Behind this late 1870s brick business block hides a wooden Italianate villa. Its first owners were probably Zipporah and Jacob Clark, an affluent young grocer. When Jacob died unexpectedly in 1870, his devastated wife sold off their land and left Newburgh. The masonry design of the storefronts is divided into panels by brick pilasters with sills and lintels of painted cast iron. It resembles the work of masons William C. Brown and William McMeekin, who lived down the street.

Irish butcher Archibald Taggart built this two-family home about 1863, taking the right unit for his family. Archibald and his wife Sarah, both Irish immigrants, were parents of five children and employed a servant—uncommon for 1st generation Irish families, telling of the family’s wealth. Archibald was the brother of James Taggart, an even wealthier landowner who operated a slaughterhouse near the intersection of Broadway and West Street.

Masons William C. Brown and William McMeekin built this Second Empire style duplex in the late 1860s for their families. It resembles their business block at the southern entrance to Dubois Street and another residence they built at 35–37 Edward Street about 1872. Brown was a Civil War veteran and over his career partnered with many contractors like McMeekin. McMeekin’s most recognizable work is the West Shore Railroad wall on Water Street. He remained in this house until his death in 1898.

This Gothic cottage served as the residence for Presiding Elders of the Methodist Episcopal Church’s Newburgh District, managers of many churches on the west shore of the Hudson. The construction seems to have coincided with the completion of Trinity M. E. Church at Liberty and Third Street in 1861, another Gothic building and pride of the district. The exterior of the cottage is based on Design III, “A Cottage in the Pointed or Tudor Style” from Newburgher Andrew Jackson Downing’s pattern book Cottage Residences (1842).

The Shaw family, Newburgh’s most prominent 19th century carpenters, had these houses built for themselves in the late 1850s. Patriarch Thomas Shaw came to Newburgh from New Windsor in the 1830s to manage construction projects in the burgeoning village. His sons George, Charles, and Elkanah, an architect, worked under him as the firm Thomas Shaw & Sons. When Thomas died in 1877, the brothers became Thomas Shaw’s Sons, and more than a decade later remodeled their family’s houses with towers and new porches.

In the late 1930s and 40s, Geraldine Ferrarro, the first female Democratic vice presidential nominee, spent her very early childhood in this house. She was the daughter of Italian Americans, and lost her father Dominick while living here. After 1945, she and her mother moved to New York City, where she completed her education to become a teacher and attorney, preparing her for her career in the House of Representatives.

Clothing merchant Samuel Owen acquired this parcel in May 1871 from Hannah M. Parkhurst, who ran a young ladies’ school on the block. He completed his house in 1872. Owens and his wife Maria employed one servant and became parents of a daughter by the late 1870s. In June 1888, the couple embarked on a remodeling of the house, but died a few years later.

Frances Olivia Campbell photographed her Irish American family’s modest brick house in the 1890s. Her scrapbook photographs depict family members in front of the house, but also views of tenement buildings on Carter Street and prominent Newburgh sites. Most of the buildings Campbell photographed have been demolished.

The dining room of the Campbell House around 1890.

By the 1890s, the United Presbyterian congregation, which occupied an older church near the waterfront, realized their neighborhood was outdated. They opted to relocate up to Dubois Street, a more fashionable neighborhood. Popular Newburgh architect Frank E. Estabrook designed this Gothic Revival church for them in 1904 as an expansion to their less imposing chapel. James Stewart was the mason; William Tweed and Caleb Woodruff, Estabrook’s favored carpenters, handled the interiors. The church’s placement at the street corner still makes it one of Dubois’s landmarks.

John Baldwin, an English real estate developer, oversaw the construction of this mansard-roofed house in the early 1870s. After its foreclosure in 1887, it sold to David C. Miller, a prolific marble cutter, sculptor, and contractor. Miller, his wife Rebecca, and their daughters lived here until his death in 1923. The Miller marble works were located on Broadway.

On this site stood the ambitious grape farm of bookbinder and horticulturist James H. Ricketts. Beginning in the early 1860s, Ricketts purchased land here and put up greenhouses, where he developed award-winning varieties of flowers and fruit. At its height in the 1880s, Ricketts produced 63 breeds of grapes and 115 different kinds of pears across five glass greenhouses. Most of the farm was compromised when Ricketts took a federal bookbinding position in 1893, leaving Newburgh for Washington, DC.

This statue honors volunteer firefighters of Newburgh, represented by city fireman Rufus Hobbs, an ice cream vendor, and his daughter Winnie. David C. Miller carved the base and sculpted Hobbs; the bronze was cast by Tiffany Studios. The statue was put in place in the first decade of the 20th century, when Miller was preparing other large-scale monuments for cemeteries and public spaces.

Bookkeeper Charles H. Halstead and his wife Grace, a Scottish immigrant, moved into this row house in the early 1880s. It was constructed in the late 1850s—some of the earliest housing in this section of the street. Halstead worked as a city park commissioner, overseeing Downing Park across from his home. The park opened in 1897, and was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, designers of Central Park, Prospect Park, and many park systems across the U.S.

Similar to 154 Dubois Street, this duplex has a raised basement and simple facade. Small wings on either end of the building are unique, and may have provided an additional room for occupants. Homes like these were marketed to young couples in the 1850s and 60s, such as Matthew Clarendon and Jane Patton, who took up residence here before relocating to Brooklyn in 1865.

This unusual duplex shows off a shingled Queen Anne style central bay. Fish scale shingles and beadboard siding add visual complexity to the bay, whose upper portion is supported on decorative dwarf columns. Duplexes of the 1880s in Newburgh began to change spatial organization, placing one unit upstairs and the other on the ground floor, as opposed to two units side by side.

Closing out this street is a house common in form but unusual in artisanship. It’s positioned at Dubois’s intersection with Gidney Avenue, a meandering 18th century farm road left intact by city planners. Brickwork at the edges of this multi-sided bay is remarkably held together with little or no mortar to bind the bricks. The jagged, tooth-like appearance is rare in the city, and the other example is in the house of Andrew Little, built by the mason John C. Van Zile in 1886 on Johnston Street.