Wappingers Falls Historic District

Wappingers Falls Historic District covers roughly 90 acres of the village in Dutchess County, New York, and takes in industrial, commercial and residential areas. At its heart is a hollow below the falls of Wappingers Creek, where a small cotton mill of 1819 grew into one of the nation's most extensive printworks complexes. Fourteen surviving masonry buildings, a power house, a pump house, a bridge and a penstock remain from it. Nearby hillside streets hold double houses built for mill employees between about 1850 and 1880. Main Street is lined with attached three-story buildings, mostly from after the Civil War, along with an 1884 twin-arch sandstone bridge, the 1887 Shingle style library and an 1871 former bank. Mesier Park centers on the 1740s Brewer-Mesier House, a pre-Revolutionary Hudson Valley dwelling. South Avenue displays Greek Revival through Colonial Revival homes and churches. Together these resources show how the village developed around its mills.