The Snyder Estate Natural Cement Historic District is located in the Town of Rosendale, New York, United States. It is a 275-acre (111 ha) tract roughly bounded by Rondout Creek, Binnewater and Cottekill roads and Sawdust Avenue. NY 213 runs through the lower portion of the district, paralleling the dry bed of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Within the district's bounds are 122 contributing properties representing what remains of five plants that produced Rosendale cement, and the homes and dependencies of the Snyder family, who originally owned the land. They range in age from the bed of the canal, where the cement was discovered in 1825 during construction, to some of the last factories built before production was ended in 1970. Included are not just homes, barns, and factories but mines, reservoirs, and a rail siding. After an aborted attempt to secure National Historic Landmark District status in 1978, the district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
Geography The district is shaped like a letter "r", solidly bounded by the roads and creek on three of its sides, but with its eastern boundary mostly following old roads between Route 213, Binnewater road and Sawdust avenue. Physically, it is dominated by two large hills, foothills of the Shawangunk Ridge to the south, which rise to over 300 feet (91 m) in elevation, more than 200 feet (61 m) above the creek's waters to the south. Between them in a narrow valley sit the remains of one of the largest cement plants in it. An old Wallkill Valley Railroad siding runs from there to the northeast corner near where it once joined the main line at today's Binnewater Historic District. Old mines and quarries are tunneled into the sides of both hills. The property is mostly wooded save for the developed areas. Some of the areas along the road are old fields, today meadows.
History Natural cement production began almost immediately after its discovery inside district bounds by James McEntee, an engineer on the D&H canal construction project in 1825. Production peaked by the end of the 19th century at about 4,000,000 barrels per year. Demand for natural cement fell during the 20th century due to competitive pressure from Portland cement. The final cement company closed its operations in 1970 after a valiant attempt to survive mounted by A. J. Snyder.
19th century The Snyder family owned and farmed the property since 1755. In 1809, Christopher and Deborah Snyder commissioned for their newlywed son, Jacob Lowe Snyder, a house with an accompanying gristmill on the creek. Known today as the Century House, it is the oldest extant building in the district whose age is precisely known. In 1825, Jacob ceded a portion of his land to John B. Jervis of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company so that a canal could be built across the property. As a condition of building the canal, Jacob required the company to build him a slip so he could ship his produce to market, and a bridge to reach his mill. Crews excavating the area a short while later found large deposits of dolostone containing an ideal amount of clay minerals that, once pulverized and mixed, could be turned into natural cement without additives. The company set up production facilities almost immediately, as similar cement was used to construct the Erie Canal. The presence of dolomite meant the canal could be built using this new cement and guaranteed another customer beside the anthracite coal miners the canal was built to serve. In 1830, Snyder leased the southeastern corner of his property to Watson Lawrence. Lawrence had already built a cement plant on adjacent land. Other mines and cement plants opened up in the 32-square-mile (83 km2) area along the Rondout as well, creating a vibrant local industry. Snyder reinvested much of the Lawrence Cement Company's profits in improving its technical quality. He courted buyers for large, high-profile government projects like New York City's Croton Aqueduct and the Brooklyn Navy Yard docks. This helped create a reputation for quality that unwittingly resulted "Rosendale cement" becoming a generic term for any natural cement, regardless of where it was produced. The popularity ultimately strained the company's finances to the point of failure; the company closed in 1858.
Lawrence retained control of the new Lawrenceville Cement Company, but was ousted after three years when William Beach took over. Beach expanded the production facilities, in time for the rise in demand that occurred as the Gilded Age saw a rapid increase in demand after the lull caused by the Civil War. Beach died in 1881; control soon passed to his son William N. Beach II. The younger Beach took advantage of the recently constructed Wallkill Valley Railroad and its connections to the New York Central network as a way to get product to market, building a siding to the plant. In keeping with a general national trend, this began a shift away from the canal that had spawned the cement works, and within two decades the canal would carry its last loads.
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