Statistics of Newburgh Waterfront Destruction

For those of us born after the destruction of the Newburgh Waterfront, it is impossible for us fully understand the loss of something we never had to chance to experience. Looking at old photographs like the one above helps. We see a dense prosperous city, full of life. We can imagine all those chimneys puffing out smoke and families gathered around fires sharing stories. We can imagine what it was like to have a butcher, a baker, and a grocer at almost every corner who probably all knew your name and your mother’s name. It is a very stark contrast to what Newburgh has become today. Even so, there is still enough of the city left behind to re-urbanize it and make it prosper.

Newburgh historian, Mary McTamaney was kind enough to share some urban renewal statistics in a speech she gave a few years back. Looking at these numbers, Newburgh really was NYC’s 6th borough. The figures below represent what was lost during urban renewal.

Churches: 673,448 cubic feet
Retail: 7,510,260 cubic feet
Storage (“warehouses and commercial structures converted to storage”): 1,868,560 cu.ft.
Office Space: 871,650 cu. ft.
Factories: 670,810 cu.ft.
Other non-residential structures: 252,090 cu.ft.

“This report never included residential buildings. Yet, we know that well over 50 acres of Newburgh were cleared. Entire streets like Fourth, Fifth, Barclay, Hudson, Garner, Smith and High Streets were obliterated. Looking through city directories before the destruction began can help estimate the residential loss statistics by following the geography of the built environment now gone. It is easy to count over 1,300 now missing addresses.

Old directories in the library told me these sample things about Newburgh 50 years ago: Within the city limits, Newburgh then supported 5 theaters, 2 roller rinks, 20-30 apartment buildings, 15 automobile showrooms, 6 truly local banks, 30-40 barbershops and an equal number of beauty shops for women, 10 bus lines, 4 bottling companies, over 50 clothing stores and over 25 clothing manufacturers, 20 drug stores, 6 appliance stores, over 70 homes renting furnished rooms, 12 furniture stores, 11 hardware stores, over 100 corner grocery stores, 5 ice cream manufacturers, 16 jewelry stores, 20 music teachers giving private lessons, 9 photographers, over 60 doctors who lived here in the city where they practiced, 66 restaurants, 15 shoe stores, 20 shoe repair shops and 2 shoe shiners, 21 tailors, 6 upholsterers, 3 window cleaners.

No era was more transforming to Newburgh than the half century since 1960″.

West Shore Train Station on far right. Buildings on left all destroyed

– Photos courtesy of John G. Arnott

For more photos of the obliterated Newburgh Waterfront click here.

10 Comment

  • Thank you for posting… i had no idea…. what a beautiful city it must have been…..

  • Cher I think a good project would be to replicate what was demolished in a SketchUp model to explain in 3d what was lost.

  • That would be a great idea! Perfect centerpiece for Newburgh Museum one day….

  • Amazing to read those statistics. I didn’t know that there were actual streets that are no longer there. Do you know where they were?
    It’s so incredibly sad to see these pictures of buildings ready to be demolished.

  • If anyone seriously wants to work on a project like that, between Mary McTamaney, The Lange’s, Mel Johnson and myself, we have the knowledge and resoources — we just lack the technological skills.

  • Colleen, there is a historical map floating around on the internet that shows building for building of what existed on the waterfront. You can’t necessarily see all of the streets, but it’s a great comparison.

  • And the reasoning for this as stated in the 1967-1969 Comprehensive Development Plan for the City of Newburgh, funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: “unless the remaining white man non-Puerto Rican and his money can be encouraged to stay and additional large numbers of such persons reenter the eastern portion of Newburgh, it will go almost entirely black and Puerto Rican.”

  • Looking for picture of the old Crystal Palace Lunch and Drug Store