Gratz Grant - GARNER Arts Center

In 2014, the Preservation League awarded a $5,800 grant to the GARNER Arts Center, the nonprofit arm of the Garnerville Arts & Industrial Center.

The League’s Erin Tobin

The grant was the third made from the Donald Stephen Gratz Preservation Services Fund. The grant to GARNER supported the cost of a conditions assessment and feasibility study for the reuse of Building 21, part of the mill complex known historically as the Garner Print Works.

BKSK Architects of New York City produced this study, which includes the exploration of options for viable uses, a preferred conceptual approach, an annotated drawing for the preferred approach, and preparation of a conceptual cost estimate.

The Garner Print Works is a remarkably intact manufacturing complex. First established as a textile mill in 1828, the Garner Print Works made uniforms for the Union Army in the Civil War. The mill complex of some 40 buildings straddles the Minisceongo Creek, which supplied water to the mill for manufacturing but caused significant flooding and damage to the complex during Hurricane Irene.

The Preservation League added the Garner Print Works mill complex to its 2012 list of Seven to Save endangered places, and awarded the Garner Arts Center a $3,000 Technical Assistance Grant to determine the viability and costs of converting Building 35, the then-vacant mill cafeteria, into gallery and exhibition space for the Arts Center.

Later in 2012, the Preservation League, in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, awarded the Garner Arts Center a Preserve New York grant of $7,724 to complete a National Register Historic District nomination for the Garner Print Works. The complex was designated a New York State Historic District in 2013 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in March, 2014 as the Rockland Print Works Historic District.