Fishkill Correctional Facility

Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, established in 1892 as the Matteawan State Hospital by an 1892 law (Chapter 81), functioned as a hospital for insane criminals. It was located in the town of Fishkill just outside the city of Beacon, New York; today its buildings form part of Fishkill Correctional Facility. The new hospital confined and treated individuals who were committed to it by criminal courts and who were declared insane while serving their sentences at state institutions. The Superintendent of State Prisons had control over the hospital.

Downstate Correctional Facility was a maximum-security prison in the Town of Fishkill in the Hudson Valley region of New York. It was located along the north side (i.e. westbound) of Interstate 84, opening in 1979 and closing in 2022. Downstate served primarily as a classification center, as it was, along with Elmira Correctional Facility and Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (women), a reception facility for new inmates entering the New York State prison system. New inmates typically waited at Downstate for a few weeks before they were assigned to a permanent facility. The "permanent" prisoners—those who worked in the kitchens, laundry, etc., which those in transit could not do—were referred to as the "cadre" and were all maximum-security prisoners, with sentences of at minimum seven years. As the vast majority of inmates in New York State come from New York City, the Town of Fishkill, located in southern Dutchess County, was chosen as prison site due to its proximity to the greater New York metropolitan area. Cells in Downstate were organized into four wings around a large and exactly square room called The Square, which was the junction point for the four wings and contained a staffed waiting room. Services such as reception, clothes, pharmacy, medical, commissary, chapel, mail, packages, visiting, and cafeteria were all centrally located, but there were small libraries in each of the wings. For many years, there was a softball field outside the prison building, used mainly by the cadre. Recreation could consist of an hour in a room with twenty other inmates and a television. Like all New York State prisons, there was a professional librarian, who supervised cadre workers at two locations, and a part-time rabbi. As with all maximum security prisons in New York State, inmate movement was scheduled and tightly controlled. An inmate who required medical attention had to be escorted to the infirmary by an officer. Shower opportunities were also scheduled. Library visits were short, scheduled, and in groups. There were dropboxes in the wings where prisoners being moved out of the facility, as most soon were after arrival, could deposit any library books that they had checked out. Downstate was right across Interstate 84 from New York state's former psychiatric hospital, which since 1976 has been known as Fishkill Correctional Facility, a medium security prison. It was also adjacent to Dutchess Stadium, home field of the Hudson Valley Renegades.

Beacon Correctional Facility was a female minimum security state prison, located in Beacon, New York, and operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. .Despite community opposition, Beacon Correctional Facility closed in September 2013 as a result of NYS Assembly budget cuts. It was the state's only minimum security facility for women.

Dutchess Stadium is a baseball park in Wappingers Falls, New York. Opened in 1994, it holds 4,500 people. It is located on New York State Route 9D and is located across Interstate 84 from Fishkill Correctional Facility. Construction of the stadium began in January 1994 and it opened six months later in June 1994.

American Geophysical Union v. Texaco, Inc., 60 F.3d 913, was a 1995 U.S. copyright case holding that a private, for-profit corporate library could not rely on fair use in systematically making copies of articles in academic journals for its employees. A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a ruling by Judge Pierre Leval of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in favor of the academic publishers who had filed the lawsuit. The case was the first heard by the Second Circuit to seriously consider the question of transformative use, a concept Leval had introduced, in evaluating a fair use claim.In the wake of an earlier case that had held similar archival photocopying of academic articles by a government agency's internal library to be fair use due to the public purpose of the agency, Congress had urged the academic publishing industry to develop ways to adequately license such photocopying, a common practice, by private, for-profit libraries. One such system was in place during the 1980s, but Texaco declined to use it, citing its cumbersome bureaucratic requirements and its belief that the practice was fair use, leading several academic publishers, including the American Geophysical Union (AGU), to sue for copyright infringement. At trial Leval found that Texaco's fair use defense failed on three of the four factors used to determine fair use. The copies were used for the same informational purpose as the original articles, and Leval did not find that the ability they gave the scientists to bring them into the lab or home was sufficiently transformative. The articles were copied in their entirety and adversely affected commercial opportunities for the publishers in the form of the lost revenue they otherwise would have made from licensing the photocopying and/or the sale of additional subscriptions to their journals. Only on the second factor, the purpose of the work, did Leval hold for Texaco, since both the originals and the copies were used commercially. Two years later, the Second Circuit took into account the Supreme Court's Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. decision in the interim, which had recognized transformative use when it held parody to be protected under fair use. Judge Jon O. Newman's majority opinion, amended twice over the year following, criticized Leval for having emphasized Texaco's commercial purpose, and held that the second-factor test, the purpose of the work, favored neither side, but otherwise affirmed his holding. Judge Dennis Jacobs dissented, arguing that the use of the photocopied articles was indeed transformative since ultimately they could lead to new research and new ideas, as well as attacking as "circular" the majority's lost revenue finding when the entire purpose of the case was to determine whether the use that gave rise to those revenues was fair, themes echoed in criticisms by academic commentators. After further appeals were denied, Texaco settled the case.

