Bloomer-Dailey House and Balmville Tree

At the center of the crossroads hamlet of Balmville, just north of Newburgh, stands a small clapboard house whose core dates to about 1750. It began as a one-and-one-half story, three-bay timber-frame cottage with a side-hall plan, and later gained nineteenth century wings and a 1932 addition. In 1914 John Staples renovated it in the Colonial Revival style, adding a porch and central dormer and converting a nineteenth century outbuilding into a matching garage. Inside, the original heavy timber frame, cooking fireplace with iron crane and beamed ceilings survive. Beside the house, at the meeting of Balmville, River and Commonwealth Roads, grows the Balmville Tree, an Eastern Cottonwood dated by coring to 1699 and long mistaken for a Balm of Gilead. Both resources were listed for their architecture, their role in the hamlet's settlement history, and the tree's status as the namesake local landmark. The house is the only building surviving from the pre-Revolutionary hamlet.