A traveler Guide to Rhinebeck, New York

A traveler Guide to Rhinebeck, New York 1. Introduction and History

Located on the east side of the Hudson River in Dutchess County some 100 miles north of Manhattan, Rhinebeck, accessed by the Taconic State Parkway, Route 9, Route 9W, and the New York State Thruway, is both a picturesque and intensely historic village. It itself is part of the Hudson River Valley National Historic Area which was established in 1996 by Congress to recognize, preserve, protect, and clarify the nationally necessary history and resources of the valley for the benefit of the nation, and stretches from Yonkers to Albany. Founded in 1686 when Dutchmen Gerrit Artsen, Arie Roosa, Jan Elting, and Henrick Kip exchanged 2,200 acres of local land with six Indians of the Esopus (Kingston) and Sopaseo (Rhinebeck) tribes, it was initially designated "Kipsbergen." In 1713, Judge Henry Beekman referred to these land holdings as "Ryn Beck" for the first time. One of the country's largest historic districts with 437 sites listed on the National Historic Register, the nucleic hamlet of Rhinebeck and the larger, surrounding Town of Rhinebeck, encompass half of the 16-mile stretch which includes the 30 contiguous riverfront estates associated with the landed aristocracy of the region during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Often dubbed a "picturesque village" and the "jewel of the Hudson," it offers many walking-proximity attractions, such as antique shops, art galleries, bed-and-breakfasts, inns, and restaurants, normally housed in historic buildings. Signature and stalwart of the hamlet is the Beekman Arms, America's oldest, continuously operating inn listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Tracing its origins to 1766 when Arent Traphagen relocated his father's flourishing Bogardos buildings of stone and sturdy timber--so constructed to protect it against Indian attacks--to the crossroads of the recently designated Ryn Beck village, it ultimately served as a Mecca of revolutionaries, often hosting the likes of George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and Alexander Hamilton. When the British burned then-state capital Kingston, placed over the Hudson, the townspeople sought refuge here. Purchased by Asa Potter in 1802, it subsequently served multiple roles, including town hall, theater, post office, and newspaper post. Renovated, expanded, and renamed its current "Beekman Arms" moniker by secondary owner Tracy Durs, it served as inspiration for Thomas Wolfe's novel, Of Time and the River, after frequent visits here, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hailing from around Hyde Park, initiated all four of his flourishing gubernatorial and presidential campaigns form its very front porch. The significantly larger complicated provides venues for sightseeing, dining, and accommodation, amidst a preserved, colonial atmosphere. The Tavern at Beekman Arms, placed on the ground floor, is decorated with dark wood trim, a huge brick fireplace, and wide plank floors, and is subdivided into the Colonial Tap Room, a garden greenhouse, and any cut off dining areas. The upper floors include the former inn's meticulously restored and elegantly appointed 1766 rooms, although room is ready in numerous affiliated structures. Amid exposed brick walls and high ceilings, for instance, guests can stay in the village's former firehouse, while the Townsend House, which opened in 2004, features the produce and architecture influenced by Rhinebeck's other historical structures. The Guest House, placed behind the main inn, offers lower-cost, motel-style rooms. The Delameter Inn, designed in 1844 by Alexander Jackson Davis and an example of American Carpenter Gothic architecture, is one block north of the Beekman Arms, and is part of a seven-guesthouse complicated which surrounds a courtyard. Many rooms highlight fireplaces. Rhinebeck itself offers many attractions. The Dutchess County Fairgrounds, for instance, hosts events such as the Dutchess County Fair, the Rhinebeck Antiques Fair, the Crafts at Rhinebeck exhibition, and the Iroquos Festival, while the town for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck offers live classical, drama, musical, and children's performances showcasing local theater companies, although talent has also included national and international names. Resembling an oversized barn to complement the surrounding rural scenery and to pay tribute to the origins of summer stock, it substituted the temporary tent under which seasonal performances had been given between 1994 and 1997, occasion in July of the following year and becoming a year-round venue in 1999. Several early-aviation and architecturally historic sights surround the immediate town, most of which offer perfect views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains beyond it. 2. Museum of Rhinebeck History Located 3.5 miles north of the hamlet of Rhinebeck on Route 9, the Museum of Rhinebeck History, housed in the historic Quitman House, was founded in 1992 "to encourage insight and appreciation of Rhinebeck history through the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of materials necessary to Rhinebeck" by