The William Shay Double House is a residential duplex

Duplex (building)

The term duplex can be used to describe several different dwelling unit configurations:A duplex house is defined as a dwelling having apartments with separate entrances for two families. This includes two-story houses having a complete apartment on each floor and also side-by-side apartments on a...

 at Point Street and River Road in New Hamburg

New Hamburg, New York

New Hamburg is a small hamlet along the Hudson River in Dutchess County, New York, best known as home of a popular marina and a busy Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line station. It is located in the southern corner of the Wappingers Falls....

, 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...

. It was built around 1870 and 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.

Shay, a local rag and cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

 merchant, lived nearby and worked out of an adjacent warehouse

Shay's Warehouse and Stable

Shay's Warehouse and Stable is in the rear of a lot on Point Street in New Hamburg, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.William Shay, a local rag merchant, built the structure behind his house around 1865...

. The duplex is a brick

Brick

A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...

 building in the Gothic Revival architectural style

Architectural style

Architectural styles classify architecture in terms of the use of form, techniques, materials, time period, region and other stylistic influences. It overlaps with, and emerges from the study of the evolution and history of architecture...

, unusual for both its scale and amount of decoration

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...

 for utilitarian worker housing of the period in the area. It is still in use as a rental property.

Building

The house is a two-story brick building with raised basement

Basement

__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...

. Its gable

Gable

A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...

 roof, pierced by two chimney

Chimney

A chimney is a structure for venting hot flue gases or smoke from a boiler, stove, furnace or fireplace to the outside atmosphere. Chimneys are typically vertical, or as near as possible to vertical, to ensure that the gases flow smoothly, drawing air into the combustion in what is known as the...

s, is surfaced in asphalt

Asphalt

Asphalt or , also known as bitumen, is a sticky, black and highly viscous liquid or semi-solid that is present in most crude petroleums and in some natural deposits, it is a substance classed as a pitch...

 shingles

Roof shingle

Roof shingles are a roof covering consisting of individual overlapping elements. These elements are typically flat rectangular shapes laid in rows from the bottom edge of the roof up, with each successive higher row overlapping the joints in the row below...

. A steeply-pitched

Roof pitch

In building construction, roof pitch is a numerical measure of the steepness of a roof, and a pitched roof is a roof that is steep.The roof's pitch is the measured vertical rise divided by the measured horizontal span, the same thing as what is called "slope" in geometry. Roof pitch is typically...

 cross-gable runs from east to west; on both elevations it has trefoil

Trefoil

Trefoil is a graphic form composed of the outline of three overlapping rings used in architecture and Christian symbolism...

 detail in the peak and a single rounded-arch window with corbel

Corbel

In architecture a corbel is a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry any superincumbent weight. A piece of timber projecting in the same way was called a "tassel" or a "bragger". The technique of corbelling, where rows of corbels deeply keyed inside a wall support a projecting wall or...

ed stops. The roofline has a wooden 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...

 decorated with paired brackets

Bracket (architecture)

A bracket is an architectural member made of wood, stone, or metal that overhangs a wall to support or carry weight. It may also support a statue, the spring of an arch, a beam, or a shelf. Brackets are often in the form of scrolls, and can be carved, cast, or molded. They can be entirely...

 and acorn pendants flanking frame panels all around. Star anchor bolt

Anchor bolt

An anchor bolt is used to attach objects or structures to concrete. There are many types of anchor bolts, consisting of designs that are mostly proprietary to the manufacturing companies. All consist of a threaded end, to which a nut and washer can be attached for the external load...

s are in the brick all over, and a string course

Course (architecture)

A course is a continuous horizontal layer of similarly-sized building material one unit high, usually in a wall. The term is almost always used in conjunction with unit masonry such as brick, cut stone, or concrete masonry units .-Styles:...

 is laid between the lower stories.

On the west elevation is a raised vestibule

Vestibule (architecture)

A vestibule is a lobby, entrance hall, or passage between the entrance and the interior of a building.The same term can apply to structures in modern or ancient roman architecture. In modern architecture vestibule typically refers to a small room or hall between an entrance and the interior of...

 porch

Porch

A porch is external to the walls of the main building proper, but may be enclosed by screen, latticework, broad windows, or other light frame walls extending from the main structure.There are various styles of porches, all of which depend on the architectural tradition of its location...

. The double doors are flanked by paired brackets and a brick transom

Transom (architectural)

In architecture, a transom is the term given to a transverse beam or bar in a frame, or to the crosspiece separating a door or the like from a window or fanlight above it. Transom is also the customary U.S. word used for a transom light, the window over this crosspiece...

. It is flanked by two one-and-a-half-story brick bays with narrow windows. The rear has a more modern shed-roofed porch.

There are two other buildings on the lot

Lot (real estate)

In real estate, a lot or plot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner. A lot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries...

. Shay's Warehouse and Stable

Shay's Warehouse and Stable

Shay's Warehouse and Stable is in the rear of a lot on Point Street in New Hamburg, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.William Shay, a local rag merchant, built the structure behind his house around 1865...

 is separately listed on the Register and was built prior to the house. A frame one-story flat-roofed clapboard

Clapboard (architecture)

Clapboard, also known as bevel siding or lap siding or weather-board , is a board used typically for exterior horizontal siding that has one edge thicker than the other and where the board above laps over the one below...

-sided garage

Garage (house)

A residential garage is part of a home, or an associated building, designed or used for storing a vehicle or vehicles. In some places the term is used synonymously with "carport", though that term normally describes a structure that is not completely enclosed.- British residential garages:Those...

 was built in the 20th century.

Aesthetics

Duplexes built on a mirror plan were not unusual in the area at the time; there are some in nearby Wappingers Falls

Wappingers Falls, New York

Wappingers Falls is a village in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The name is derived from the local Wappinger Indians. One half of the village is in the town of Wappinger and the other half is in the town of Poughkeepsie, with Wappinger Creek forming the dividing line between the...

, where they were built mainly to house workers in the village's industries, which included some of the earliest cotton textile mill

Cotton mill

A cotton mill is a factory that houses spinning and weaving machinery. Typically built between 1775 and 1930, mills spun cotton which was an important product during the Industrial Revolution....

s in New York. It is likely that Shay's business as a ragman took him there, where he would have seen them and decided to undertake a similar project in New Hamburg.

The duplex he built, however, was on a larger scale than similar houses in any nearby community. It also included many ornamental touches, both inside and out, not seen on such houses, showing in some areas a sophistication normally seen on houses of the well-to-do in the region, reaching a Picturesque

Picturesque

Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...

 level. The alternation of panels and paired brackets in the roof, for instance, is identical to one shown in Villas and Cottages, an 1857 pattern book by Calvert Vaux

Calvert Vaux

Calvert Vaux , was an architect and landscape designer. He is best remembered as the co-designer , of New York's Central Park....

.