Main Street Historic District

Six buildings along Main Street in New Hamburg, Dutchess County, form a compact remnant of a village streetscape from the railroad age. Three houses of about 1850 show typical local forms: a side-passage house, a center-passage house enlarged to five bays, and a two-story center-passage house later given a cross gable and bracketed trim. Commercial buildings include the brick Central House Hotel of about 1855, a small 1875 post office with a later railway express wing, and a store of about 1876. The railroad arrived in 1848, and commercial development spread westward from the tracks, shifting the hamlet's focus from the river docks. In 1928 the railroad widened its right-of-way, removed the street's crossing and created Bridge Street, leaving this block isolated. Listing recognizes the group as the best surviving example in the hamlet of how architecture and daily life changed as rail transport displaced the river economy in the later nineteenth century.