Rhinebeck Sites

The Rhinebeck post office was built in 1939 in the stone Dutch Colonial style popular around the Hudson Valley. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who took a lively interest in the local architecture in Dutchess County, his family's ancestral home, insisted that the model for this post office should be "Kipsbergen," an 18th century Rhinebeck home occupied by his ancestors, the Beekmans.  That house had burned in the early 20th century; some of its stones were used in construction of the post office. FDR, Postmaster General James Farley and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. were all present at the dedication ceremony on May...

The Rhinebeck post office contains a series of twelve murals (plus those over the windows) depicting scenes from local history. The murals were painted by Olin Dows in 1940 with Treasury Section of Fine Arts funding.  Dows was a Rhinebeck resident , trained at Vassar College and head of the Treasury Relief Art Program – no doubt brought in by the request of President Roosevelt, who had taken a keen interest in the Rhinebeck post office near his home in Hyde Park.   The artist provided a thorough explanation of all the panels in a pamphlet published in 1940 by the Civic...