As a resident of rural Ulster Park, NY, the New York City metropolis is both strikingly distant and strangely close. I live on a dead-end road in the hills, surrounded by farmland and isolationist religious compounds, and yet Midtown Manhattan is only a two-hour drive away. NYC has seemingly so little bearing on day-to-day life, and yet its inescapable presence has shaped and continues to shape almost every big-picture aspect of the greater Hudson Valley, ranging all the way from the existence of the region's many historic riverside towns to modern day rising real estate prices, cultural trends, and surging population growth after decades of decline. While much of this influence is evident in my nearby town of Kingston, the small city of Poughkeepsie has experienced these forces at a much more visible scale.
For me, Poughkeepsie has always been the dividing line between the NYC metro and "upstate." Throughout my life, the Poughkeepsie train station has been my gateway to Grand Central. It is the end of the line for Metro North, and as a result is the last of a long series of commuter-focused exurbs lining the banks of the Hudson. Because of this, Poughkeepsie's culture and urban character feel far less akin to the similarly sized towns and tiny cities to the north, and far more like a node of the immense metropolis to the south. This past summer, I drove through Poughkeepsie each day as part of my hour-long commute, and every single crossing of the Mid-Hudson Bridge felt like a transition between worlds. Suddenly, country roads exploded into three-lane highways, sprawling rural properties gave way to dense, mixed-use apartments, and a sprinkling of high-rises thrust towards the sky. The immense, state-funded Walkway Over the Hudson pedestrian bridge to my left further added to the feeling that I was entering somewhere entirely different, and the beautiful, well-maintained city parks on the Poughkeepsie side repeatedly reinforced this.
Yet despite this initial burst of glamor, I knew that this unexpected bubble of urban prosperity would crumble as soon as I probed deeper into the city. While Poughkeepsie's government has been successful in revitalizing its waterfront district, fastidiously maintaining its parks, and transforming the Walkway into a cultural destination that draws up hordes of tourists from NYC every weekend, they have yet to successfully apply this newfound revenue towards fixing the city's deeper issues. This glossy strip of parks, bars, and restaurants stands in stark contrast to the poverty and crime that has plagued the rest of the city for decades. As the neighboring suburb of Arlington has grown increasingly wealthy, much of Poughkeepsie itself has slipped into decline. Countless prosperous Manhattanites have bought up weekend homes and mansions in the surrounding suburban area in recent years, and many even made the move permanent during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet these new communities have failed to engage with Poughkeepsie beyond utilizing its parks, entertainment district, and train station. Instead, these suburban enclaves have built their own schools, created their own social spheres, and created their own shopping hubs and restaurants, seemingly finding it easier to start from a blank slate than attempt to fix Poughkeepsie's entrenched flaws.
This has exacerbated the inequality within Poughkeepsie even further. People who can are gradually moving out of Poughkeepsie proper and into these newer surrounding areas, seeking better schools, better housing stock, and lower crime rates, thus taking their tax dollars with them and creating a negative feedback loop that gets worse with each passing year. While the Poughkeepsie urban agglomerate has a population of roughly 315,000, less than 32,000 people actually live within city limits. Many of those who remain do so because they rely on the 2-hour-long train to Manhattan and need to live as close to the station as possible to minimize this grueling commute. To facilitate this need, the Rip Van Winkle housing development was completed in the 1990s. This high rise provides much-needed, modern low-income housing a block from the station, and to this day is the most potent symbol of Poughkeepsie's contradictions. In one sphere of Poughkeepsie, you have a popular waterfront district and a well-funded tourist destination. In another, you have wealthy suburbs founded and populated by urban transplants seeking a quiet place to settle down. In the last, you have a sizable portion of Poughkeepsie's actual population, who have been continuously priced out of the NYC metro and pushed farther and farther outwards until finally, they have reached the literal end of the line and must make do with what is available. The Rip Van Winkle project, looming over the waterfront and visible from many of the adjacent suburbs, bridges the gap between these spheres and is a constant reminder of the contrasting roles that Poughkeepsie fills: getaway, gateway, and last resort.
All images captured by me.
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