Residents and businesses in the city’s Wilbur neighborhood will be eligible for new grants and other benefits after the hamlet along the Rondout Creek was added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places. A similar effort for the Ponckhockie neighborhood was rejected in the latest round of additions to the Historic District registry.

First laid out in 1836, the hamlet of Wilbur was once a center for quarrying the bluestone and limestone used to build sidewalks from New York City to Havana. The neighborhood, along with the municipalities of Rondout and Kingston merged to form the City of Kingston in 1876. Historic assets in the hamlet include a number of old lime kilns and 19^th-century buildings.

Efforts to establish the historic district began in 2021 when the city hired a consulting group to begin surveying historic resources in both Wilbur and Ponckhockie. The work included documenting existing individual landmarks and used data from surveys conducted in the 1980s as part of the city’s Urban Cultural Park Plan. Much of the work was funded by $42,000 in grants through the state Office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation’s Certified Local Government program. In September 2024 the Kingston Common Council designated Wilbur and Ponckhockie local landmarks.

The new designation gives property and business owners in the neighborhood access to a number of new resources including grants for rehabilitation expenses, tax credits for restoration work, and a local tax abatement program. Common Council Majority Leader Michele Hirsch (D-Ward 9), who represents Wilbur and has been a strong proponent of the historic district, said that the effort had received an enthusiastic buy-in from constituents that she hoped would translate into positive changes in the neighborhood.

“I’m very excited about it,” said Hirsch, “because Wilbur needs more infrastructure, sidewalks and things like that, and I’m really hoping we are going to be able to get those things for the neighborhood and the residents.”