This is an American story. It begins at 109 Liberty Street in Newburgh, New York, just down the block from the headquarters George Washington occupied from 1782 to 1783—the historic site where he declared an end to fighting in the Revolutionary War, refused the suggestion that he become the young nation’s monarch, and outlined the principles he thought essential to its governance.
Yes, Newburgh, the once-handsome city on the Hudson midway between New York City and Albany, where river and rail traffic brought prosperity in the nineteenth century, and notable figures like Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–1852) established an American aesthetic in landscape and domestic design that lingers here and there on its streets. From the Gilded Age to the middle of the last century, Newburgh was also a vigorous working-class city that churned out everything from overalls to televisions, until factories moved south for cheaper labor, a highway bypassed it, and—to short-circuit a complicated history—a disastrous urban renewal plan left poverty, crime, and urban blight in its wake. An American story.
But that is not the story’s end. My recent visit showed Newburgh on a steady but modest upswing with new businesses, a partially redeveloped waterfront, and a can-do spirit that just might bring the city back without sacrificing its grit and mimicking the fate of Beacon across the river, where the arrival of the Dia Art Foundation sent that town from anonymous to annoying in a matter of months—or so it seemed to this New Yorker.
My destination, 109 Liberty Street, is a three-story building on a commercial block, home to the Velocipede Museum, a small museum with a big heart devoted to American-made bicycles from the earliest boneshakers to mid-century banana-seat bombers. And that is why I am here, still a passionate cyclist, still moved by the beauty of two wheels, and entranced by all the historic trials and errors on display that eventually brought us to the safety bicycle in the 1890s, liberator of thousands, especially women . . . especially women.
The Velocipede, as the museum is familiarly known, is the work of Ted Doering, a Newburgh native who left the city after high school in the late 1960s, eventually establishing a solid business in the manufacturing of replacement parts for Harley Davidson motorcycles in Delaware. He returned a few years back and began a quiet life of Newburgh reclamation. Ted is delighted to show me around, even though he admits we diverge in our passions. His is for motorcycles and, yes, he has a museum of American-made motorcycles close by that he wants me to visit. That place is unquestionably a bigger draw for Newburgh folks than the Velocipede and I may visit someday, but the Velocipede is where I want to be, surrounded by bikes that don’t make noise, pollute, or do my cardiovascular work for me. Ted understands.
If the connection between antiques and bicycles is not obvious, consider this: like any good tall-case clock or highboy, a bicycle will go on forever if properly cared for. Those on display at the Velocipede look well-restored and ready to roll should anyone be intrepid enough to hazard a ride on one of the more challenging models. And like other antiques, their physical presence is enriched by a deep social history. Some of the earliest models excited resentment from the laboring classes as the leisured elite wobbled around the parks and streets of 1820s London on their clumsy foot-propelled velocipedes. When the democratization of bicycling arrived with the safety bicycle in the 1890s it was accompanied by a good deal of moral panic: people riding on the Sabbath! Women in bloomers astride a two-wheeler! Women off on their own! There is vastly more to this rich social history, and for that you should consult Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle (2022) by Jody Rosen, a masterful work.
My passion for the history of the bicycle is shared by my neighbor Steve Powers, dealer in folk and outsider art and specialist in historic woods, notably North American burl treen. We both eagerly turn to Copake Auction’s ads in Arts and Antiques Weekly, where vintage bikes are often featured, even though neither of us is going to abandon our sleek twenty-first-century models for a boneshaker. Still, we can appreciate, dream, and learn. In 2013 Steve arrived at the ideal combination of passion and practicality when he had the Portland, Oregon, firm Renovo build him a wood-framed bicycle. The tubing of tiger maple, bubinga, ash, and a few other woods anchors a fully outfitted bike that weighs only twenty pounds, whereas my first elite racing bike, a Schwinn Paramount, clocked in at a hefty twenty-two pounds. (We have arrived at the nerd level when such tiny distinctions bear mentioning, but there again the parallel with antiques is apt.) Steve has clocked some fifty thousand miles on his bike and knows it will keep on keeping on, someday becoming a treasured antique and still rideable.
Before I leave the Velocipede, I take a second look at a quite different display that visitors pass on their way to the big back room of bikes: photographs and memorabilia associated with this nation’s first African American regiment, the so-called Buffalo Soldiers, assembled with a little help from nearby West Point by local chef Rodney Thornton, who is African American. Why, if there is not an obvious connection to cycling, is it here? What is part of history is part of us, and since there is a Newburgh connection with its significant population of African Americans and since Ted Doering is on a quiet mission to revitalize his city, it belongs.
Of course, the history of the Buffalo Soldiers, beginning with its name, is a complicated one, as is the history of the bicycle or, for that matter, George Washington. It is not the job of the Velocipede to iron out the contradictions of our past. As with the nearby motorcycle museum, it is simply enough to remind us that we made some beautiful things in this country. We still do.
