2025 Exhibit: Open Sundays, 1-4 pm through December!

Photographs by Louis S. McTamaney, c. 1950-1960

Newburgh’s central park was in full flower as it entered the 1950’s. The landscape designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead in 1897 had grown to maturity and offered city dwellers a glorious and healthful retreat.

Lifelong Newburgh resident Louis S. McTamaney was born in this city in 1912 and saw the park develop. He married Elizabeth Swanson of New Windsor in 1940 and bought a camera when his first child, Louis Jr., was born in 1941. From his home on Prospect Street near South, Louis walked to and from his job at Abbey Lumber Company on Carpenter Avenue using the park as his favored short cut. He always carried his camera to capture the beauty he saw along the way.

Louis joined the Newburgh Camera Club where he learned and shared photographic techniques with others. He built a darkroom in the cellar of his Prospect Street house where he experimented with the nuances of black and white developing and printing. Throughout the fifties, Louis could often be seen in Downing Park capturing on film not only nature but the activities of his three sons and their friends as well. As his health declined, he was not able to visit the park as often. He died of emphysema in 1966 at the early age of 54. The thousands of black and white negatives that he left behind are his legacy.

This year, his son, David, shared these negatives with the Historical Society of Newburgh Bay and the Highlands. The views of Downing Park opened a never-before-seen look at this rich landscape.

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With gratitude to Varvara Mikuskina, Historical Society board member and professional photo archivist who lovingly curated this show.