National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Asbury Historic District

A National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for Asbury Historic District Narrative Description Summary Paragraph: "The Asbury Historic District is situated in the Town of Saugerties, Ulster County, New York at the northern end of a fertile agricultural zone bordered by limestone ridges running along the Hudson River on the east and a bluestone shelf at the base of the Catskill Mountains on the west. It contains just under 250 acres and is composed of four farms created in the eighteenth century, three of them by the division of the Trumpbour Homestead, which was settled in the 1730s (NR-listed 1983). The fourth farm was purchased by a Trumpbour family member in 1805; it also was the site of grist and saw mills. The farms are essentially intact with their associated buildings and agricultural land. All are distinguished by limestone houses ranging in design from Dutch Colonial (Trumpbour Homestead) to Early Republic. All have barns surviving from different eras, one being a New World Dutch Barn type and another a concrete-block barn with a patent gambrel roof built ca. 1945 after a nineteenth-century complex burned. A number of story-and-a-half wood-frame (and one built of brick) dwellings, a distinctive regional type, were added to the farms from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. In the early nineteenth century, a small hamlet developed at the intersection of King’s Highway, the principal north/south route along the west side of the Hudson River, with roads leading east to the river and west to the mountains. It included a store, wagon and blacksmith shop, a schoolhouse, and a Methodist Church, none of which are extant. A Methodist cemetery remains on the church property, and the Trumpbour family burial ground also is extant. Formerly known as Trumpbourville, by 1875 the hamlet was renamed Asbury in honor of the Methodist leader." Statement of Significance Summary Paragraph: "The Asbury Historic District is significant under Criteria A in the areas of exploration and settlement, ethnic heritage, and agriculture as a rare surviving example of a rural landscape representing nearly 250 years of agricultural use initiated by Johannes and Christina (Fiero) Trumpbour in the 1730s and sustained by their heirs into present times. The Trumpbour family arrived in the Hudson Valley in 1710 as Palatine refugees and were settled in West Camp by the English government to harvest naval stores. The 3,000 Palatines arriving in New York in 1710 represented the largest mass immigration into America at that time. They represented a large group within the ethnic European mix that made up the “Dutch” identity in New York (an identity that can be distinguished as other-than-English), but their significance has been overshadowed by the Dutch largely because of their refugee status and their history as tenants. With the failure of the re-settlement scheme, the Palatines were released from their obligation to the English two years after arriving in West Camp. It was at this time that Johannes Trumpbour obtained about 250 acres of land in a small fertile valley in Saugerties between the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains and became part of a settlement of Palatines that were significant in the history of the town and the region. The district is also significant in documenting the settlement, domestic, and social history of a group of interrelated Palatine families over several centuries. The district is also significant under Criterion C for its surviving domestic and farm architecture, ranging in time from the early 1700s into the mid-1900s. Although commercial and trade buildings have been lost, as well as a church and schoolhouse, the district retains virtually all the houses depicted on nineteenth-century maps. Stone houses associated with each of the Trumpbour family were built at various times in the eighteenth century and are distinctive examples of this Ulster County architectural tradition. Some of them share characteristics with other houses associated with the Palatine ethnic group, notably bank houses with basement kitchens. Others reflect the emergence of a national identity after the Revolution. Wood-frame houses also have distinctive characteristics associating them with the region. All are story-and-a-half, gable-roof dwellings with symmetrical plans and facades based on the traditional Dutch form. Agricultural buildings from different periods retain distinctive characteristics of farm architecture as it evolved over time. One barn has New World Dutch framing with iconic anchor bents; the most recent is a mid-twentieth-century concrete-block dairy barn with a patent truss gambrel roof." Project funding was provided in part by a Historic Preservation Fund grant to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, administered by the State, Tribal, Local Plans and Grants division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (grant number P20AF00037).

National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Asbury Historic District

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