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| 1986 |
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| 2011 |
The demise of Shay's Warehouse and Stables, also known as the Rag Factory, is the loss of an important piece of New Hamburg's history.
This was the only intact building left on the New Hamburg waterfront relating to the hamlet's function as a river port. It connected the hamlet to the industrial complex in Wappingers Falls which housed some of New York state's earliest cotton-textile mills.
These brick buildings were built around 1865 by rag dealer William Shay. His business involved buying scrap pieces of cotton from the textile mills and selling them to to paper manufacturers. Wappingers Creek was the waterway ferrying this material from the mills to New Hamburg, where the bales of rags would then be shipped on to New York City. Part of what made New Hamburg such a dynamic village was this- it's location. It connected this stream to the Hudson and the world beyond. 
The stable section of the building once had wagon and animal doors, horse stalls, and a tack room.
Shay's Warehouse visually reminds us of how New Hamburg played a part in the industrial history of the Hudson valley. One historian has noted, "New Hamburg was never a fancy town," but buildings like these solidly represent the architecture of a working Hudson River port town in the nineteeth century.
