Main Street to Mainframes: Landscape and Social Change in Poughkeepsie

Traces the history of Poughkeepsie's development from the nineteenth through the twentieth and into the challenges of the twenty-first century.

Main Street to Mainframes is an in-depth study of a small American city and its evolution in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. It describes the economic and social changes, as well as the challenges that face the community. This includes Poughkeepsie's unique history and characteristics, as well as trends that are common in many other communities. The text integrates both social history and spatial analysis, describing the city's physical form through time along with its economic growth, decline, and efforts at renewal post-COVID-19 pandemic. The historical narrative is followed by an appendix containing examples of cultural features unique to Poughkeepsie’s past and present, with questions that can serve as discussion points for readers and groups.

As an exploration of a small city that has undergone many of the social and economic problems of much larger urban systems, this book adds important insight into the organic nature of urban systems, including issues of immigration, ethnicity and race, housing and the unhoused, health care, and economic changes in the nation, especially in the growth of the creative and arts-centered economy.

Harvey K. Flad is Professor Emeritus of Geography at Vassar College. His recent publications include essays on the preservation of historic and cultural landscapes and the history of artists and landscape designers in the Hudson Valley. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York. Clyde Griffen (1929–2015) was Lucy Maynard Salmon Professor Emeritus of American History. His previous books include Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Poughkeepsie (with Sally Griffen) and Meanings for Manhood: Construction of Masculinity in Victorian America (coedited with Mark C. Carnes). He resided in Bowie, Maryland.