Work to restore ruins of historic Frog Alley house could be finished soon
Construction to restore the historic ruins of the Louw-Bogardus House on Frog Alley began in April and could be completed soon, the executive director of the Friends of Historic Kingston said.
Jane Kellar said the construction work began when the state lifted restrictions that had been imposed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She said masons have been on the site and have taken down one of the walls of the ruins in order to restore it. The bricks were numbered and will be put back in place as part of the work, Kellar said, adding that she has gotten calls from people concerned about the ruins being taken down.
“It will be the ruin again,” Kellar said Tuesday.
The ruins are being stabilized as part of a project that is benefitting from $472,500 in state funding provided to the city of Kingston through New York’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, or DRI. The city was awarded $10 million to use on various projects in Uptown.
Kellar said Friends of Historic Kingston, which owns the Frog Alley site, also raised funding to put toward the project.
The project was esti
mated to cost $658,375. In addition to the state funding and money raised by Friends of Historic Kingston, in-kind services are being provided by affordable housing agency RUPCO.
The Louw-Bogardus House, which was built in the 17th century, is located on Frog Alley between North Front Street and Schwenk Drive. The Friends of Historic Kingston group purchased the property from the Kingston Urban Renewal Agency in 1975 to prevent it from being demolished.
According to Friends of Historic Kingston, the history of the house dates back to around 1661 when Pieter Jacobsen established milling operations and built a mill house just north of the stockade wall of the Wiltwyck settlement that became Kingston. The residence then passed through a succession of family members, including mason Nicholas Bogardus, who is believed to have enlarged the house around 1770.
The house was ultimately gutted by fire in the 1960s, according to the Friends group.
Kellar said the current restoration work was necessary due to a bulge in one of the walls of the ruins. She said once the project is completed, the chainlink fence around the structure could be removed to allow the public to have access again.
The project would also involve installing some signs and adding park amenities to the site, Kellar said. She said that would be done to improve the visitor experience.
Future plans involve how to “interpret” the site to tell the whole story of the area, including the Dutch settlement of the land but also the Lenape people and culture who existed there already, Kellar said.