Fort Decker

Fort Decker is a stone house in Port Jervis, New York, United States, built in 1793 from the remains of an earlier fort of the same name. It stands on West Main Street and is described as the oldest building in the city, predating the city itself by several decades. The first fort was raised before 1760 by the Dutch settler Frederick Haynes during the French and Indian War as an unofficial defense and trading post, built of stone and overlapping logs, and it passed to the Decker family, for whom it is named. Joseph Brant's raiders burned it on July 19, 1779, during the Revolutionary War. The house later lodged engineers working on the Delaware and Hudson Canal and stayed in private hands until 1958, when the Minisink Valley Historical Society bought it and made it a museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.