means of letters, books, journals, clothing, furniture, photographs, postcards, and artifacts. Open from mid-June to October 31, it features two every year exhibits, old ones of which have been entitled "The First Century," "The Civil War," "The Guilded Age," "World War I," "The Roosevelt Years," "World War Ii," and "Early Rhinebeck Industries," among others. The Quitman House, marking the area of the town's first settlement, had been built in 1798 as a parsonage by the parishioners of the around Old Stone Church for the Reverend Frederick H. Quitman, who had served the Lutheran congregation for more than three decades. Henry Beekman, who had placed 35 Palatine German families in the area in the early-1700s, had been given most of the land by royal grant, and the nascent society industrialized round a particular log church until the 19th century, at which time manufactures had taken root three miles south in the hamlet designated "The Flatts." 3. Wilderstein Located two-and-a-half miles from the historic downtown district of Rhinebeck, Wilderstein, named after the petroglyph of a outline holding a peace pipe in his right hand and a tomahawk in his left in Suckley Cove, translates as "wild man's stone" from the German, and had been a restrained Italianast villa when it had been built in 1852. Home to three generations of the Suckley family, it had been significantly enlarged in 1888 with two upper floors, a tower, and a veranda, rendering it the clarify Queen Anne-style mansion overlooking the Hudson River it is today. The interior retains all of its former wall carvings, furniture, artwork, book collections, and stained glass from its 1888 expansion, and the ground floor, designed by Joseph Burr Tifany, features a dark, heavily-paneled foyer, a fireplace, a library, a dining room, a kitchen, and two living rooms. Calvert Vaux and his son, hired in 1890 to produce the outdoor scenery in Romantic style, had already had a long list of similar accomplishments, among them other Hudson River estates and anticipation Park and Central Park in New York, and had ordered 1,091 shrubs and 41 trees from a local Rhinebeck nursery for the Wilderstein project. The area, greatly reduced from its former size, currently encompasses 40 acres and three miles of trails. Margaret (Daisy) Suckley, a close friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the last to survive, had ceded the mansion and its grounds to the Wilderstein Preservation in 1983, a not-for-profit educational institution. Today, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 4. Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome Located on tiny, easily-missed Norton Road on the east side of the Hudson River not far from the hamlet of Rhinebeck itself, Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome offers a time portal to the grass fields and fabric-covered aircraft which recount the first "sprout" of aviation a century ago. Its own seed had been planted when Cole Palen, having earned his airframe and powerplant license form the now defunct Roosevelt Aviation School on Long Island, purchased six airplanes offered for sale by its museum in order to vacate the area for the pending Roosevelt Field Shopping Mall. After storage in an abandoned chicken coop on the Palen farm in Rhinebeck, the six aircraft, which encompassed a 1917 Spad Xii, a 1918 proper J-1, a 1914 Avro 504K, a 1918 Curtiss Jenny, a 1918 Sopwith Snipe 7F1, and a 1918 Aeromarine 39B, had formed his initial fleet and the "aerodrome" had been a 1,000-foot-long, rocky, swamp-drained clearing called a "runway" and a particular crude construction serving as a "hangar" on a patch of farmland he had subsequently purchased. Supplementary aircraft acquisitions-and parts of them-had wide the mostly biplane lineup, after necessary resumption and reconstruction. Three metal, quonset hut-like hangars, built between 1963 and 1964 and placed at the top of a small hill above the main dirt-and-grass parking lot, house Pioneer, World War I, and Lindbergh era aircraft today, over from a new museum installation and a small gift shop. But the aerodrome itself, on the other side of Norton Road, is accessed by a wooden covered bridge which serves more than just an entry to the grass field, but as the time portal itself to the barnstorming era of aviation, an historical dimension somehow arrested and preserved in time beyond its boundaries. The hangers, as if ignorant of the calendar, proudly brave the winds, bearing such names as Albatros Werke, Royal Aircraft installation Farnborough, A.V. Roe and Company, Ltd., and Fokker. But it is the multitude of mono-, bi-, and triplanes which most fiercely wrestles with one's present-time conception. The current air show program, which runs from mid-June to mid-October, features the "History of Flight" show on Saturdays, with pioneer aircraft such as the Bleriot Xi, the Curtiss D "Pusher," and the Hanriot, while the "World War I" show on Sundays includes designs such as the Albatros, the Avro 504K, the Caudron G.Iii, the Curtiss Jn-4D Jenny, the Fokker D.Vii, the Fokker Dr.I, the Nieuport Ii, the Sopwith Camel, the Spad Vii, the Davis D1W, the de Havviland Tiger Moth, and the Great Lakes 2T-1R. Biplane rides in