HURLEY >> Town officials will review the number of buildings in the Old Hurley National Historic District as part of their effort to get grant money for a townwide inventory of historic properties.
Historic Preservation Commission members, speaking at a Town Board meeting this week, said the information is needed so funding agencies can be certain that historic designation guidelines are being met.
“They want us to resurvey the district first because the survey was done in 1963 by the Junior League of Kingston,” said commission Chairman Sam Scroggins. “That’s a long time ago, and boundaries have changed, and they just want to make sure that district is properly surveyed.”
Town officials are seeking a $6,500 grant from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
“We put the application for the grant in two phases,” Scroggins said. “One is to redo the historic central district [inventory], and then second to do the rest of the town.”
Town Board members realized the need for an inventory in 2012, when the Historic Preservation Commission unsuccessfully tried to stop the demolition of a barn on private property. Under the town’s Historic Preservation Law, adopted in 2007, structures can be protected if an inventory has been developed.
Scroggins said state officials have asked for the local law to be changed to take out references to the national historic registry.
“They’ve surveyed the town Historic Preservation Law, and they just want one reference that occurs three times, which is a reference to the National Historic Landmark laws that are a separate set of laws, taken out of the local law because they are separate things,” Scroggins said.
“They say if we make those tweaks, then they’ll be happy to go ahead and recognize us as a certified local government,” he said.”That’s what you have to be to be given federal money.”
The inventory of buildings within the Old Hurley National Historic District, which runs along Main Street from Zandhoek Road to just past the Hurley Reformed Church, would include 10 stone houses that were given National Historic Landmark designations in 1961. Town officials say there are about 50 structures in other areas of the town that they believe should be subject to the 2007 preservation rules.
The town last year received a proposal from Woodstock consulting firm Larson Fisher Associates to inventory of historic properties for a $25,000 fee.
