Barrett House

About this property

Barrett House is a historic home located at Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New York, today home to Barrett Art Center. This triple-landmark (National, State, and municipal) Greek Revival brick townhouse was built in the early 1840s. The Barrett House reflects three phases of construction. The original building is a ca. 1842 three-story, three-bay by four-bay Greek Revival brick house with a side-gabled, stepped roof. A two-story, three-bay by two-bay, front-gabled brick addition was constructed to its rear ca. 1867. In the twentieth century, Barrett House achieved notoriety as the family home of Poughkeepsie-born WPA muralist Thomas Weeks Barrett. Jr. (1902-1947), who founded the Dutchess County Art Association (DCAA) in 1935 and lived there until his death in 1947. His artwork, family archive, and DCAA records remain in the house today. Thomas W. Barrett Jr. graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1926, but his energies and artwork centered on the Hudson Valley. Barrett worked professionally as a designer, painter, printmaker, and as a muralist for the Treasury Relief Art Project (1936) and the Works Progress Administration (1937). As a Hudson Valley “American Scene” painter Barrett fashioned a modern iteration of the region's landscapes first immortalized a century earlier by the founders of the nation's first major art movement, the Hudson River School. Barrett turned his artistic attention to the urban landscapes of cities along the Hudson as symbols of a resilient and modern American character. Barrett organized the first art exhibition in Dutchess County at the Luckey Platt Department Store in 1934. Barrett founded the DCAA a year later. Barrett died in 1947 and his sister bequeathed the townhouse to the DCAA in 1974. The DCAA subsequently converted its first and second floor living spaces to four galleries, a community arts space, and offices, and operates under the name Barrett Art Center. Today, the third-floor studio Barrett designed in 1930, with a 7-foot by 9-foot north-facing sky-light, is an active studio used by an artist in residence. The DCAA collection includes artwork – much of it Barrett's – and archives including his family papers, film, photographs, manuscripts, memorabilia, and DCAA records, all of which remain in the house. The three-story, three bay brick building in the Greek Revival style. It is on a raised basement and features brownstone trim and a third story Eastlake style porch. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Early 19th century Poughkeepsie & the Construction of 55 Noxon Street

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Dutchess County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Dutchess County.

More historic places in New York

Browse all historic places in New York.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

New York history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.