Stony Kill Farm is located on NY 9D in the Town of Fishkill, New York, United States. It is a 1,000+ acre (3 km2) working farm owned and operated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) as an environmental education center. In 1683, settlers Gulian Verplanck and Francis Rombout bought the 85,000-acre (430 km2) tract, including the farm, from the Wappinger people for goods worth approximately $1,250. In 1708 the Great Partition of this land put the area around the farm in the Verplanck family's hands. Instead of working it themselves, they took in tenant farmers to keep the land worked and productive. They built the stone tenant farmhouse near the property's main entrance in four sections between the late 17th and early 19th centuries.An 1836 subdivision of the property gave a thousand acres (4 km2), including the current farm, to descendant James DeLancy Verplanck of nearby Beacon. He had a Greek Revival home, now known as the Manor House, built and moved into it in 1842.A century later, his descendants gave the farm to the state Education Department (SED) for use as a teaching farm. It was used for this purpose by SUNY Farmingdale until the late 1960s, when the college decided it no longer needed the property. In 1973 DEC took it over and converted it to its present use. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Today, DEC uses the property to help visitors learn about basic ecological issues. They can either do this on their own, by walking the property and hiking several trails or perusing the library at the Manor House, or by taking part in the many programs DEC offers or sponsors with other groups on the site.

Glenham is a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The community is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) east-northeast of Beacon. Glenham has a post office with ZIP code 12527, which opened on March 6, 1839. The hamlet is served by the Glenham Fire Department, which was formed in 1921.

Beacon is a city located in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The 2020 census placed the city total population at 13,769. Beacon is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, New York–New Jersey–Connecticut–Pennsylvania Combined Statistical Area. Beacon was so named to commemorate the historic beacon fires that blazed forth from the summit of the Fishkill Mountains to alert the Continental Army of British troop movements. Originally an industrial city along the Hudson, Beacon experienced a revival beginning in 2003 with the arrival of Dia Beacon, one of the largest modern art museums in the United States. Recent growth has generated debates on development and zoning issues.The area known as Beacon was settled by Europeans as the villages of Matteawan and Fishkill Landing in 1709. They were among the first colonial communities in the county. Beacon is located in the southwestern corner of Dutchess County in the Mid-Hudson Region, approximately 90 miles (140 km) south of Albany, and approximately 60 miles (97 km) north of New York City.

Castle Point is a hamlet in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The community is 2.9 miles (4.7 km) north of Beacon. Castle Point has a post office with ZIP code 12511.

The Howland Cultural Center, formerly known as Howland Library, is located on Main Street (New York State Route 52 Business) in Beacon, New York, United States. It is an ornate brick building designed by Richard Morris Hunt in the 1870s. In 1973 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Hunt was commissioned by his brother-in-law, Joseph Howland, to design a home for a subscription library he donated to the city. The completed building has much in common with the Stick style summer homes in Newport, Rhode Island, that Hunt designed at this early stage of his career. Some of its design elements have been compared to Norwegian vernacular architecture. The interior was not complete in its current form until almost the end of the century. Except for some upgrades to its utilities, it has remained largely intact since then. Throughout the 1920s it was one of only two remaining public subscription libraries in the state. In response to a donor's bequest, the library became free at the end of that decade. Almost 50 years later, the library moved out when it outgrew the building. Since then it has been used as a cultural center, hosting various visual and performing arts events.

Towne Crier Cafe is a club and restaurant located in Beacon, NY. It was established in 1972. The restaurant offers a brunch menu, dinner menu or dessert menu, depending on the time of day. The restaurant is accompanied by live music, and seats approximately 100 guests. The intimate venue seats 170 guests. It was founded in 1972 by Phil Ciganer. After a period of decline, it has enjoyed increased popularity in recent years.

The U.S. Post Office in Beacon, New York, is located on Main Street (New York State Route 52 Business). It serves the ZIP Code 12508, covering the entire city of Beacon and some of the neighboring areas of the Town of Fishkill. It is a stone structure in the Dutch Colonial Revival architectural style built in the mid-1930s. In 1988 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with many other older post offices in the state. While its style was not uncommon for post offices of the era, its fieldstone exterior is. Only a few other New Deal post offices in the state, most of them also in Dutchess County towns along the Hudson River, used it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's preferred that new post offices in his native region echo the architectural preferences of his Dutch ancestors who had been among the earliest settlers of the Hudson Valley, and the success of the Beacon post office may have encouraged him in that respect.It was also the only federal building in New York designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, who lived in Idaho and primarily worked on buildings in the national parks of the West, closer to his home. Inside the building, Charles Rosen painted a map of the Hudson Valley on the lobby walls, in addition to some murals depicting historic events in the area. Both interior and exterior remain largely as originally constructed.