View down Liberty Street.

The post office – formerly a one room schoolhouse built in 1875. According to “Hidden Treasures of the Hudson Valley” by Anthony P. Musso:

A one-room brick schoolhouse with a square frame bell tower was built on Liberty Street in 1875. An 1858 map of Chelsea indicates that an earlier school occupied the same parcel of land. The current building, which features four tall windows and an inscribed date stone of marble embedded above its entrane, now serves as the community’s post office, and its fire department headquarters.

The interior still retains many of its classroom features, including original blackboards. The schoolhouse closed in 1958, when a number of smaller schools in the town were consolidated into the Wappinger Central School District.

The Gothic Revival style of the school closely resembles the steeply pitched roof of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, located next door and dedicated in 1869.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. According to its website:

St. Mark’s was founded in 1865 by John A. Taplin and thirteen other residents of Carthage Landing, now known as Chelsea, NY in the Town of Wappingers Falls. In June, 1869 the Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter, Bishop of New York dedicated the new church building. It is in the style of “Carpenter Gothic”. The board and batten construction, according to Dutchess County historians, exemplifies “Upjohn inspired parish churches built from Gothic Revival pattern books.”

Throughout most of the 20th Century, lay readers and clergy from surrounding congregations served St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. In the mid-1980’s, St. Mark’s joined in ministry with St. Nicholas on the Hudson in New Hamburg, NY. In 1998, they entered the Congregational Support Plan of the Diocese of New York and the Rev. Sr. Jean Campbell, OSH became a part time priest in charge of the congregation.

View across the green with the Post Office on the left, St. Mark’s on the right and an interesting ‘church-like’ building straight ahead. It seems to be in the process of renovation. Is it a private dwelling? Or is it in some way connected to the church?

Blue doorway with star.