Elting House
aka 1799 House
aka LeFevre House

Historic Marker Reads:
Elting House
Built by Ezekiel Elting in 1799
Original Gambrel Roof Destroyed
In Blizzard Of 1888. Structure
Served As Both Residence
And Store.

Ezekiel Elting

In the early 1700's Roelif Elting arrived in New Paltz and in 1703 married the daughter of Abraham DuBois, Sarah. In 1760 Roelif purchased the Bevier House from Louis Bevier's son Samuel. The house was passed on to Roelif's son Josiah upon his death. Josiah passed it to his son Roelif who married the daughter of Rebecca Freer and Johannes Low and lived in the house during the American Revolution. Their son Ezekiel in 1799 built the house further to the south on Huguenot Street now known as the LeFever House.

The House

So what's a brick Georgian doing in New Paltz?

More than a century has passed since the founding of New Paltz, life has marched on and tastes have changed. Not to mention the resources of the people of the Village. Another new century was about to turn.

But there's a little secret in this house. Only the front wall is brick, the other three are still field stone. In building his house Ezekiel wanted to present a prosperous front to customers arriving to his store and visitors arriving at his door. So the front of the house is constructed of brick and carefully follows the Georgian style of the day, in America known as Federal. As people approached the house from the south along Huguenot Street their first view would have been the south wall tho!

Ezekiel tried to face the south wall with brick but only had a limited amount and knew he would run out half way through the wall. His solution was to face the upper section of the wall with brick and the lower half of the wall was parged with cement and brick outlines were cut then the whole thing was painted to look like brick. And it worked. People arriving from the ferry would have seen the upper part of the wall with the gable and then approached the front of the house.

On the north wall he parged the stone with cement and cut in lines making it look like cut limestone. Most of this facing has fallen away but there are still sections intact.

Ezekiel built his house as both residence and store. The north rooms on the main floor were given over to his business, the family occupied the south and upstairs rooms. The home is constructed with a center hall and four rooms on each floor symmetrically arranged.

The roof was originally a Dutch Gambrel, but was destroyed in the blizzard of 1888. In the reconstruction they noticed the value of the steep pitched roofs of the older houses on the street, all had survived the blizzard. So they put a new steeply pitched roof on the house. In construction they simply built over the original lines of the roof enclosing the remaining structural pieces which are still visible in the attic. From the outside if you look up at the peek of the roof on the sides of the house you can see where they "filled in" and get a feeling for the original silhouette.

Later generations opened the two north rooms combining them into a single large parlor, how it is configured today.

In 1967 the LeFevre Family Association was formed. Their ancestral home had been destroyed when the children of Samuel LeFevre sold the property to the Dutch Reformed Church which was erected in 1839. Since several of the daughters of Ezekiel Elting had married LeFevres they determined to purchase and restore the Elting House and fill it with LeFevre family heirlooms, mostly from the Federal and Empire periods. So though the historic marker reads "Elting House", it is more commonly known as the LeFevre House.