An online exhibition brought to you by the Dutchess County Historical Society
The Smith Metropolitan AME Zion Church in Poughkeepsie is a listed on the National Register of Historic Places. We examine the historic contribution of the stained glass windows from 1912 and what that reveals about the parishioners and church leadership at the time. An oversize print of the Tuskegee Chapel stainted glass windows, a gift from President Franklin Roosevelt, reveals yet another layer of the story of its parishoners and mission.
The 1912 building that was formerly the Poughkeepsie Savings Bank, which still stands on Market Street today, has a central feature of a stained glass window based on a photograph taken during the 1909 Hudson Fulton celebration of Henry Hudson’ Half Moon, arriving at the river that now bears his name.
