2015 Charles E. Peterson Fellowship Report

Both the Warren House (1850) in Newburgh and Chichester’s Inn (1680-1710) in Huntington tell defining stories about the New York towns that house them. As the recipient of The Charles E. Peterson Fellowship this summer, I was given the opportunity to research these two pre-1860s buildings, and compose their histories as they have been interpreted and transmitted by those who constructed, inhabited, recorded, and preserved them.  While one (Chichester’s Inn) took me back to the early settlement period through the narrative of a family who built the seventeenth century inn on a historic stagecoach route, the other (Warren House) summoned an often overlooked architect, Calvert Vaux, who left a profound imprint on nineteenth-century American taste and design. These buildings will become part of the 100 Classic Buildings series of the New York State contributions to SAH Archipedia and writing their entries has enriched my understanding of the multicultural climate of New York State that so impacted the distinctive architecture of early America.

Tonia Sing Chi
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Columbia University