The Josiah Hasbrouck House

There are many stories of success in the young republic.  Few, however, are preserved in such extraordinary detail.  The fashionable house built by Colonel Josiah Hasbrouck was a testament to the Jeffersonian ideal of pride in the rural, agricultural tradition. It was also the hub of a thriving, successful gentleman's farm that sustained three generations of Hasbroucks.

Josiah Hasbrouck was born to a prominent family in the small upstate New York village of New Paltz.  He grew up in the large stone house built by his grandfather Jacob in 1722, today known as the Jean Hasbrouck House at Historic Huguenot Street.

As young man, Josiah served in the Revolutionary War as part of the Ulster County Militia. It was after this first taste of public service that Josiah married a local Dutch woman, Sarah Decker, and inherited his boyhood home. In the years that followed, Josiah was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, an honor that would change his life and the lives of his descendants.

Josiah served during the administrations of Jefferson and Monroe, and was witness to building and development of forward-thinking capitol city.  When Josiah returned to New Paltz after serving in Congress, he wanted to create a new home based on the heady architecture he had seen in Washington D.C. and Virginia. In 1809, he purchased a small farm, mills and a stone house from the Terwilliger family. Here, a few miles outside the village, he began construction of his family's new home on a knoll overlooking the Plattekill Creek.  The home is based on a design by Asher Benjamin, a notable architect of the early 1800s, and took five years to complete.  During construction, Josiah purchased adjoining land, increasing the size of the farm to over 1,000 acres. 

The house features grandly proportioned rooms and a distinctive faux marble center hallway.  The original finish, complete with a floridly inscribed "1814" remains intact today.  Downstairs, double parlors front the house, while a private family dining room, a school room and a kitchen fill out the back part of the house.  On the second floor, there are four bedrooms and a child's room later carved out of a portion of the generous hallway.  The third floor was given over to storage and living space for slaves and later servants.

Because much of the house was not lived in after 1885, it was not subjected to modernizations that could have altered its original design.  The succession of tenants who lived in part of the house over the course of seventy years made few changes. The house was donated to Historic Huguenot Street by Annette Innis Young, Josiah's great-great granddaughter, in 1958.  The house, which is filled with three generations of furnishings, clothing, books and documents left by the Hasbrouck family, is open to the public on a limited basis.