Kripplebush Historic District

Kripplebush is a small hamlet near the base of the Catskill Mountains in Marbletown, Ulster County, New York. It grew up where local roads met beside Kripplebush Creek and a hillside called Snake Hill. The district holds 33 contributing buildings. Four are one-and-a-half-story stone farmhouses, including the Ephraim Chambers House of about 1772 and the Hornbeck House of about 1790. The rest are mostly plain frame buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries: a Methodist church of 1857, a district schoolhouse, a lodge hall, a former hotel, former stores, and a carriage and wagon manufactory. Barns, sheds and other outbuildings also survive. Many commercial buildings were later converted to houses, which helped keep the hamlet's layout and appearance intact. The district was listed because its structures and land-use patterns remain so well preserved and show how a rural hamlet developed around farming, small-scale manufacturing and trade. Today the hamlet is residential, and the old schoolhouse serves as a historical museum.