2002-2007

The idea for the Reher Center was hatched in 2002 when Geoffrey Miller peered into the window of 101 Broadway and observed a time capsule: the space was left untouched since Hymie Reher closed his family’s bakery in the early 1980s. Geoff describes it as “falling down a rabbit hole,” as he envisioned preserving and opening the site as a museum. Through a conversation with his friend Barbara Blas, Geoff learned that the Rehers and Blases were longtime members of Kingston’s Orthodox synagogue, Agudas Achim, and old family friends. Hymie was pleased with Geoff’s vision (Barbara remembers him singing “Happy Days are Here”) and arranged to deed the Reher’s property at 99-101 Broadway to the Jewish Federation of Ulster County.

A core committee quickly formed to develop plans to preserve the buildings and expand on Geoff’s initial vision for the site as a museum and cultural center that would honor the Reher family’s legacy and the broader immigrant history of the Rondout neighborhood. Its tagline became “Building community by celebrating multiculturalism and our immigrant past.”

2008-2016

Geoff led the all-volunteer Reher Center Committee to restore the storefront and raise $750,000 in funding to stabilize the property under the guidance of preservation architect Marilyn Kaplan. Read more about this extensive and ongoing work on our Building Preservation page.

The Reher Center developed a range of off-site public programs to bring together many communities and celebrate the cultural diversity of the Hudson Valley. Working with a variety of local organizations and partners, the Reher Center spearheaded a series of popular programs including an annual Kingston Multicultural Festival and Deli Dinner, and curated original exhibits related to Rondout and Kingston history.

2016-2018

The Reher Center Committee expanded its Steering Committee and hired its first professional staff to leverage a range of new expertise and develop an interpretive plan for the site. In 2017, Sarah Litvin, interpretive planner, and Samantha Gomez-Ferrer, archivist, were hired to inventory, catalog, preserve, research, and digitize the Reher Center’s collection and expand it through conducting oral histories. They created several Digital Exhibits to make our collections accessible.

2018-2023

Under full time and professional leadership for the first time, the Reher Center grew into a vital resource for the Kingston community and tourist audiences alike with the mission of fostering belonging through culture, community, work, and bread. The Center received its provisional museum charter from New York in 2020 and its non-profit determination in 2021. It purchased its historic buildings from the Jewish Federation of Ulster County in 2022. Additionally, the Center secured nearly $1M in capital funding through state, foundation, and private sources in order to convert the former hayloft at 99 Broadway into the region’s only gallery dedicated to immigrant stories, and to replace the roof over 101 Broadway. The Museum protected, digitized, and grew its collection, which includes artifacts left behind by the Reher family, recovered from archeological digs of our site, local history, oral histories, and furnishings to recreate its historic bakery ca 1959.

In 2022, the Center launched a Hudson Valley Immigrant Oral History Project in partnership with the Kingston Library. It also produced and led a wide variety of public and educational programs, including original exhibitions, seasonal educator-led tours of historic Reher’s Bakery, K-12 field trips and special projects, and programs ranging from a community mural to a sustainable fashion day, to films, concerts, and panel discussions.