Alms House design said to be ‘historically sensitive’
KINGSTON, N.Y. » The new apartment building planned for the Alms House property will fit in with the historically designated structure that sits there now, the project’s architect says.
Architect Scott Dutton said he sought advice from government officials about the design of the new building, which will be part of RUPCO’s Landmark Place housing project at 300 Flatbush Ave.
“Guidance for the design of the new structure was sought from [U.S.] secretary of the interior’s guidelines to develop a historically sensitive response to placing a new structure on a historic site,” Dutton said.
The Alms House recently was added to state and national Registers of Historic Places. “And as such,” Dutton said, “strict standards are required to be adhered to in the handling of all aspects of the rehabilitation of the primary structure.”
Being listed on the historic registers makes sites eligible for various public preservation programs and services, such as state grants and state and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits.
The former Alms House is four stories high and sits on a knoll at the highest point on the site, Dutton said.
“The proposed fourstory new structure is similar in massing and scale to the Alms House but is located down a 12-foot gradient from the Alms House and is pulled away from the Alms House to the east by approximately 140 feet,” Dutton said. “The existing tree line that envelops the site on both U.S. Route 9W [East Chester Street] and Flatbush Avenue shall be
"Strict standards are required to be adhered to in the handling of all aspects of the rehabilitation of the primary structure." — Scott Dutton, architect
maintained.”
Dutton has produced computer-generated images
of what the new building and the rest of the site will look like once the project is complete. Those images are contained within City Hall files being examined as part of the Kingston Planning Board’s review.
The board is expected to take up the proposal will it meets at 6 p.m. March 19 on City Hall, 420 Broadway.
RUPCO, a Kingstonbased affordable housing agency, plans to create 34
apartments in the existing vacant Alms House structure and 32 more units in the new four-story building. The housing would be open to individuals 55 and older, and more than half of the units would offer support
services to a mix of homeless populations with special needs.
The agency plans to buy the property from the Ulster County Economic Development Agency for $950,000.
Constructed in the 1870s as a place to care for the city’s poor, the Alms House later was used as a tuberculosis ward in the 1950s and most recently housed the Ulster County government offices.