Upstate

A Picturesque Italianate Villa With Cupola Near Newburgh, Yours for $748K

The house boasts wide planked floor boards, a plethora of marble mantels, and an original stair.

Photo via Weichert

by Susan De Vries

12/12/2025 0

While there have been some changes to this Newburgh-area dwelling over the centuries, it still retains its picturesque charm inside and out. Likely dating to the 1860s, the house boasts wide planked floor boards, a plethora of marble mantels, and an original stair.

The property on the market at 5091 Route 9W is in Balmville, a hamlet adjoining the northern edge of Newburgh, New York. County records date the house to 1862, and it certainly fits within the era of villa construction in the hamlet.

Newburgh was a hub of design in the mid 19th century. Newburgh-born landscape designer and architect Andrew Jackson Downing was part of a group of architects there who would shape the American home in the 19th century, including Alexander Jackson Davis, Calvert Vaux, and Frederick Clarke Withers. The designers contributed house designs to each other’s publications, and their work can be seen in completed villas and cottages in the region. Withers designed a brick mansein Balmville around 1857.

The listing notes that there is speculation the house was built for Sylvanus Thayer, a military man, engineer, and an influential superintendent of West Point in the early 19th century. However, this doesn’t correspond to the details of his life. According to an extensive biography, Thayer was living in his hometown of Braintree, Massachusetts in 1861 and in ill health. While he experienced ups and downs in his health over the next decade he focused on projects in his home state. He died in 1872.

This house is indeed recorded as the Thayer House on an evaluation for the National Register of Historic Places. However, it is likely that name derives from a Thayer family that settled in Newburgh in the early 19th century and were connected with multiple properties, rather than Sylvanus. The Thayer family owned property in Balmville; an 1859 map does show the Thayer name in the hamlet.

Whoever originally built the house likely gained at least some inspiration from the picturesque house plans available at the time in books like Villas and Cottages published in 1857 by Calvert Vaux. Decorative bargeboard, brackets, dormers, bay windows, and a porch ornament the exterior. A cupola rises above the three peaked gables of the front facade.

It is a spacious dwelling, with roughly 3,900 square feet. There isn’t a floor plan, but according to the listing that square footage includes four bedrooms and 2.5 baths.

The front door with a transom and sidelights opens into a wide central hall with a stair and a period appropriate newel post. Wide planked floorboards stretch into a parlor on one side and a dining room on the other. The parlor has the first of at least seven marble mantels in the house. Most are Italianate in style.

The kitchen has had some updates, with brown cabinets, a dishwasher, and faux wood floors. A door leads to the rear yard.

At least one of the four bedrooms has an en suite bath with a soaking tub.

There is room for a new owner to tackle some new projects; the listing notes the basement and the attic are unfinished.

The residence sits on a lot that is just over half an acre. A Google Street View shows that it is set back from 9W. A line of trees provides some privacy from the street and continues along the long drive.

It is listed with Rosalie Cook of Weichert Realtors and priced at $748,000.