In this blog post, we decided to look at an interesting piece of dog history. Twenty twenty-three marks 215 years since the New York State Legislature decided that all dog owners must make sure that their dogs have collars and that their family name (meaning the owner’s) is visible on that collar. Is this a very random piece of history? Yes, it is. Did you know this random fact? Probably not.

Buried within the collections of the Local History Room is a box with a thick leather ledger inside. On the cover of this book, someone wrote in pen, “Chas. E. Dobbs, Daybook. Feb 1. 1906 to” and that's it. However, the pages inside the ledger are a bit more complicated than a simple daybook, as newspaper articles and musical programs are plastered over the older handwriting that once marked its pages.

The invention of the moving picture was a big deal at the turn of the 20th century! Watching fast moving images of people on a big screen, as opposed to watching actual people in real time on the stage took some getting used to. However, not everyone was quick to jump on the movie making trend, nor did everyone immediately see this new technology as an art form. In spite of this, there was a group of men in Poughkeepsie who believed that not only was this art, and the future for theater goers, but also that it was going to make them some money. In 1917, the Elgar Company was formed, partly as a real estate venture focused on buildings for the arts. This company included men like Ely Elting, who owned a major clothing store on Main Street, and the president of Luckey, Platt and Co., William DeGarmo Smith. The company quickly changed its name to the Poughkeepsie Theatre Corporation, and rumors began to spread of their desire to build a major motion picture theater. While this was not the first theater built for the purpose of showing motion pictures in town, it was much larger than the previously [...]

By Shannon Butler Did you know that the library has a big birthday coming up? More specifically, the anniversary of the opening of Adriance Memorial Library! Save the date, October 21, 2023, for the special celebration event. We will honor the library namesake and benefactors, the Adriance Family, who financed the construction of this building through a donation on behalf of the family. Over the past century, the library has expanded, both in collection and in size, to include several branches and partnerships, but it would not have been possible without first establishing a permanent location. The public library for the City of Poughkeepsie bounced around quite a bit during the 19th century. It started out at 324 Main Street, then moved to Union Street.  From there it moved into the courthouse for a spell, and then to the newly built high school in 1872, which was located on the corner of Washington Street and Lafayette Place. It wasn’t until the deaths of John Peter Adriance, who died in 1891, and his wife, Mary Platt Adriance, who died in 1895, that the funds for the creation of a new library became available. In the summer of 1896, their children and other [...]