The hamlet of Asbury on Old Kings Highway at the far northern end of the Town of Saugerties was recently designated a National Historic Landmark District by the National Park Service.
Saugerties Historic Preservation Commission Chairman Stefan Yarabek says this is the first federally recognized historic district in the Town of Saugerties. A National Historic Landmark District is already in place in the heart of the Village.
And he said it represents quite an accomplishment. “Very few districts get approved; it’s been quite a number of years since the last one has been approved.” It’s hard enough to get a single building declared a National Historic Landmark, let alone a district. Asbury was previously designated a historic district by the State Historic Preservation Office earlier this fall.
Yarabek said he believes the National Park Service cited Asbury’s impressive assemblage of buildings built in the 18th and early 19th centuries and the way they’re laid of with the land in approving the district.
“It’s the spirit of the place,” he said. “It met every requirement for the nomination. We easily did it, the state and federal review was done in an expeditious manner, every threshold was done in minimum time.”
The Commission is now turning its focus to getting the district declared a local historic landmark. He said this lets officials enact preservation regulations that have more teeth than either state or federal designations which are more honorific. While the state designation requires any potential construction projects to go before the Commission for full site-plan review, the local regulations place further restrictions on potential demolitions of historic structures, Yarabek said.
What the designation does not do is change existing zoning or restrict the use of land or restrict things from being adaptively reused.
“But you will not see off-the-shelf factory housing unless it meets preservation guidelines and is well-screened,” he said. “The main requirement is they submit their plans to both the Town Planning Board and the Historic Preservation Commission.
He said such a designation has a number of advantages to residents who live in the district including tax advantages through assistance programs residents can apply for. He added that some of these programs are being made more readily available under a recently passed federal infrastructure bill. Yarabek said the Commission is lobbying for state funding for historic preservation grants that would be made available to individuals.
While such programs are available strictly to those own historic landmark properties outside of landmark districts, within a district anyone can apply, he said.
Yarabek said such a landmark designation increases property values within the district. “It’s unique, and I’m buying into a known quantity,” he said. And it will enhance the image of the Town overall and attract tourists.
Yarabek said they were able to do much of the historical research needed for the designation through research the Commission did for previous stone house tours. They are now updating the Hudson River Valley Ramble map to show the new landmark district.
Asbury is named after the pioneering Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury who was sent to American colonies 250 years ago by Methodist founder John Wesley to spread the fledgling Christian movement across the colonies. The hamlet was home to Rev. John Crawford, a pioneering Methodist circuit preacher who preached throughout Ulster and Greene Counties and married into the Trumpbour Family who loomed large over the hamlet through much of the hamlets’ history since European Settlers first came to the area in the early 1700s.
Crawford was ordained as a full pastor, known as an “elder” in the Methodist Episcopal Church, a predecessor of today’s United Methodist Church by the 1790s.
Crawford is buried in the historic Asbury Cemetery on Schoolhouse Road, not far from the still-extant home where he lived. Once connected to a long-gone Methodist congregation, the cemetery still exists.
The district would not actually get its name until the 1880s when it was named Asbury by local Methodists around the same time Asbury Park, New Jersey, which Yarabek admitted is one of his favorite places outside Saugerties, was also named in honor of the Methodist pioneer.
Asbury residents truly appreciate this history and the district’s unique mix of historic stone and frame structures framed by pristine agricultural lands in full view of the Catskill Mountains, he said. And all of this is accessed by Old Kings Highway which still follows the path of the colonial era thoroughfare it derives its name from, he added.
“The people who have been there were very sensitive and the newcomers are even more sensitive,” he said.
The whole effort to create the district was sparked by the concerned neighbors who were not pleased with an application a couple of years back to place a large-scale solar power generation project on the district’s main agricultural areas. The Commission determined the solar field would diminish the value of the beautiful landscapes of the area and the Planning Board sided with the Preservation Commission and the plan was pulled.
He asserted the Commission understands the importance of solar power projects at a time when officials are scrambling to find zero-carbon energy sources to combat climate change. But he would like to see them limited to portions of the Town already zoned industrial.
“It’s not we’re anti-solar at all,” he said.
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