Rustic wood posts have recently been installed on Huguenot Street in front the Jean Hasbrouck House as barriers to traffic. (photo by Lauren Thomas)
Say goodbye to that illegal turn to get past the herm in front of the Jean Hasbrouck house: Huguenot Street in New Paltz is now officially closed to vehicular traffic from that point to Broadhead Avenue. Seeing old utility poles planted in the ground — between which car-stopping chains are now strung — may come as a surprise to infrequent readers of the New Paltz Times, but the idea has been discussed in public since at least June, 2016.
The barriers are chains because access for emergency vehicles is still necessary on what remains a village road. There remains room around the sides for pedestrians and “cautiously-moving cyclists,” according to the agreement between the Village of New Paltz and Historic Huguenot Street (HHS) officials. The closure comes from the same concern which led to the oft-ignored “no turns” rule at the monument, namely concern that vehicular traffic was damaging the foundations of the stone houses. From this point forward, this stretch of Huguenot Street will be a public space ideal for holding events. Removal of snow and refuse will now fall to HHS personnel, who also hope to eventually raise enough money to replace the asphalt with something a bit more historic.
I get the desire and decision to close, but come on…the “goal is to protect our most historic street”…and New Paltz has chosen quite possibly the UGLIEST WAY TO DO IT!!! Ridiculous!
Can we not raise the funds from the people who insisted this street be closed to traffic and raise
the $3,000 we’d need to install clean, simple, wooden posts, perhaps with a period-accurate
finial on top, and then string the access chains between those?!!!
Right now it looks like, we took the cheapest, laziest route possible, jammed rough too tall posts in the ground and walked away – the protective closure has been done by creating a total eyesore!!! Fix it.
That depends on whether “we” want to work toward raising the funds or if “we” just want to yell at things with a computer, I guess.
Point taken. But this WAS a really ugly solution. There should be room for people to yell on the computer about stuff that affects the community generally without personally being on the hook to fix it. That said, there are a lot of people who only complain about the work that others do on the behalf of the community. That’s not productive.
It keeps out illegal aliens