Gardiner Place Historic District

Three public buildings on Gardiner Place in Walton, New York, form a compact civic group built over four decades. The William B. Ogden Free Library, finished in 1897, is a one-and-one-half-story bluestone building that blends Richardsonian Romanesque massing with progressive Chicago School features such as bands of reading room windows. It was funded through a bequest from Ogden, a Walton native who became Chicago's first mayor, and designed by New York architects Charles Morris and Richard Amerman Walker. The brick village hall, built from 1912 to 1914 after a fire destroyed its predecessor, is Walton's finest Neoclassical building and holds offices, an auditorium and a fire station. The post office, dedicated in 1937, is a simplified classical brick and limestone building typical of Depression-era federal construction. Together they illustrate changing American styles and mark the site long used for schools, meeting halls and village government, surrounded by modest private homes and shade trees.