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The Italian Center is a late 19th century residence. On Mill Street, houses located here on the upper ridge were large mansions for bankers and lawyers. The Italian Center is of the same architecture and style, and the interior is beautiful as well, with a lot of mahogany and stained glass. The Italian Center is now a clubhouse for the local Italian community.
Further west towards the Hudson River down Mill Street, there are similar urban Victorian houses. Across from the Italian Center on the southside of Mill Street is the location of Matthew Vassar’s former city home. Next to it is an 1830 Baptist church. It is the best example of Greek Revival architecture in the Hudson Valley.
Mill Street continues west down to the river to Mount Carmel Square, which is at the heart of the Italian-American community. The small park or square at the entrance to the Mount Carmel neighborhood is named after the first governor of New York Colony during the Dutch and English period.
Mount Carmel Square is primarily an Italian-American commercial area. One of the businesses is Café Aurora, a well-known pastry shop in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Across the square from the café is Dalio’s, an import specialties shop with products like Italian cheese and salamis. Many shop windows and signs symbolically use the colors white, green, and red as references to the Italian flag.
The area keeps up a generalized ethnic history of the Italian community, although the area has gone through a number of different immigrant groups. Mt. Carmel Square was initially Irish and then Italian, and now it is more mixed, with Mexicans and newer immigrants moving into available housing. Neighborhoods are in constant change; however the commercial center often remains the same as well as the importance of the local ethnic Church.
Mt. Carmel neighborhood is named after Mt. Carmel Roman Catholic Church, which is situated in the center of the neighborhood. The green copper dome of the original church is visible throughout the neighborhood. Many parish churches were organized ethnically in Roman Catholic dioceses. This was the Italian church, and there were other national and ethnic churches in the city. During the mid-20th century, the New York diocese decided it would collapse ethnically oriented parishes into neighborhood churches.
The other Roman Catholic Church around the corner in the same neighborhood is St. Peter’s. It is a much newer building and in better condition than the Mt. Carmel Church. So, Mt. Carmel Church was abandoned as the two parishes were joined. St. Peter’s Church is now called Mt. Carmel Church because the Irish parishioners of St. Peter’s had already mostly moved out of the neighborhood and moved into the town and suburbs of Poughkeepsie after World War II and in the latter part of the 20th century. Mt. Carmel not only brought its parishioners but also the Baroque alters and statuary. Inside St. Peter’s there are Irish-American names on memorial wall plaques as well as Italian sculptures and paintings, which creates an interesting ethnic mix.
Fall Kill Creek runs through the heart of Mount Carmel neighborhood. The Fall Kill begins many miles to the northeast and runs south through the Town of Hyde Park, past Eleanor Roosevelt’s home of “Valkill” (named after the stream), and into the northeastern part of the City, past College Hill and then westward through the Mount Carmel neighborhood to enter the Hudson River just north of the train station.
Mills built along Fall Kill would be driven by the water power, such as textile mills, grist mills, and saw mills, as well as a felt mill in this building across the street from Mount Carmel Church. It was abandoned for years and is now high-scale condominiums.
At this mill site, the Fall Kill flows over a very picturesque waterfall to enter the Hudson River just north of the railroad station by the Children’s Museum at the waterfront. These condominiums in this historic mill are a good example of in-town urban revitalization, historic preservation, and urban recycling all happening in some of the old mill structures that have a certain amount of historical interest, but are also a very good space for residential use.
Most of the workers in the mills lived nearby in the neighborhood. Often the mill owner in early 19th century would build his mansion close to the mill. Mill owner, workers, and the physical mill were all together in the fabric of early industrial cities. However, by the 1840s, most mill owners left their residences close to the mills and went to other mansions higher away from busy industry. The areas down by the river or railroad and their neighborhoods became more working-class and ethnic neighborhoods.
From Mount Carmel Church one can see the railroad bridge. It not only crosses the river east to west at a height of 214 feet, but also extends high above many of the small houses in the neighborhood until the tracks land on the slope in the Cottage Street warehouse district area.
The railroad bridge is important as a historic artifact. Completed in 1888, the City of Poughkeepsie felt that if Poughkeepsie were the only place where the railroad from Massachusetts and Connecticut went off to the Pennsylvania coalfields, it would make the city a very important link. The rail line goes across the river, but it just basically bypasses the city and never really performed the intended function. It’s the only railroad crossing between New York City and Albany and was important up to World War II for troop trains. But, in the 1970s it was abandoned for lack of traffic. There was a fire in the late 70s, during which the ties burned up and the rails bent, so it is now officially abandoned.
There is hope in the future that the line itself can be part of a hiking and biking trail that will go across the Hudson. There are a number of enthusiastic people working on this, although there are many problems, such as liability insurance concerns, that need to be solved.
