Newburgh's newly minted poet laureate, Genie Abrams, grew up in the Newburgh that Look magazine named its All-American City in 1952. Her father, Albert Abrams, served as city manager; her home on Farrington Street was an easy walk to Downing Park and the public library, and Water Street was a shopper's paradise.
Her father's successor, Joseph Mitchell, had been recruited by an openly racist city council member and instituted a series of changes to the city's welfare system so draconian—aid recipients were made to collect their benefits at the police station, for one thing—that state regulators under Governor Nelson Rockefeller stepped in and eventually sued, and the mess became known as the Battle of Newburgh.
"He was a hideous creature," Abrams says of Mitchell. "He took a functioning city and ruined it." That was only one of a series of body blows the All-American City would experience in the 1960s. Urban renewal confiscated 1,100 homes and seven entire streets—including the riverfront shopping district and the stability of hundreds of families.
Interstate 84 opened in 1966, whisking travelers past without a glimpse of the city where Washington had run the Revolution, Andrew Jackson Downing had developed and disseminated his philosophy of landscape architecture, and Thomas Edison had brought thousands to the sidewalks to marvel as the lights went on a Monday evening in 1884, a first for any small city in the land.
A Dark Past
By the late 1970s, hundreds of Newburgh's once-elegant brick homes were owned in bulk by absentee landlords, and the once fabulous Ritz Theater, where Lucille Ball had made her stage debut, was a run-down two-screen movie house. Businesses and job opportunities had fled, leaving the city a sitting duck for the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
"My dad was in the Army, so we were traveling from when I was five and came home when I was 15, in the `80s," says Jaqui Watkins, co-owner of Newburgh Mercantile with her husband. "It was scary and depressing; you wondered whether it could ever be a functioning city again. People I remembered from childhood were skeletons; I remember my parents talking about who was on crack. As an Army brat, I'd grown up with all colors and cultures—and it seemed like people in Newburgh were blaming African Americans for the mess, which never made any sense to me."
It was still home, and when Watkins and her husband opened in the late `90s, offering framing services and gifts, she felt something click. "I've always been entrepreneurially minded, and it always felt like I was supposed to have a store on Broadway," she says. "Then one day my mom said 'Your grandfather used to have a store a couple of blocks down the hill from here.' I was stunned—I hadn't known because my grandfather, doing what he had to do as a Black businessman in the `50s, sold moonshine and had a gambling room in the back and had to pay off the cops. The corruption was famous—our city historian was able to tell me the names of the cops involved and everything."
The framing and gift shop closed for a time following the 2008 economic crash, but reopened in 2014, when then-mayor Judy Kennedy's revitalization initiatives began gaining traction. "I did the social media for the Newburgh Illuminated festival from 2015 to 2018; when it outgrew the original focus on small business, I decided my energy could be better used elsewhere."
Today, she runs a Shop Downtown Newburgh Facebook page with almost 2,000 followers and coordinates a coalition of about 35 indie businesses on shop local initiatives. "People that haven't been here in 25 to 30 years have been coming back for Shop Small Saturday, bringing their families, walking around, meeting up for lunch at the Wherehouse, discovering stuff they want to do again, and every year it grows," says Watkins. "My grandfather had to bribe the police to stay in business. Today, I coordinate with them to make the city better for everyone."
Home is Where the Art Is
In 2010, the business moved to a historic building on Grand Street where the couple live upstairs from the shop. "People would drive long distances to get here, because there really wasn't anything like it," he says. "There hadn't been anything to draw them, but now they came here, looked around, and were shocked—and, being artists, they were fascinated. A lot of them found homes and studios and moved in."
Their inaugural Open Studio Tour in 2011 signed up nine artists. "We added ourselves, so it was 11 and we at least had double digits," says Gabor. "We printed 100 maps and we were thrilled when they were all gone." The following year, 33 artists signed on; by 2022, there were over 150, and thousands of visitors.
This year's tour is scheduled for the last weekend in September. "You can walk to almost every location on the map from right here, which is fabulous," says Gabor. "I'm really proud of helping grow the arts community; the city has an active arts commission that does great stuff, and there are working artists tucked away all over the place. And despite Newburgh's reputation, we've loved it here since day one—this has always been a great place to live."
Bon Temps Rouler
Newburgh's first Mardi Gras-style carnival invigorated downtown in February with a classic "second line" parade and live music at Spirit Lab, Wherehouse, and Mama Roux. "We decided we needed to make something happen, so we pulled it together in two and a half weeks, and turnout exceeded our wildest expectations," says Sterling Knight, a New Orleans native and owner of Mama Roux."Everyone did great—we were four deep at the bar. Now I'm holding small business meetings at Mama Roux the third Monday of every month, pulling together a coalition of everyone—the Pilates studio, the boutiques, the welding company," Knight continues. "We want to do something even bigger next year, get everyone involved. Sims Foster, the guy from Sullivan County who's opening the urban resort—he and I actually opened a restaurant together in Chicago, and he'll be at our next meeting."
