The John Thompson House is one of the best examples of Victorian Italianate style in Ulster County. The house was built in 1851 by John Thompson as the family's country villa in the Hudson Valley. John Thompson and his sons, Samuel and Frederick founded the Chase National Bank, a predecessor of the Chase Manhattan Bank. The Thompson Family's main house was on 295 Madison Avenue in New York City. The family affectionately called their summer home, "The Anchorage". The Anchorage is built in the Victorian Italianate villa (also known as Tuscan Villa Revival) style of designer Andrew Jackson Downing, an American landscape designer, horticulturist & writer of American architecture, who lived just down the Hudson River in Newburgh, New York. Andrew Jackson Downing's grand country designs with their highly decorated interiors were popular among wealthy American socialites of the Victorian Age. The house has been maintained as originally built with updates for modern amenities such as electricity. Significant exterior design features include a Belvedere tower with elongated windows on three sides with views of Poughkeepsie, NY across the Hudson River. The Hudson River is now visible from the tower only in the winter when the trees have lost their leaves. Its broad verandas overlook multiple gardens that so often graced the grounds of country villa homes. The wrap-around porch is thought to have been added in 1904. The main house has sixteen rooms, five on the first floor, eight on the second, and three on the third. The five first-floor rooms are nearly twelve feet high. Seven of the ten fireplaces are made of sculpted imported Italian marble. The ten fireplaces were meant to provided heat during the spring and fall months while the house's northern orientation and double-brick walls provide protection from the summer heat. The rooms are decorated with ornate scroll and designed plaster. The center chandeliers in four first floor rooms are surrounded by large plaster medallions. The large paneled doors are painted with wood grain, a common feature of ornate homes of the period, and are surrounded by 10-inch-wide ) moldings. The entry-way has a large marble floor and rounded staircases with scroll work on the side. The stairwell includes an arched niche built to hold decorative art. A massive four-tier brass Italian gasolier (chandelier) in the living room is decorated with grape clusters that turned on the gas and women that hold up the glass globes. The lighting was originally gas and has since been converted to electricity. The house's eight-foot double-hung windows contribute to the vertical Victorian design. The windows on the first floor include solid-wood interior folding shutters that fit into side pockets when folded in to let in the natural light. This innovation was added during the Victorian era to meet the preferences of the period to keep rooms dark and the thick walls made closing exterior shutters difficult to close. The house is accompanied by a stone carriage house with a carriage pit to fix the underside of the carriages. The Thompson's gardener lived in a carriage apartment above the garage. The grounds are extensive, which was typical of Italianate villas of the time.
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