Our Story
The 401 is a beautiful Victorian treasure built in 1892 on Main Street in Rosendale, NY. In 1992, Dr. Beverley Keith, a clinical psychologist, purchased the building to house a collective private practice space in response to her experience of being excluded from the “boys clubs” that dominated clinical practices during that time. She called it Rosendale Family Therapy Center (RFTC).
Dr. Keith’s vision was an inclusive space where struggling new clinicians could pay by the hour and offer affordable therapy to community members. Charging therapists so little allowed them to offer reduced rates to their clients while making a meager amount to support their private practice. Over the next several decades, Keith supported the building expenses out of her own funds so that it could stay open for community psychotherapists to practice family therapy.
During this time, Keith participated in The Children’s Psychotherapy Project (now called A Home Within), which donated time-unlimited psychotherapy to children in the foster care system for free. Therapists volunteered their time and often followed children until they aged out of foster care and beyond. In return, the therapists received clinical supervision and training from more experienced therapists, including Dr. Keith.
The current Executive Director of RFTC, Dr. Nikki Pison, became involved in the Children’s Psychotherapy Project in 2008 and later directed the local chapter. Dr. Keith was a mentor to Pison. Keith had met Pison’s mother while hitchhiking to New Paltz to teach at the college in the early 1970s. The women became fast friends, and as Pison grew, Keith was a powerful role model and friend to the young Pison, with her influence leading Pison to pursue a career in clinical psychology. Pison often fondly referred to Keith as her “Clinical Mother,” which was lovingly embraced by Keith, who had no biological children of her own.
In 2015, Keith and Pison transitioned RFTC to nonprofit status with its first Board of Directors. It had been operating essentially as a nonprofit serving the community at a loss since its opening in 1992, with the tiny supplements from therapists renting the space rarely covering even basic expenses, so the status helped it to retain its civic goals.
In 2024, when Keith passed away, Dr. Pison became RFTC’s Executive Director, committed to fulfilling Keith’s vision of the nonprofit and the building being a center for educational and therapeutic activities for the local community. Our goal at The 401 is to further Dr. Keith’s enduring vision of an open, welcoming space for people to heal in community.
