Scenes from the Estate
of C.H. Housman

Introduction

Who was C. H. Housman?

Valatie historian Dominick Lizzi reports that Charles Housman was a wealthy New York City business man who retired to Columbia County. In 1876, he purchased the Charles Wild mansion on Church Street in Valatie. He made several improvements and changes in the house. Just eight years later, the house burned to the ground.

According to the bicentennial pamphlet on "The History of the Village of Valatie", it was originally Charles Housman who purchased the neighboring mansion from its original owner, Robert Martsch, for use as a "fresh air home for children" and gave it the name "Brightfields". The photos in this collection are not Brightfields, however. They depict the "original" Housman estate, located on the current site of the Martin H. Glynn school. (A photo of Brightfields is available here.)

About these photos.

The images collected here were photographed in 1880 or 1881 by J. R. Allis, of Chatham, New York. The were assembled as "stereographs" for viewing in a stereopticon viewer, a popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. The collection was generously donated to the Valatie Library by Mr. Charles Huyck, of Valatie.

The "lithographs" that introduce the collection are reproduced from a 1985 facsimile edition of Captain Franklin Ellis's History of Columbia County, New York, originally published in 1878. Curiously, although Ellis included these fine images of the Housman estate, his text contains no information about Housman himself.