43 Green Street

The brick house at 43 Green Street rose in 1868 for Joseph C. Wyckoff, A.M., the schoolmaster who headed Kingston Academy after the city consolidated its schools in 1863. Sylvester's 1880 History of Ulster County lists him at the top of the new district's first faculty roster, Principal of the Academic Department, the classical school that had operated since 1774, was chartered by the Regents in 1795 with Governor George Clinton among the signatories, and stood on Academy Green from 1830, the oldest preparatory school in New York State. Wyckoff built a short walk from his classrooms, a late Greek Revival in brick that borrows Italianate detail, set on a double lot inside the Stockade.

Four finished levels hold five bedrooms with three full and three half baths. The current owners ran a full modernization through the house, seven zones of Mitsubishi mini-split air, updated plumbing, new 200-amp electrical service, an EV charger, without losing the marble mantel. The kitchen carries a Wolf range, a Sub-Zero, and a wine cooler; upstairs, a dressing room fitted by California Closets, Papier wallpaper, and Soho Home lighting; below, a private gym and a three-person infrared sauna. A three-season room opens to a cedar-fenced yard with a brick wood-burning grill.

The Stockade District is the eight blocks Peter Stuyvesant ordered walled in 1658, and the street grid still follows the palisade lines. Kingston became New York's first capital here in 1777; the British burned the city that October, 326 houses and their barns, and the town rebuilt on the same plan. Green Street runs the district's western edge, past the Tappen House, reputedly the oldest structure in Kingston, and the whole district entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. The farmers market, restaurants, and shops of Uptown sit two blocks from the door.