loeding. Owners of historic boats could have conservation work done on their craft; in exchange, the boat would be available to the community for educational purposes. Nonprofit organizations, such as the Pegasus, a former Standard Oil tugboat based in New York City, are prime candidates, said Gill.
Loeding is also trying to get a grant to fund a boat-building program for teens. Earlier this year, she conducted a slide show on working boats for elementary school kids in conjunction with the Kingston Library, which was underwritten by Iannucci.
“Rondout is pretty funky and we don”™t want to lose that,” said Gill. “It has an incredibly important industrial cultural presence. We want to combine green development with that industrial memory.”
“We”™re coming up with a community vision for the area,” added Loeding. “We want to create attractions that tell the story of Rondout. People can go for a boat tour on the Rip Van Winkle, see the lighthouse, and get a full experience.”
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