This past Saturday, Columbia University urban design students conducted a site survey in Newburgh and Beacon. They conducted interviews with community members to hear their stories, which will be compiled later into a visual presentation. To learn more about what students are studying this semester, click here.
Last Friday, October 2, Columbia University urban design students made a site visit to Newburgh and Beacon. They met in the Atlas Studios Warehouse. Speakers included city manager, Michael Ciaravino, and city planners Dierdre Glenn and Alexandra Church, among others. Students had a meet and greet with Newburgh stakeholders and bus tour of the city. It’s very exciting to have Columbia back for another semester! To learn what they will be studying this semester, check out this past post.
If you’d like to participate in one of Columbia’s on site events, the students will be back in Newburgh October 17th.
-Photos by Nans Voron
Something I have been vocal about in the past is the desire to have a bookstore in the City of Newburgh. They might be a dying breed, but bookstore alternatives are becoming very popular. I’m working on my own project for something like this in the Spring. In the meanwhile, I’m so pleased the Fullerton Center Free Community Book Exchange has been formed! You can visit starting this Sunday, 297 Grand Street.
Inspired by a fan of Fullerton who needed to give away a lifetime collection of hundreds family books, Michael Green offered the Carriage House at Fullerton as a Give and Take situation: A Fullerton Center Free Community Book Exchange.
The left bay of the carriage house was cleared out, tables and shelves were donated augmented by tables made by Jeff and via word of mouth, and boxes of hardbacks and paperback books started pouring in. Newburgh neighbors revealed: the book subject range was astonishing. Testing the waters a soft opening was held on Saturday. People brought books, people took books; most did both. People stayed and chatted about books, people sat down and ruminated about books—a word as well as a book exchange.
So, off we go! The Fullerton Cultural Center Community Free Book Exchange will now be open for bring ins and take-outs on Sundays from noon-3, starting with this Sunday, October 11th. Located at 297 Grand Street.
As an extra, the CBE is also collecting children’s books for Amina Chaudri, a librarian and author who, with her son and wagon walks though the streets of Newburgh giving out books to local kids. A collection box for Amina is in the Carriage House. Please join us this Sunday!
-Photo from Newburgh Last Saturdays, Lisa Selin Davis
It looks like the Columbia University Urban Design Studio had such a great experience in Newburgh last Fall, they are coming back again in 2015! This semester they will be studying the regional relationships between Newburgh, Beacon and New York City. The similarities and contrasts of the sisters cities leads to a worthy discussion of Newburgh and Beacon’s development, and perhaps collaboration in the future.
According to the syllabus:
The histories and current state of Newburgh and Beacon reveal the Hudson River Valley as a place of great promise and innovation as well as a place of tension and disinvestment. Each city is defined by multiple and overlapping narratives and together they reveal the complex environmental, economic, technological and cultural territories that define the Valley. These narratives have changed over time, shaping settlement patterns, driving the transformations of the natural environment for occupation and exploitation, altering the movement patterns of people and goods and manipulating the exchange and intensity of commerce and culture…
Today new pioneers are again finding their way up the Hudson River, looking for places of opportunity: access to resources, the promise for growth and a higher quality of life at lower-cost. At the same time, people who have lived in the Valley and its cities for generations and those who live there by necessity rather than choice, are also striving to make their cities better places to live and work and to capitalize on their regional contexts…
The Fall 2015 UD Studio will examine not only what can be done but how any actions might be undertaken, with what tools and methods. This entails work at many scales and with many actors and, to the extent that the Hudson River Valley is part of a global system as much as a local system, the studio research will necessarily challenge the language and assumptions of urban design as a practice.
Last year many Newburgh residents thoroughly enjoyed the site visits and student installations. This year they will be in Newburgh and Beacon October 2 for a site visit and October 17 for a site installation. For a glimpse of the final outcome, check out last years final presentations.
73 Bay View Terrace has new owners. Alison Filosa and Larry King, longtime friends of Newburgh artist Judy Thomas, have just closed on their dream home. Alison earned her Masters degree in Urban Planning from Hunter College and has a Horticulture certificate from Brooklyn Botanic Garden. She has worked on the Highline in Manhattan, and is currently a John Nally intern at Wave Hill in the Bronx. Larry King is the head of a high end residential design and metalworking shop based in Clinton Hill Brooklyn and is a motorcycle racing enthusiast. They are looking forward to being part of of the Newburgh community. Welcome!
Habitat for Humanity of Newburgh recently announced their new rehabilitation projects on South Miller Street. The house numbers are 22, 24, and 26; all houses have been featured as Rescue Me homes. Judging from the few photos Habitat posted to their Facebook page, these buildings are deteriorating fast. They will eventually be offered to home owner occupants, changing the vacant tide of South Miller one house at a time.
The Newburgh Community Land Bank also has vacant homes available for purchase on this block if you are interested.
Photos via- Habitat for Humanity Facebook
