Snyder Estate Natural Cement Historic District

Near Rosendale in Ulster County, New York, this 275-acre district joins a family estate with the remains of four major natural cement operations: the Lawrence, Beach, Snyder and Century works. The estate includes the 1809 Jacob Lowe Snyder house, later called Century House, altered around 1940 by Kingston architect Edward Milliken, along with several later residences, barns and a Brooklyn Bridge-themed entry gate. The industrial side includes eight stone draw kilns dating to about 1830, mines, a tenement house and numerous ruins and archeological sites. Watson E. Lawrence developed continuous draw kilns here and supplied cement for projects such as the Croton Aqueduct and the Brooklyn Navy Yard dry dock. The Delaware and Hudson Canal supplied coal and carried the product to New York City. The nomination presents the district as the largest and most important source of natural cement in New York State in the nineteenth century, with cement production continuing until 1970.