Academy Street Historic District

Academy Street in Poughkeepsie, between Livingston and Montgomery streets, forms a fourteen-acre district of nineteenth-century houses within four blocks of the city's main commercial street. The land was once part of Lawrence Van Kleeck's farm and later Bronson French's "French Place." After French sold it in 1836, the street was laid out by a group of speculators. The Panic of 1837 delayed their plans, but about two dozen houses went up in the third quarter of the century. Mostly frame buildings of two and a half to three and a half stories, they show Greek Revival, Bracketed, Second Empire, Stick, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles. A sandstone English country-style church, Christ Church, designed by William Appleton Potter, stands at the north end. Houses grow larger and later toward the south. The district is described as the earliest part of Poughkeepsie's first planned neighborhood and keeps its tree-lined streetscape and period character. Local residents had already voted to protect it as a local district.