Decker, Johannes, Farm

Johannes Decker Farm is a Dutch farm complex of about 65 acres on the alluvial plain of the Shawangunk Kill in Ulster County, New York. The Decker family settled here around 1695. In the 1720s Johannes Decker built a one-room stone house, which became the core of the present dwelling. Additions followed before 1750, in 1784 and in 1787, producing a one-and-one-half-story T-shaped house with a flared Flemish gable roof and four brick chimneys. Southwest of the house stands a Dutch barn from about 1750 whose center aisle posts were spliced for extra height. A carriage house and an ice house, both wood frame, were added in the 18th century. The complex is valued as a complete and well-preserved example of Dutch farming life in the mid-Hudson region. The house grew with the family's means, and the later outbuildings show increasing prosperity. The property stayed within the family for more than a century.