by Shannon Butler
This week, we investigate the Pringle Home as we continue to look at interesting buildings of Poughkeepsie that are no longer standing. Before we begin, let’ s answer the thought that just popped into some of your minds by saying: no, it’s not the home of the delicious potato chips (disappointing, we know). Actually, it has a much more sentimental value than a tasty sour cream and onion crisp. The home was the creation of a trio of loving siblings. They were devoted to each other and to the idea that men in their elder years should be able to retire in peace, comfort, and dignity. So began the story of “The Pringle Home for Aged Literary Men.”
Margaret, Samuel, and Mulligan Pringle all lived in New York City in the early 1800s. Margaret married David Fenton and the two had no children; they lived a very frugal life in Greenwich Village, surrounded by writers, artists, and musicians. Her brothers both worked hard in their lives and neither ever married or produced any children. When her brother Mulligan retired in his later years, he had no place in which to grow old, no one to care for him, and he died alone. This concerned both Margaret and Samuel as they began writing their wills, and they started making plans for their wealth to go into a home for retired men. Margaret was no doubt inspired by some of the men who lived around her in Greenwich Village when she decided that the rooms in the home should be given to men of talent; in other words, writers, artists, and musicians.
After Margaret died in 1897, Samuel saw to it in his will that their money would go into a fund for the Pringle Memorial Home. By 1899, Clarence Fenton (David and Margaret’s nephew) was on the hunt for a building to use for the home. The Poughkeepsie Eagle News mentioned that the former home of Col. Oliver T. Beard had been chosen, which was located at 153 Academy Street. The house was a remarkable mansion that was said to have over $40,000 worth of furniture and antiques inside. By 1901, the home received its first “inmates,” as the papers proclaimed, one being a “musical genius and a Russian by birth” (though he was actually a Polish music teacher named Cassius Podgorski). The home quickly filled with writers, clergy, and artists in residence, including Casimir C. Griswold (1834-1918), a Hudson River School artist who had worked in Rome and New York City and exhibited his works all over the world. There was also William Forrest Gilchrist, a newspaper editor and dramatic critic.
The home provided a place for these men to retire with grace. They each had a lovely room, food, clothes, and care along with the company of other men who, they could befriend, all exactly what the Pringle siblings envisioned. However, the inhabitants of the home would inevitably die over time, and there was not a large number of men needing such care. The number of inhabitants dwindled down to six by 1947, which was right about the time there was talk of selling the property. The Tabernacle Baptist Church purchased the property in the late 1950s and used the home as an educational building until the 1970s, when it was torn down. Today, you can find many of the former inhabitants buried alongside one another in the Pringle Memorial Home plot at the Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery. There are two long rows of men buried in section A, about 20 graves or so.
References:
Poughkeepsie Eagle News – 24 Sep 1900, 18 Feb 1901
Poughkeepsie Journal – 28 Mar 1947, 21 Nov 1955
The Pringle Memorial Home, The New York Community Trust brochure
Images:
01 – Photo of the Pringle Memorial Home on the corner of Academy and Holmes Streets
02 – Colored postcard of the Pringle Memorial Home, 1917
03 – Article from the Poughkeepsie Eagle News, 18 Feb 1901
04 – Aerial view, 1955
05 – Aerial view, 1970
06 – Aerial view, 1980
