Hudson Valley House Parts Makes a Big Move in Newburgh

Old-home buffs rely on Hudson Valley House Parts for replacement house parts original to the eras in which their homes were built. After six years on Broadway in Newburgh, the business moved in February to a bigger space around the corner at 201 Ann Street—where owner Reggie Young hopes to expand awareness of home preservation, the core of his mission.

“So many people don’t have a clue where to start [in house preservation],” Young says. Buying a vintage home can be daunting when replacement fixtures like doorknobs, flooring, doors, windows, or chandeliers are needed. Luckily, Young has a network of pickers along the East Coast who salvage those items from homes before they’re demolished.

Growing up on a Pennsylvania farm, Young was raised with a respect for craftsmanship. “My parents were old-home fans when I was growing up on our farm,” says Young. “Then, as a student at Pratt, I rebuilt a bar on 42nd Street in 1979.”

Young spent more than a decade in Columbia County preserving older homes and teaching classes in preservation in Athens. After a stint in Brooklyn restoring brownstones, Young opened his flagship store in 2018. “I wanted to find a new market for this, and the best place was Newburgh, where buildings were kind of crumbling back then,” he says. “My whole life has pretty much led me to this.”

The Broadway storefront proved a good gamble—until 2020 changed the retail scene. “Everything changed with Covid—now, more than half of my business is sales online, via the website or Instagram,” says Young. “Now that we crate things for shipping, we needed a loading dock as well as a room to pack things. We have both now, along with a parking lot and a yard that will become an outdoor garden. We also have room now to sell flooring and beams, which we didn’t have before. We’ve almost doubled our size in the new space.”

The new shop is well thought-out, too, with dedicated rooms for plumbing fixtures and other specialties. “I can display much more merchandise in a more organized way,” Young says. And the space accommodates bigger pieces, like Art Deco speakeasy doors from Paris that were featured recently in the shop. A walk through the shop (and Instagram) reveals interesting house parts that Young’s customers crave.

“There is no standard to who my buyer is,” Young says. “My clientele includes every imaginable kind of person from all walks of life. They may be here just to buy a doorknob or an escutcheon, all the way up to rebuilding a house and looking for all the components.”

And Hudson Valley House Parts is happy to oblige, according to Young: “Soon we will be offering barns and houses that have been completely taken apart and numbered for reassembly. In particular, we have a 1550’s barn that was exported from England 30 years ago to the Hamptons, and now it’s been disassembled and available for sale.

“All of these are on such a limited time frame, and we are the last ones who are called,” he explains. “Salvaging something is the last thing people think about.” Young’s hoping to change that with education. Additional space in the Ann Street building will allow classes in preservation—from historic mortars to window restoration—to resume.

“I’d like to focus more on education and preservation awareness,” he explains. “What we’re seeing is the total destruction of the historical fabric of our country. I realize that New York City would never be New York City if it hadn’t been torn down and rebuilt 10 times over. But I think we are going to be sorry.”

Young has embraced the community at his shop, too. On March 30, the Ann Street shop hosted a fundraising dinner for the Thornwillow concert series at the nearby Calvary Presbyterian Church; a second one is planned for April 27.

Owning the shop has led to fascinating conversations every day with equally fascinating people, Young says. “There’s nothing consistent about this business from day to day,” he says. “Everything is unique, and everything has a story.”

This article appears in April 2024.