Main Mall

The Main Mall was an outdoor pedestrian shopping plaza in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York, which was in existence from 1973 until 2001. An urban renewal project designed with the intention of stopping the decline of the central business district of downtown Poughkeepsie, the mall was created by blocking off a section of Main Street (from Market to Catherine/Academy Streets) to automobile traffic. The growth of Poughkeepsie's immediate suburbs, along with the decline of the City of Poughkeepsie, doomed the project not long after its construction.

Early years

The Main Mall was the centerpiece of a project which also included the improvement of US 9 in the Poughkeepsie city limits to a freeway-standard highway and construction of The Arterial, a combination of Routes 44 and 55 into two one-way, three lane highways a block to the north and south of Main Street. At the time of the project, downtown Poughkeepsie was faced with the competition of the Poughkeepsie Plaza Mall on Route 9 as well as Dutchess Mall ten miles south Route 9 in Fishkill. In the first years after its opening, many ceremonies, promotions, and festivals took place on the mall, with it also being the site of many United States Bicentennial festivities as well. These occurrences softened the sting of Dutchess Mall's presence in the early years of both venues. The moving of the de facto bus station and the transfer point for the then-fledgling City of Poughkeepsie Transit and Dutchess County LOOP bus systems to the Market Street end of the mall also softened the sting to some degree.