Lower Main Street Historic District

Two blocks of lower Main Street in Beacon, New York, preserve what remains of the central business district of Fishkill-on-Hudson, a river community built on shipping, trade and fishing. The district holds about 40 commercial properties, 36 of them contributing, mostly two- to three-story attached brick buildings from the 1870s to the 1890s, with a few later additions up to about 1929. Italianate brackets, cornices and window trim give the rows a consistent look, and several cast-iron storefronts survive. Notable buildings include the Dondero Block, the Lewis Tompkins Hose Company fire station of about 1886, and the Neoclassical bank building of about 1929. The area matters because urban renewal and the widening of Route 9D erased most of the former village core, leaving this stretch as the surviving evidence of a community that flourished as a center of commerce and professional activity in the late nineteenth century. Its scale, materials and rooflines remain remarkably intact.