Kingston Stockade District, Historic district in Kingston, United States
Kingston Stockade District is a historic neighborhood in Uptown Kingston, New York, covering eight city blocks with buildings from three different centuries. The street layout and block shapes still follow the original Dutch settlement plan from the mid-1600s.
Peter Stuyvesant founded the settlement in 1658 and ordered a wooden fence built around the Dutch village for protection. A few years later, the English colonial government chose this same place to hold the first meetings of the New York Provincial Assembly.
The name Stockade comes from the wooden fence that once ringed the entire settlement, a detail visitors often miss when walking the streets today. The original street grid has stayed almost untouched since the Dutch laid it out, so the routes people walk now follow the same paths as those early residents.
The district is easy to walk through since the streets are flat and the sidewalks are in good condition. Guided tours run during the warmer months, and self-guided materials are available at a local gallery for those who prefer to explore at their own pace.
At the corner of Crown and John streets, original Dutch stone houses stand on all four corners, a grouping found nowhere else in the country. These houses were rebuilt after a fire in 1777 and still show the building methods the early colonists used when constructing permanent homes.
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