FDR and
Dutchess County Stone Buildings
Historic Stone Buildings
Springwood
Stoutenbourgh House
Val-Kill
Hyde Park Library
Poughkeepsie Post Office
Rhinebeck Post Office
Wappingers and Ellenville Post Offices
Hyde Park Post Office
FDR Library
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Top Cottage


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FDR and Dutchess County Stone Buildings

Reviving Dutch colonial architecture in the Hudson Valley became a very important project for FDR and in the introduction to Helen Wilkinson Reynold's 1928 book Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley Before 1776, he expressed his desire to preserve the past: "The genesis of my interest in Dutch Houses of the Hudson Valley Before 1776 lies in the destruction of a delighteful old house in Dutchess County….when I was a small boy; for, many years later, in searching vainly for some photograph or drawing of that house I came to realize that such dwellings of the colonial period in New York as had stood until the twentieth century were fast disappearing before the march of modern civilization." The homes, according to Franklin Roosevelt, provided great "information as the manners and customs of the settlers of the valley of the Hudson" and the "extremely simple" living of both wealthy and small landowners served as an example of how one should live.

This house on Crosby Place, Rhinebeck and the William Stoutenburgh House in Hyde Park were typical 18th and mid-18th century Dutch homes in measurement, materials, and plan.

Crosby
Place

Stoutenburgh House

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FDR Library Logo Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum
4079 Albany Post Road
Hyde Park, New York
1-800-FDR-VISIT
roosevelt.library@nara.gov


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