The Metro gets closer to landmark status
A state board has recommended a Midtown building — set to be turned into, among other things, a film production center — be made a national historic landmark.
The Metro, a South Prospect Street building once home of the Pilgrim Furniture Factory, has been recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places by the state Board of Historic Preservation, according to Marissa Marvelli, a historic preservation specialist working on The Metro project.
“(The nomination) is now being considered by the Na-
tional Park Service for listing to the National Register of Historic Places,” Marvelli said in an email. “It typically takes 2-3 months to hear back from them, which means we should know by mid-June at the latest.”
“It’s expected that it will be listed,” Marvelli said.
In November, RUPCO, a Kingston-based affordable housing provider, said it hoped to secure tax credits and start construction of a film and television production studio in September.
The national listing needs to be accomplished before the agency can receive the tax credits.
The agency views the project as an important one “that has gained much attention,” particularly from the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council, which listed it a “priority project.”
When completed, The Metro is expected to house a television and film production center called Stockade Works, which will be headed by actress and director Mary Stuart Masterson, who lives in Dutchess County.
The single-story brick building started out as a factory of the Pilgrim Furniture Company. Built in 1946, the first factory was the first to be built in the Kingston area after World War II and is “significant as an early example of a modernist factory in the region,” according to a historic accounting by Guy Kempe, vice president of RUPCO’s community development.
“Its construction, which required authorization from the federal government, was hampered by nation-wide material shortages,” the accounting says.
The building was designed by Albert E. Milliken, a Kingston architect.
“While Milliken’s design for the Pilgrim Furniture building was primarily functional, it features an attractive Art Moderne style façade,” Kempe’s accounting reads. “A projecting section with curved brick walls, glass block, and a semicircular aluminum canopy helped to draw visitors to the furniture company’s showroom and offices.”
In 1951, Pilgrim Furniture sold the building to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which used the building as a Hall of Records.