Warwick: Then and now

Editor's note: The following article was provided by Warwick Village Historian Jean Beattie May.

WARWICK — With recent changes in the landscape on the north end of Main Street, it is interesting to have a look at some of the early buildings of that area of the Village.

Thanks to its designation as a historic district and listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, many buildings have been preserved, but as the village grows, so, too, do the changes.

A new exhibit in the entrance to the Village Hall features several past and present photographs of the village.

Included are a small house, one of two that the Albert Wisner Memorial Library replaced when money to build it came from the Wisner estate in 1926.

For $1,000
Fred Cary, a former president of Warwick’s First National Bank, owned the land and offered it for $1,000. Although Edward B. Lewis, another prominent resident, preferred to see the library built across the street, an old apartment house located on that property was sold in the late 1920’s and it was eventually acquired by the Standard Oil Co. later becoming Exxon Mobil, and Warwick’s first gas station came into being.

Memorial (nee Forester) Square
Forester Square, as it was once called and later changed to Memorial Square, - (but who has ever heard it called that?) - the small island that holds the Sanford Memorial Fountain and the rock with the bronze plaque honoring Frank Forester at the intersection of Colonial, Maple and Main Street is described in two articles found in the Library Archives written by Miss Hylah Hasbrouck, a beloved teacher who lived a good part of her life in what is now the Key Bank, a house built by James Hoyt in 1810.

The square was the earliest center of Warwick Village even before it was incorporated in 1867 and was named after the English writer, Frank Forester, who put Warwick on the literary map with his book entitled “Warwick Woodlands.”

He loved to hunt and fish in Warwick in the 1840’s and often stayed at the Wawayanda Hotel that once stood at the beginning of Colonial Avenue. That road, still referred to as “King’s Highway,” then “Hudson Street,” was used by George Washington traveling to and from his headquarters in Newburgh and Morristown, N.J.

The Baird of Warwick
Francis Baird, knew what he was doing when he built his tavern right at the confluence of those streets in 1766. It was the leading tavern in the village until 1830 and is one of the Historical Society’s treasured buildings.

According to Miss Hasbrouck’s account, a barn “stood on the vacant lot between the Fred Cary house and the library, where Samuel Youmans kept a harness maker’s shop. In 1857 Joseph Roe used it for a general store.”

Fred Cary’s house stood next to it, an impressive building with a Mansard roof and large front porch (shown in the exhibit) which had been considerably upgraded since it was built in 1825 by Samuel Youmans.

The house and barn were both razed to build the new post office in 1965.

Next to it was the recently razed house which will become the new home of Riehle Opticians. That house, estimated to have been built in the 1800’s, had belonged to John McKee, a hat maker in Warwick’s early days,

The, the farm, the bank, the hospital, the gas station

The Key Bank building had been built on Hoyt’s 30-acre farm which extended to Cherry Street. Miss Hasbrouck was determined to retain the charm of the early days and sold her house to the Chester National Bank in 1967 with the understanding that the house would remain unchanged on the outside. Hoyt’s carriage house was moved to the rear of the Baird Tavern in the 1960’s and serves as a museum of early medical practice by three generations of Doctors Bradner as part of the Historical Society’s collection of buildings.

Part of the Hoyt farm was later sold to Isaac Van Duzer, for whom Van Duzer Place was named. His large farm house with its Mansard roof, was situated on the corner of Maple and Grand Street. Isaac’s daughter Jane married Grinnell Burt, one of the founders of the Warwick Valley Railroad, later the Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad, of which Mr. Burt was president in the late 1800’s.

With the death of his wife, he remarried and built an elegant house on the knoll across the street which he named “the Arches.”

By 1938 Warwick’s first hospital had closed and a new hospital completed, incorporating the Arches as part of its complex. The Van Duzer/Burt house, (shown in the exhibit) which had been occupied by Burt’s daughter, Mary, until her death in the 1950’s, became the Sunoco station.

'One of the finest mansions'
Across the street next to a house on the corner of Main and Wheeler, formerly the site of Country Chevrolet and now Duncan Donuts, standing majestically on a knoll was a house built in the 1840’s by James Wheeler. “Considered one of the finest mansions in town,” it was inherited by his granddaughter, Annie Wheeler White in 1860. Annie opened up the extensive land behind the house, creating Wheeler Avenue, and selling lots along it. Annie’s daughter, Lurana White, founded “Graymoor,” near Garrison, where she started the “Society of Atonement,” a religious community that professed the vow of poverty. It still exists with its Spiritual Life Center which shares Franciscan hospitality and spirituality.

Her house in Warwick became known as “The Hermitage” and was revered by the Franciscans of Graymoor. It was later sold to Fred Cary, who moved across Main Street. The house and knoll were demolished in the 1950’s when Drew’s Garage replaced them.