M'burgh to Seek Historic Designation for Village Hall

By David Avitabile

MIDDLEBURGH - The two-story brick Middleburgh Village Hall is a historic building and village representatives want to make that official.

The Village Hall on Main Street in Middleburgh has been serving the community for more than 145 years and Mayor Tim Knight will be doing research on getting an official historic designation for the building. The building served the village as a bank from 1880 through the early 1960s and then became the village and town hall. It has been the village hall since the mid-1990s.

"We are going to start with a state historical designation, and potentially work our way towards national recognition if the state is receptive," Mayor Knight said this week.

"Village Hall is a historic structure; it stands as a living intersection of our community's business and government operations," the Mayor noted.

In addition to the notoriety of being on the Historic Registry, a designation would help the village receive grants for the building.

"Receiving a historical designation would also make Village Hall eligible for more preservation grants in the years ahead, as we want to ensure this structure as all the funding necessary to operate well into the 21st century," Mayor Knight said.

"In addition, I am optimistic that a historical designation would also open up additional funding to make Village Hall handicapped accessible."

The village has been seeking funding for several years to make the building handicapped accessible but have found the cost unaffordable.

At their April meeting, village board members were very much in favor of the seeking the designation.

Trustee Bob Tinker said it was a good idea and that some grant funding could be used to remove the drop ceiling on the first floor and expose the original ceiling.

"It would be gorgeous," Trustee Tinker said. "I think it would add to the looks of the building."

Trustee Sheryl Adams said that the building has "been so many different things" and is "very historical."

The bank was also the site of the last heist in the long and storied career in crime of Max Shinburn, aka "The Count" and "The King of Crooks." His career came to an unlikely end after his last score, the contents of the safe of the First National Bank of Middleburgh in 1895.

As recounted in a Forgotten Schoharie County feature in 2022, after being pursued on two continents for more than 35 years, the man who was nicknamed "The Count" in Europe and was also known as the "King of Crooks," was arrested in New York City by the detectives from the famous Pinkerton Agency. He stood trial in Schoharie on burglary charges and nearly escaped, and probably could have, after being jailed in the county jail during the trial.

Being arrested was nothing new to Mr. Shinburn, once called "The greatest bank, safe and vault burglar that has ever been known in police history" by Robert Pinkerton of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.

He was first arrested in Saratoga after robbing the Walpole Bank in New Hampshire in 1864. Police closed in on him on April 10, 1865, just four days before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He was convicted but later escaped from New Hampshire State Prison, a pattern he repeated several times during his infamous career.