Foster's plan rehabilitates three vacant Grand Street properties into a hotel, spa, event space, and dining destination, and is expected to be transformative for the area just north of Broadway. A mixed-use revolution actually began two decades ago, when Tricia Haggerty-Wenz purchased the decrepit single-room-occupancy Hotel Newburgh and founded Safe Harbors of the Hudson, which brings together low-income housing, artists' lofts and event space.
Their Cornerstone Residence embodies the "housing first" philosophy, offering 128 safe, well-maintained single-room-occupancy dwellings rich in amenities and services in partnership with Independent Living and SUNY Orange, and now includes a park and is restoring the Ritz Theater.
"It's always been about more than the housing, though that is key," says current executive director Lisa Silverstone. "Bringing in the arts has made it a community hub." Salsa music and movies under the stars, contemporary art openings at the Ann Street Gallery and performances at 2 Alices Coffee Lounge draw in the community, while veterans, people with disabilities, and other once-marginalized folks enjoy the library, pool table, computer lab, and fitness center.
"Planning at the municipal level and with community partners is the path to, hopefully, the economic turnaround of the city," says Silverstone. "Everything can't be supported housing and everything can't be market-rate; we have to make sure that we can bring in both to secure opportunities for generational residents while we welcome new residents and visitors. It's common sense, and it seems like it should be easy, but it's not."
Safe Harbors is currently rehabbing the theater—the lobby is already open and hosting events—while growing their programming and working on a second mixed-use project nearby in partnership with city government. "We're still smoothing the details, but we're very excited," says Silverstone. "It's looking good, and it won't be simply housing but another downtown revitalization hub." Landlord-tenant issues are vanishingly rare at Safe Harbors, and Silverstone points out with pride that the property's outdoor amenities and landscaping have never been vandalized.
Changing Perspective
Lang says the city's school district and law enforcement are on point these days, but he'd love to see a revitalized recreation department. bringing kids from all over the city together. "You don't go to war against people you got to know before you ever heard of hate," he says. "More than a city, this is a collection of villages, and we need to build on that—when I was 10, I was all over the city on my bike, and my mom was fine with it because she knew if I had trouble over in the Heights, the phone would ring on North Miller." So far, he's gotten 28 young people onto career tracks including the military, manufacturing, law enforcement, and the local IBEW (electrician's union) chapter, where he's referred 17 fresh apprentices since 2020, working closely with the school district to identify the kids who might benefit most.
Laura Garcia-Balbuena worked for the school system before taking her current position as community engagement coordinator at the Newburgh Free Library. "The library is a safe place and it's where a lot of us learned English," says Garcia-Balbuena, who moved to the city from Mexico at the age of eight. "Now we work with community members to determine the programming they want. We did a Dia de los Muertos celebration that had great turnout and brought together a great group of women from all over Central America, lots of whom were teachers back home, and now we're planning our Family Day to coincide with Dia de los Niños—it's a reading-themed celebration. Five hundred people came out last year. We had a packed auditorium for our Kwanzaa celebration, too." Along with the festivities, the library—which is managed by the school district—offers a rich menu of services for everyone from infant to elder.
Garcia-Balbuena says that Newburgh's diverse Latin American community gave her a warm place to land as the child of farm workers and just keeps getting better. "So much great food!" she says. "Do I want tacos, or Peruvian ceviche, or to try the new hot dog place? Then there's the new shop with all the traditional Mexican snacks. I see loads of immigrants and people of color launching new little businesses, making this a food hub to rival New York City."
Poet laureate Genie Abrams moved back to Newburgh in 2002 with her family, serving on the City Council for a time and on the Conservation Advisory Council. "When I ran for council in 2014 we had almost 1,000 vacant city-owned houses and now there are less than 10," she says. (There are still several hundred non city-owned vacant and abandoned properties in Newburgh.) "And we've replanted a whole lot of trees. Nowadays I just go out with my little trash-plucker and clean the sidewalks—Public Works does a great job with the streets—and talk to everyone, see if they need anything I can help with. I stepped aside from the Conservation Advisory Council because I felt a younger person, someone of color, should have that spot, and I managed to get that to happen. People ask me if I'm going to run for something again, but I'm happy with poet laureate. 'Why don't you run?' I ask them. 'It's your turn."