four-passenger New proper D-25s are given before and after the shows, while viewers can admire the fleet either in hangars or on the grass aerodrome while having lunch on outdoor picnic tables at the Aerodrome Canteen. Audience volunteers, sporting Victorian, Edwardian, and 1920s dress, provide fashion shows after changing in the aerodrome's single, track-mounted, red caboose, often transported past spectators in vintage vehicles such as a 1909 Renault, a 1916 Studebaker, and a 1914 Model T Speedster. Duration music completes the scene. The air shows themselves, which highlight only treetop-high sprints of the pioneer aircraft before immediate relandings on the grass, otherwise offer more dramatic maneuvers of the World War I and Lindbergh era designs, including aerobatics, dogfights, bomb raids, balloon bursts, parachutists, and "Delsey drives." 5. Montgomery Place Designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and nestled on a scenery influenced by Andrew Jackson Downing, Montgomery Place, placed off of Route 9G in Annandale-on-Hudson, is a richly-ornamented, classical revival, architectural landmark, reflecting both Hudson Valley estate life and practically 200 years of family ownership and imprint. Tracing its origins to 1802 when 59-year-old Janet Livingston Montgomery had purchased a 242-acre area to produce a commercial farm and produce a house called the "Chateau de Montgomery" to honor her husband, general Richard Montgomery, it first served as a base in which to live and work. Poised at the end of a half-mile long alley of deciduous trees, the federal style, stuccoed fieldstone house became the town of orchards, gardens, nurseries, and greenhouses, and flowers and trees had been sent to her from exotic areas of the world, including magnolia, yellow jasmine, orange, and mangos from England and Italy in Europe and Antigua in the Caribbean. The flourishing firm supplied seeds and fruit trees to local farmers. Although the estate had been intended for general Montgomery's heirs, their earlier deaths forced her to cede it to her youngest brother, Edward Livingston, whose collective service vocation had encompassed positions as New York City Mayor, Us Representative and Senator from Louisiana, Secretary of State, and priest of Finance during the Andrew Jackson administration. Louis Livingston, his widow, and Coralie Livingston Barton, his daughter, renamed the mansion "Montgomery Place," using it as a summer domicile and extensively modifying its architectural and scenery features during a 40-year period. The farm and pastureland, particularly, sported formal flower gardens and an ornate conservatory, and the estate's aesthetics were enhanced with walking paths to the Saw Kill Stream, rustic benches, colorful fruit gardens, and an arboretum comprised of purple-leafed European beech, cucumber magnolia, red oak, sweetgum, Tuliptree, white oak, Sargent's weeping hemlock, flowering dogwood, Amur Corktree, black locust, and Sycamore trees. These 150-year-od monoliths of nature can still be enjoyed today during the walk from the Visitor's town and the actual mansion. Based upon the style of Alexander Jackson Davis, then the most American architect of the romantic movement, the house itself was redesigned with porches, wings, and balustrades during a dual-phase process which commenced in 1842 and later in 1860, rendering it the classical revival example it is today. Andrew Jackson Downing, then leading scenery writer and co-owner of a nursery in Newburgh, New York, in case,granted input about gardens, statuary, walking paths, and water features. After a post-Civil War decline, during which time the asset had been busy by relatives, general John Ross Delafield, a Livingston descendent and New York attorney, inherited it, and his wife, Violetta White Delafield, herself a botanist, resurrected the scenery by introducing garden rooms for roses, herbs, and perennials, a wild garden with an synthetic stream, and a hedged ellipse with a pool for aquatic plants. In 1986, Delafield descendants conveyed title to Montgomery Place, its 424 acres of land, and a part of the hamlet of Annandale, to Sleepy Hollow Restorations (later renamed Historic Hudson Valley) in order to ensure its resumption and preservation. Now a National Historic Landmark, it reopened to the collective two years later. 6. Bard College Only a short distance Supplementary north and immediately off of Route 9G in Annandale-on-Hudson is Bard College. A fusion of two historic estates, the liberal arts, residential campus, situated on more than 500 acres of fields and forested land bordering the river, features a complicated of trails and walking paths through wooded areas, along the Saw Kill Stream, and down to the Hudson River, where the rising Catskill Mountains are visible. Founded in 1860 by John Bard in association with the New York City leadership of the Episcopal Church and initially named St. Stephens College, it used part of Bard's riverside estate, Annandale, and the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, both of which he donated, to teach a classic, preparatory curriculum for those intending to enter the seminary. Transitioning to a broader, more secular practice in 1919, it