This week is the 50th anniversary of a Newburgh tragedy. In December, 1970, the Palatine Hotel was demolished. Its red bricks were scooped into dump trucks along with its copper and zinc roof trims and its carved granite doorways and window frames. The stained-glass panes that crowned each front window on its ground floor were taken away (over a year later, I saw two of them for sale at Mid-Valley Mall in a gift shop). The massive stained-glass stairway landing window depicting boats out on the Hudson River also must have been salvaged and sold. I hope so. It would be good if someone were still enjoying that glowing scene.
The loss of the Palatine Hotel pretty much marked the end of the destruction phase of Urban Renewal. By the time it was targeted and taken, most of Newburgh on the hillsides below its Grand Street location was bare. The stated purpose of needing the land on which the hotel stood was to build a county office building that would continue the presence of Orange County services to the eastern “shire” or sector of this county, a tradition since 1840. A county office building never rose on that emptied lot and today it is the sloping front lawn of the Newburgh Free Library. Instead, the county pulled off the west addition of the old courthouse across the street and built a modern office complex there along Liberty Street. It only served that purpose for three decades. Today, those same county services are in the old armory building at the corner of Broadway and Johnston Streets and the former county building at 123 Grand Street is owned by the city.
What was lost by destroying an old hotel? Architectural beauty vanished, certainly, plus a neighborhood anchor that served as a crucial gathering place for civic and historic events. Then, the empty space was reconfigured to remove the street grid and the road and sidewalks were plowed under as well. Third Street was cut off at Grand and no longer served as a cultural and commercial corridor up from the public piers along the river. Closing Third Street and siting the new public library across it also closed the front gate and entry walk to the Dutch Reformed Church, forever making that building harder to use and blocking its view out to Newburgh Bay. The five-story Palatine had 116 guest rooms plus dining rooms, public parlors and multiple staircases and elevators. Might it have been rehabilitated into the needed office building?
When it opened in 1893, the Palatine was hailed as the queen of Hudson Valley hotels. It was popular for overnight trips from New York City in its early days. Although only 300 automobiles had been sold in the US in 1893, the fledgling American Automobile Association sponsored ads for the new Palatine as a perfect motoring adventure destination. Guests at the Palatine included Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and the acting family the Barrymores who performed at Newburgh’s Academy of Music Theater. During its July 4th weekend opening in 1893, people paid $1 just to tour the elegant facility and guests invited to opening day dined on a multi-course feast at 9 p.m. and danced until dawn rose over Mt. Beacon outside the eastern windows.
The Newburgh Board of Trade (the forerunner of the city’s Chamber of Commerce) called for a first-class hotel for Newburgh in 1891 and raised $80,000 in stock subscriptions to build the grand hotel. Ultimately, it cost $150,000 to complete. Over its life, the hotel was headquarters for service club meetings of the Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary and was the favorite catering place for receptions of all kinds. One special feature of the Palatine was its 5th floor piazza where guests could enjoy a vista of the entire landscape of east Newburgh and the Hudson Valley.

But, like so many other resources in Newburgh, changing times triggered its demise. By 1959 people were excitedly staying in a new Holiday Inn and the Palatine was being converted into a “retirement club,” a residential hotel for senior citizens. Although the Women’s World War Veterans Inc. opened a fund drive to buy the Palatine and make it their national headquarters, they failed to raise enough money and no other organization or official had the imagination to bring new life to the aging structure. The Newburgh Savings Bank, which had foreclosed on the last hotel owners, sold the building to the city for $71,000, less than half of its construction cost and it was put into the Urban Renewal cauldron.
On this 50th anniversary of a destructive event, plans have been announced to put a new hotel on Grand Street. Two blocks south of the old Palatine site, a Sullivan County developer hopes to open a hotel, restaurant, catering hall and even roof garden in the former civic gathering spots of the Masonic Temple, YMCA and American Legion. Perhaps the name of our first settlers, the refugee Palatines, will be attached to some part of this venture and Newburgh can claim having a grand destination hotel again.