Mary McTamaney

A big construction project is underway in east Newburgh. You certainly see it if you go to Horizons-on-Hudson Elementary School or if you travel South Street as a route through Newburgh. You don’t notice it as much if you drive quickly along Water Street because the big Bourne Apartment building obstructs some of your view uphill. Slow down next time you arrive at South and Water Streets and notice that the woodlots that were behind Bourne are stripped out and something is happening on those dirt acres that run along Montgomery Street. A mixed-use housing project is coming, tentatively called “The Green” by its developers, Kearney Realty, the same company that built the apartment complex called East End Lofts on South Colden Street. The Green was covered well by this newspaper in its August 5, 2026 issue where descriptions and architect’s renderings can be seen.

What can be seen only in the memories of older Newburghers, however, is the housing that was once at these intersections – single and multi-family homes along Montgomery Street, South Street and the totally vanished Smith Street. Smith was one of Newburgh’s oldest streets dating back to the layout of the Village of Newburgh at the dawn of the 19th century. The hillside above Water Street north of First Street was the farm of Benjamin Smith and, as he divided it into building lots, he called the central roadway Smith Street. The majority of Smith Street disappeared under Varick Homes in the early 1970’s but its northernmost segment was gobbled up before that in 1952 as Newburgh’s first high-rise apartment was built. Anne Bourne, a Leroy Place resident and widow of a brickyard entrepreneur, gave the money to construct new low-income apartments at the northwest corner of Water and South Streets. The high-rise was named for her. When it was built, that project bit off the northernmost segment of old Smith Street, the block from South to a little cross-street also destroyed named Barclay Street. Ebenezer Baptist Church elders may remember that their first church was a tall brick sanctuary on Water Street at the corner of Barclay before they bought their much larger present church on First Street in 1957.

The block of Smith Street that ran from South Street to Barclay had a nickname through the twentieth century: Cart Alley. It was an eclectic mix of mostly brick structures that were constructed to be modest homes and some first intended to be stables and storage barns. The roadway of “Cart Alley “was narrower than the rest of Smith Street since it was hardly a through street (Barclay also was only an alley). Yet, it was home to generations of working class Newburghers, a few of whom ran little businesses there. It was also a long-standing racially integrated block, like Washington and Clark Streets were on the southside of the city. Out the doors of the little homes on Cart Alley each day, came laborers and wagon drivers, bakers, watchmen and brickyard workers. A few families ran small businesses in the alley. Miss Frances Payne operated a laundry in her home at 148-152 Smith Street in the early 20th century and she was followed at that spot and occupation by Mrs. John Amos whose husband had a small contracting company. Joseph Hearst ran his taxi and delivery express service at #140-142. Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s John Goncalves and his son operated a carpentry business and George and John Holiday were masons.

In the two photos I could find of the excavation of the Smith Street hillside neighborhood behind Bourne Apartments, the old homes and businesses are empty. The big timbers jutting out from under the rooflines of the upper stories were there to support ropes to hoist heavy items into the lofts of the early warehouse spaces. The east side of Smith Street north of South Street was already a gaping hole by the time these photos were taken but few structures were on that east side. The Goncalves carpentry shop had been there at #139 Smith Street and may have been the same place that operated as an early pottery by Selah Reeve in colonial Newburgh. One landmark that still shows in 1952 in the top left corner of one photo is the side of the elegant big Imperial Apartment House that sat on South Street at the corner of Smith. See it in better detail at the New York Heritage archive site: https://nyheritage.org/collections/newburgh-removed-urban-renewal-newburgh-ny.
The Imperial wasn’t removed to build Bourne but it didn’t last long afterward.

There may yet be local folks who lived in The Imperial or in the neighborhood across from Horizons on Hudson School. Call your family and old friends and gather the stories of this place about to be transformed again.