Closter Road-Oak Tree Road Historic District

Along one block of Closter Road and one block of Oak Tree Road, the district preserves the core of the upland crossroads community in the hamlet of Palisades, Rockland County. Its 19 properties include mostly frame houses, a former Methodist Episcopal church of 1859, a former schoolhouse now a community center, two commercial buildings and a burying ground with graves dating from 1774. The buildings date from about 1780 to 1910 and show a progression of styles: vernacular Georgian, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and Italianate. The c.1780 Trenchard House is one of the few surviving eighteenth-century farmhouses in the area and shows English rather than Dutch building influences. The c.1840 country store is the oldest surviving commercial building in the surrounding resource area. Settled as farmland, the area grew into a middle-class neighborhood of merchants, craftsmen and tradesmen once railroads opened and New Yorkers came for summer homes. Level terrain gave regular siting and unified streetscapes that keep a nineteenth-century character.