A look around Kingston’s Rondout neighborhood reveals many signs of the buildings’ lives. Walk past a storefront or home and you can see how well-tended and cared for many places are. The signs, shapes, materials, or features convey a structure’s past as well as its present life. What isn’t visible as often to the eye is the way that the owners, business proprietors, residents, and museum and cultural center personnel unearth, tend to, and expand on the stories of these places – what they used to be, the lives and activities that inhabited them many, many years ago.

Dig a bit and talk with those dwelling in or running businesses and varied enterprises in the Rondout’s buildings and you discover how many folks embrace the histories of their own buildings. They know that it’s part of the treasure and character that reside in each place. Ultimately, the spirit of a community resonates in this sense of history and place.

In conversations, these connections to the building’s and neighborhood’s history pour out easily.

• The owner of The Forsyth B&B points out the large windows of a lower floor beneath the entrance and talks about a shop for ship supplies that existed in the building during the 19th century.
• The proprietor of Milne Inc., an antiques-design-interiors business with a Broadway showroom, notes that the building was a ship engine repair shop in the 1860s.
• The director of the Arts Society of Kingston tells of how this Broadway structure was once the community center for three synagogues, and the richness of the building as a setting for many cultural offerings today.
• A team using painstaking scholarship, archival research, an array of artifacts, and an ingenious use of old recipes is creating the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History in a former kosher bakery on Broadway.

These are just a few of the many stories and places we’ll share in the Mindful Walker tours of the Rondout during this summer and autumn.

The tours highlight a mindful, engaging, and relaxing walk of the neighborhood’s winding streets, paths, and waterfront. We’ll look at architectural gems that reflect the neighborhood’s history and character; learn about native tribes, colonial settlers, immigrants, industrial tycoons, workers, spiritual congregations, activists, and artists; and delve into the Rondout’s transformation from bustling maritime village and a magnet for immigrants, through the decline of the “Lost Rondout,” to revitalization. The two-hour tours are scheduled on the first and third Saturday of each month, at 1 p.m., from July through November. A social hour for those who wish to gather will follow the walks at a local establishment or community setting in the Rondout.

The Forsyth’s 21st Century Chapter

Tamara Ehlin and her husband, Charles Mallea, exemplify Rondout business proprietors and residents who have brought to new life a chapter of Rondout history. The couple have transformed a 19th century edifice on Abeel Street into a beautiful bed-and-breakfast, the Forsyth B&B. Ehlin and her architect husband completed some six months of restoration work before opening the B&B in 2016, according to a Feb. 11, 2018 Daily Freeman article. Ehlin, a trained chef, compiled the historical record of the eyebrow-colonial from the time of the sale of the property by a couple to the D&H Canal Co. in 1826. The house was constructed in 1838, with a low hipped roof, eyebrow windows, and a wide, classical front porch that gave it the appearance of a “Caribbean plantation home,” according to the Daily Freeman article, citing notes that Ehlin provided from an old-house tour.

The Forsyth B&B

The B&B’s four guest rooms, with accompanying bathrooms, have original wood posts and beams, keeping a historic feel, while the features and décor employ a mix of modern chic and vintage furnishings, skylights, and art. Each room has the name of an explorer, growing out of a theme of daring to go where others haven’t yet gone and a continual venturing throughout life.

It’s obvious in a tour around the 4,000-square-foot building with Ehlin that she is keenly aware of the past that resides in the structure: She points out, behind an outdoor trellis, the long windows under the main-floor porch. This was once a storefront for a dealer in shipping supplies. In 1863, a local man named Christian Forsyth purchased the building. During that year, a “Mrs SA Van Keuren” ran an ad in the Courier touting her opening of an ice cream and oyster establishment in Forsyth’s building, according to the Daily Freeman story. When the couple bought the property to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast lodging, Ehlin says, they found many oyster shells buried out back.

Earlier this year, the Friends of Historic Kingston gave a “Local History Award” to Ehlin and Mallea. It recognized their outstanding work in restoration, local history, and community stewardship for the building’s renewed life and a facelift of a barn loft behind the main structure.

Join In a Walking Tour

The stories and historical evidence now form part of the Forsyth B&B as it welcomes visitors and becomes another chapter in the life of a building and in a lively, resilient, consistently reinventing 21st century neighborhood. Walking around the Rondout and being observant, one can see the interplay of its past and present, whether it’s in materials like bluestone or cast iron, or a feature like a round portal-like window that affords a view of the Hudson River on the far horizon and speaks of its maritime character.

Join in an upcoming summer or autumn walk. Tickets are available via EventBrite. Follow Mindful Walker on Facebook. In addition, Mindful Walker plans to highlight more stories of the Rondout and discoveries from the tours on the blog.

Info and Tickets: Walk the Dynamic Rondout
https://rondoutwalks2018.eventbrite.com