Huguenot Street Historic District

Huguenot Street in New Paltz, New York, preserves five stone houses built between about 1693 and 1775 by the families who founded the town. The settlers were French Protestants who fled to the Palatinate in Germany and then to America. In 1677 they bought their land from the Esopus Indians and established New Paltz on the Wallkill the following spring. The houses include the Jean Hasbrouck House of about 1712, the Abraham Hasbrouck House, the Hugo Freer House, the Bevier-Elting House and the Daniel DuBois House, which began as a one-story fort in 1705. Most are one-and-a-half story fieldstone buildings with steep gabled roofs, clapboarded gable ends and solid shutters, typical of Dutch Colonial work. The district is also valued for the settlers' self-government by twelve heads of families, known as the Dusine, which lasted until the town was incorporated in 1785. The street looks much as it did two centuries ago, and the houses remain in excellent condition.