incorporated both natural and collective science courses in its curriculum for the first time, and a decade later served as an undergraduate school of Columbia University. Increasingly focusing on liberal arts, it officially adopted the "Bard College" name in 1934 and ten years later became a coeducational institution, severing ties with Columbia. By 1960, the very wide curriculum included science, art, art history, sculpture, and anthropology, and attracted a significantly larger student and faculty base. A film agency was introduced. Its first graduate program, the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, was established in 1981, and, by the summer of 1990, the Bard Music Festival, created to provide a deeper appreciation of the repertory of reknowned composers, was introduced, focusing on the work and era of a separate artist and showcased in the modern, metal-roofed, Frank O. Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher town for the Performing Arts in 2003. The architecturally bold, innovative structure, offering tours during the day and chamber, orchestral, jazz music, drama, musical, dance, and opera performances by American and international artists during the evening, is subdivided into three venues. The Sosnoff Theater, with an orchestra, parterre, and two balcony sections, features seating for 900, while the teaching Theater Two sports adjustable, bleacher-type seats and a semi-fly tower with a catwalk. The Felicitas S. Thorne Dance Studio serves as a classroom and rehearsal hall. 7. Clermont State Historic Site The 500-acre Clermont State Historic Site, north of the town of Tivoli and off of Route 9G, was the seat of the politically and socially leading Livingston family whose seven generations shaped both the house and its grounds over a 230-year period. The estate harks to 1728 when Robert Livingston, Jr. Acquired 13,000 acres of land along the Hudson River from his father, the First Lord of Livingston Manor, who had owned the second largest tract of secret land in colonial New York, and built a brick, Georgian-style mansion between 1730 and 1750, christening it with the French name for "clear mountain," or "clermont," after the Catskill peaks graphic over from it. When his only son, Robert P. Livingston, subsequently married Margaret Beekman, who herself had been heir to heavy expanses of land, he considerably wide the property's boundaries. Their own, and eldest, son, Robert. R. Livingston, Jr., was a leading and extremely influential outline who, as one of the Committee of Five, drafted the notification of Independence, served as the first Us priest of Foreign Affairs, specifically as Secretary of State, and Chancellor of New York, under whose title he gave oath of office to George Washington as the nation's first president. Because of the Livingston family's involvement in fostering independence, British forces targeted and burned the mansion in the autumn of 1777, but Margaret Beekman Livingston, who had managed it, had it reconstructed during the three-year Duration between 1779 and 1782. Developed for agricultural purposes, it was the site of experimental sheep breeding and yield-increasing crop methods, attracting national attention. A more clarify house, in an "H" configuration, had been constructed south of the former one in 1792, but was decimated by flames in 1909. Serving as Thomas Jefferson's priest to France from 1801 to 1804, Chancellor Livingston negotiated the Louisiana buy in Paris, and later jointly designed the world's first steamboat with Robert Fulton. Manufacture its inaugural trip from New York to Albany in 1807, it reduced the journey by land to less than half the time and paved the way toward the Fulton Steamboat firm and the lucrative transport of passengers and cargo along the Hudson River. After having been willed to the chancellor's oldest daughter, the estate received necessary expanding and modification, and in the 1920s, John Henry Livingston and his wife, Alice Delafield Clarkson Livingston, remodeled it in the Colonial Revival style. Dwelling there between her husband's death and the onslaught of the Second World War, she then moved to the gardener's cottage, unable to pronounce its precious upkeep, although it was normally opened during holidays and extra occasions. Deeded to New York State in 1967, it was subsequently designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973, and today appears as it did in the early 20th-century when it had been busy by Mr. And Mrs. John Henry Livingston and their daughters, Honoria and Janet, the last two generations to have lived there. A Visitor's Center, placed a short walk from the actual mansion, features a museum with a model of the first steamboat, a gift shop and bookstore, and an initial film. 8. Conclusion A visit to the hamlet and Town of Rhinebeck, along with its many necessary sights, is an immersion into the historic inns, bed-and-breakfasts, antiques and artwork, architecturally-bold and barn-like theaters, vintage aviation, and earlier-century aristocratic estate life of the region, all with the azure backdrop of the Hudson River and the green silhouettes of the Catskill Mountains rising beyond it. A traveler Guide to Rhinebeck, New York