"Perrine’s Covered Bridge: Celebrating 200 Years Across the Wallkill River: Then & Now" is an illustrated talk that draws on archival and field research. While the talk focuses on Perrine's Bridge, it will also mention two other bridges build across the Wallkill River in the 1820s in the then larger Town of New Paltz--New Paltz Main Street Bridge 1820/1821; Perrine's Bridge 1821/1822; and Phillies Bridge 1826/1827--and then brings the stories forward into the 21st century. The talk will highlight why two dates are shown here.

Today, after a history of two-hundred years, Perrine's Covered Bridge is the only one of these three still standing as a covered bridge, but today Perrine's is in the Town of Esopus. The abutments of Phillies, the covered bridge having collapsed in 1952 and then burned, are now in the Town of Gardiner.

Ron Knapp, a cultural/historical geographer, taught at SUNY New Paltz from 1968 to 2001, when he retired as SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus. While he is best known for his more than 20 books concerning China's vernacular architecture, including village dwellings and covered bridges, he has co-authored three books with Terry Miller on covered bridges in the United States and China: America's Covered Bridges: Practical Crossings, Nostalgic Icons (2014), China's Covered Bridges: Architecture over Water (2020); and Theodore Burr and the Bridging of Early America: The Man, Fellow Bridge Builders, and Their Forgotten Timber Spans (2023). Details can be found on amazon.com about these and other books https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001HD2YE4/about

For those wanting to know more about the three Wallkill River bridges, including Perrine's Bridge, from the beginning down to the present, visit this article by Ron- https://built-heritage.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43238-021-00028-8

The DePuy Lecture Series 2025 is made possible by the M&T Bank Foundation.