Newburgh Heritage

Newburgh’s biggest land development

By Mary McTamaney
Posted 5/30/24

May 30th is an anniversary that Newburgh has forgotten. For over a century after the Civil War, it was the national Decoration Day when communities held ceremonies to remember those who fought and …

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Newburgh Heritage

Newburgh’s biggest land development

Posted

May 30th is an anniversary that Newburgh has forgotten. For over a century after the Civil War, it was the national Decoration Day when communities held ceremonies to remember those who fought and died for our country. People picked the garden flowers abundant in late May and together carried them ceremoniously to each cemetery where they set them at the graves of veterans who had died in service. It may be because so many people were expected to be out together with family on that date that two Civil War veterans decided to kick off their land development sale May 30, 1888. Henry McCoun and Charles Weygant invested together to buy 100 acres of what had long been the Robinson Farm in south Newburgh. Henry Robinson had farmed 267 acres of land that ran from his homestead at South William and Liberty Streets up and over the hillsides to the slopes of the Quassaick Creek valley. Mr. Robinson died in 1866 and his heirs slowly agreed to sell off the land. Two old friends, McCoun and Weygant, saved enough money on their return to civilian life that, after two decades, they developed a plan to create a new community in their hometown.

Post-war Newburgh was growing quickly, incorporating as a city in 1865 and attracting many new industries. Streets along the eastern wards of Newburgh, and particularly the south wards, were bustling with workers but housing was scarce to accommodate them. McCoun and Weygant not only bought 100 acres from Robinson descendants but did all the infrastructure work on those acres to make it ready for housing. They quickly surveyed, engineered and landscaped eight streets with 450 building lots and offered buyers a plot in the new neighborhood they named Washington Heights that came with everything (water, sewer, electric, bluestone sidewalks, granite curbs and street trees) but the house itself.

On the Decoration Day weekend of 1888, the developers held a well-publicized land auction. They presented plot maps and a steady sales pitch. Brass bands were hired to walk the new neighborhood and a hot-air balloon was hired to ascend over the land and offer a birds-eye view.

Sales were brisk and scores of building lots sold the first day with many more in the subsequent weeks. “The Heights” was an instant hit. As soon as houses began to rise, the city trolley system added a spur up Liberty Street to serve them. The new neighborhood provided a boom to builders and members of the trades as well. Some contractors built, or were engaged by new owners to build, groups of adjacent homes all incorporating matching styles and trims that made it simpler and less expensive to buy from the supply companies like the Newburgh Planing Mill.

Small front and back yards for each home set off the walkable streets that would soon be shaded by the rows of new trees that came with the property. The Heights design promoted neighborliness among the hundreds who were settling in together as the nineteenth century came to a close.

The real estate office for McCoun and Weygant was set up in a new building at the southwest corner of Liberty and Renwick Streets – still standing with distinctive arched brick windows. Soon a U.S. Post Office substation was established there too, making the perfect gateway building to Newburgh’s newest district. It would be only two years later, in 1891, that the population of Washington Heights grew so dramatically that it required a new school of its own. Grammar School #6 rose up across from the post office and the gateway to The Heights was complete.