Gene Dauner is a regional historian, preservationist, and photographer originally from Port Ewen, New York whose work has focused on documenting changes and transformation in the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains. Confronted with the destruction wrought on the community of Kingston during the Urban Renewal initiatives of the 1960s, Gene and his close friend Bob Haines commenced what would become a lifelong project to save materials and visually document infrastructure threatened by the bulldozer. Working both solo and in tandem, Gene used his spare time off work (and initially his father's flower shop delivery van) to photograph building demolitions, rail infrastructure, historic sites, and streetscapes during a period of immense regional change. Gene's photographic efforts culminated in a remarkable 19,000-image collection of Kodachrome II slides chronologically sorted and indexed covering the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. This was pared with a unique assortment of historical records and manuscripts he helped to save from locations like the Cornell building in Rondout, which he pulled material from immediately prior to its demolition. The majority of Gene's collection is rail-centric, celebrating the expansive history of rail in New York and beyond while also documenting its collapse in the 1970s, though his interests are far-reaching and reflect a broad sensitivity to materials of value for those examining the history of Ulster County and the region around.
Segments of this monumental collection, including the preserved archives of several early regional newspapers, made their way to disparate repositories in the 1990s and 2000s and have since been collated in the care of the Ulster County Clerk's Office through the cooperation and generosity of Gene Dauner, Friends of Historic Kingston, and the Ulster County Historian's Office. Other materials directly related to Mr. Dauner's collection in both subject and provenance can be found in the collections of his late friend and fellow photographer Bob Haines.
