![]() ![]() Spend Saturday morning strolling the Kingston farmers market, one of the biggest and most diverse of its kind in the region. Here’s where to make the most of a weekend in Kingston proper. It’s over two miles to get from one end to the other, so a car or rideshare makes exploring much easier. Within its bounds are many residential neighborhoods, and three distinct commercial areas: Uptown (or the Stockade), Midtown, and the Rondout (referred to by many old-timers as Downtown, due to its location at the bottom of a steep hill, bordering the Rondout Creek). The city of Kingston, on the other hand, is one of the more urban communities in the region, and certainly the most urban in Ulster County. To understand Kingston, a little geography lesson: the town of Kingston is quite large, and much of it is rural. Add to that a growing number of creative professionals and young families fleeing New York and other cities for lower cost of living and a less harried lifestyle, and you have the makings of a small city in the midst of a true and very unique revival. Kingston even has its own minor league soccer team, the Stockade Football Club, whose games draw packed crowds. Mary Stuart Masterson’s Stockade Works is helping grow both professional and creative opportunities in the film and television fields. While Kingston is home to dozens of metalworkers, jewelers, and woodworkers-most notably Black Creek Mercantile-it’s also becoming a hub of large scale fine art manufacturing, including Workshop Art Fabrication and newcomer Lite Brite Neon who are helping to shape Kingston’s new artistic economy. While the Hudson Valley has always had a strong artistic community, Kingston is unique in its deliberate zoning and programming meant to attract, house, and retain working artists and craftspeople, particularly through the Midtown Arts District initiative. Unlike many of the more rural surrounding towns, most of Kingston’s newer residents aren’t merely coming to weekend or vacation, but to work, live, and stay. Kingston, today, is emerging as a hub of artistic activity and has seen a huge surge in the number of people moving from elsewhere. Ever since, Kingston has been a city with an aging population and several historic neighborhoods facing increasing vacancy. The closing of the facility was a major economic hit to Kingston and the surrounding towns in Ulster County. Sounds…dusty, right? Indeed, Kingston has been a sleepy town since the IBM campus-which operated from the 1950s to the early ‘90s and employed over 7,000 people at its height-shut down. Photo: the first capital of New York State. Kingston, NY, roughly two hours north of New York City, was New York’s original capital and is now in the midst of a creative renaissance. ![]()
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