The Church Building is located at the corner of Main and Market Streets in downtown Poughkeepsie

Poughkeepsie (city), New York

Poughkeepsie is a city in the state of New York, United States, which serves as the county seat of Dutchess County. Poughkeepsie is located in the Hudson River Valley midway between New York City and Albany...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, just across Market Street from the Dutchess County Court House

Dutchess County Court House

The Dutchess County Courthouse is located at 10 Market Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It is the third county courthouse to stand on that site....

, and north of the Bardavon Theater

Bardavon 1869 Opera House

The Bardavon 1869 Opera House , in the downtown district of Poughkeepsie, New York, USA, is the oldest continuously-operating theater in New York State. Built in 1869, it served as a venue for various performing arts, community meetings, and celebrations until 1923; it largely resumed this...

. It is a complex of stores and other commercial space, so named because it is owned by the Reformed Dutch Church of Poughkeepsie

Reformed Dutch Church of Poughkeepsie

Reformed Dutch Church of Poughkeepsie is a historic church at 70 Hooker Avenue in Poughkeepsie, New York.The original congreagation was formed in 1716. The building was constructed in 1921 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008....

, which has owned the land since 1717 and benefits from the rent

Renting

Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...

al income. It was the western anchor of Main Mall

Main Mall

The Main Mall was an outdoor pedestrian shopping plaza in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York, which was in existence from 1973 until 2001. A urban renewal project designed with the intention of stopping the decline of the central business district of downtown Poughkeepsie, the mall was created by...

, the city's former pedestrian mall

Pedestrian mall

Pedestrian malls in the United States are also known as pedestrian streets and are the most common form of pedestrian zone in large cities in the United States. It is a street lined with storefronts and closed off to most automobile traffic...

.

It is considered the best example of Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 architecture in the city, where most commercial buildings predate the style's popularity in the 1930s. The two-story building has tilework designs suggesting Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 aesthetics. Other ornamental

Ornament (architecture)

In architecture and decorative art, ornament is a decoration used to embellish parts of a building or object. Large figurative elements such as monumental sculpture and their equivalents in decorative art are excluded from the term; most ornament does not include human figures, and if present they...

 touches associated with Art Deco include, floral and patterned metalwork along the shop cornice

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...

s, and polished green and black marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 inside. There are also ribbed pilaster

Pilaster

A pilaster is a slightly-projecting column built into or applied to the face of a wall. Most commonly flattened or rectangular in form, pilasters can also take a half-round form or the shape of any type of column, including tortile....

s between the windows and a multicolored chevron pattern above and below the roof parapet

Parapet

A parapet is a wall-like barrier at the edge of a roof, terrace, balcony or other structure. Where extending above a roof, it may simply be the portion of an exterior wall that continues above the line of the roof surface, or may be a continuation of a vertical feature beneath the roof such as a...

s.

The interior is intact, although some of the offices and shops have been modernized. One of the former does remain in its original condition. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

in 1982.