1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. & Canada Before You Die (32 page)

Known to Native Americans as the “twoway river” because salty ocean tides are felt as far north as Albany, the Hudson River was crucial during the Revolutionary War, with 92 battles fought along its banks and George Washington’s most important stronghold at the river’s narrowest point that would become the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (see p. 205).

The Hudson Valley’s majestic panoramas inspired Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and other landscape painters who created the important 19th-century Hudson River School (see p. 153). It was home to such literary figures as Washington Irving, whose “Rip Van Winkle” and “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” were set here, and wealthy (sometimes fabulously so) families like the Livingstons, Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, and Rockefellers built palatial mansions (see p. 154), still beautifully furnished and on view. The Catskills’ wild beauty has drawn visitors for 200 years, and the Mohonk Mountain House (see p. 165), one of the country’s few remaining great 19th-century retreats, still welcomes travelers from atop the Shawangunk Mountains.

The Valley’s fertile bottomlands and rolling hills, famous for its unparalleled sweet corn and apples, has a new food export today: The Culinary Institute of America (see p. 156) in Hyde Park is one of the world’s finest training grounds for chefs. The Hudson Valley is also the site of a bold experiment in sustainable dining—a restaurant that farms its own food—that has made Blue Hill at Stone Barns (see p. 200) a point of pilgrimage for dedicated foodies.

Take a drive on back roads past manicured horse farms, dairy farms, pick-your-own orchards, and wineries, then stop for lunch and antiquing in 18th- and 19th-century riverside towns such as Nyack, Kingston, Hudson, Rhinebeck (see p. 120), and Saugerties, the latter with its 1869 lighthouse-cum-B&B. For a rural setting the Hudson Valley hosts an impressive wealth of art museums (see p. 153), including the standout Dia:Beacon. Cold Spring is a particularly charming 19th-century
village with shops, cafés and a waterfront that offers stunning river vistas of craggy Storm King Mountain and the Hudson Highlands. These same views add to the magic of nearby Boscobel Restoration, an early 19th-century mansion with one of the nation’s leading collections of Federal-era furniture; it is the setting for highly regarded outdoor productions of
The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
and
Macbeth
during the annual Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.

For bedding down afterward, the Garrison is a 300-acre river view resort with stylish rooms, golfing, a spa, and superlative dining in the Valley Restaurant. Hudson Valley native chef Jeff Raider serves up tasting menus that are a model of wit and sheer sensuous pleasure, sourced in part from the substantial garden out back. A little farther north, jutting out as the only structure on the tiny uninhabited Pollepel Island, is one of the river’s great curiosities and most romantic silhouettes, Bannerman Castle, now open for tours. Looking every bit the haunted ruins of a medieval castle, it was in fact an arsenal built by Scottish immigrant Francis Bannerman for his military surplus business (his clients included Buffalo Bill and WWI regiments).

When Bear Mountain Bridge opened in 1924, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Cool Hudson Valley evenings lend a certain magic to summertime concerts and festivals in open-air venues like the new Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (see p. 144) and the 90-acre Caramoor estate in Katonah, famous for its first-class International Music Festival each summer. This rambling 1920s Mediterranean-style mansion with priceless art and entire rooms imported from European palaces was a gift to the public from collectors and musicians Walter and Lucie Rosen, in memory of their son, who was killed in WWII.

Washington Irving, who traveled widely (his works include the famous
The Alhambra,
about the Moorish palace in the city of Grenada, Spain), ultimately preferred the verdant, rolling landscape he made his final home (see p. 155). “The Hudson Valley is, in a manner, my first and last love,” he wrote, “and after all my wanderings and seeming infidelities, I return to it with a heartfelt preference over all the other rivers in the world.”

W
HERE:
150-mile stretch of river, from Yonkers to Waterford.
Hudson Valley visitor info:
Tel 800-232-4782 or 845-291-2136;
www.travelhudsonvalley.com
.
B
OSCOBEL
R
ESTORATION:
Garrison. Tel 845-265-3638;
www.boscobel.org
.
When:
Wed–Mon, Apr–Dec.
H
UDSON
V
ALLEY
S
HAKESPEARE
F
ESTIVAL:
Garrison. Tel 845-265-9575.
www.hvshakespeare.org
.
Cost:
tickets from $28.
When:
mid-June–early Sept.
T
HE
G
ARRISON
: Tel 845-424-3604 or 845-424-2339 (restaurant);
www.thegarrison.com
.
Cost:
from $300; dinner $60.
When:
resort closed Jan–Mar.
B
ANNERMAN
C
ASTLE:
Tel 845-234-3204;
www.bannermancastle.org
. Tours through Hudson River Adventures, tel 845-220-2120;
www.prideofthehudson.com
.
When:
Sat–Sun, mid-May–mid-Oct.
Cost:
$40.
C
ARAMOOR
: Katonah. Tel
914-232-5035 or 914-232-1252;
www.caramoor.com
.
Cost:
Music Festival tickets from $18.
When:
Wed–Sun, May–Oct.
B
EST TIMES
: summer for a variety of festivals and events; 2009 for the quadricentennial celebration of Hudson’s voyage (
www.exploreny400.com
).

The Ultimate Road Trip for Art Lovers

New York

With its great wealth of historic homes, rolling farmland, and wilderness, the scenic Hudson Valley invites many different routes for exploration. Perhaps the best for art lovers and history buffs
is to follow the Hudson Valley Art Trail, which links some 20 different museums and historic sites.

The natural beauty that inspired Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and other landscape painters of the 19th-century Hudson River School—the first truly American art movement—remains surprisingly unsullied. Church would find the views of the river from Olana, his eccentric 1872 blufftop Moorish mansion, little changed and the interiors exactly as he left them, with all the original furnishings and his personal art collection intact. Stay for sunset to see why Church claimed that this was “the center of the world.” The old-world master most definitely would not recognize nearby Hudson, whose once-gritty stretch of downtown is being transformed by high-style refugees from Manhattan into a neighborhood of tasteful boutiques, antiques stores, and restaurants with young chefs from the nearby Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park (see p. 156).

Downriver, great works of the modern, postmodern, and contemporary eras are clustered at the mid-point of the Hudson Valley. The once scrappy east bank industrial town of Beacon is a rising star in the art world since the 2003 opening of Dia:Beacon, a branch of the New York City–based foundation. With a quarter of a million square feet illuminated by countless skylights, this spacious 1929 riverside printing plant is the perfect home for major (and often oversize) works from the 1960s to the present, including pieces by Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly that challenge your sense of perception.

Across the river and just north of West Point (see p. 205), the Storm King Art Center is known for its harmonious yet dramatic interaction between sculpture and the surrounding landscape. More than 120 internationally recognized artists from the post-1945 period, including monumental works by Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Isamu Noguchi, are represented among its 500 bucolic acres where picnickers are welcomed.

More outstanding sculptures by Calder, Nevelson, and Noguchi, along with Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso, can be seen at Kykuit, the hilltop paradise in Westchester’s Pocantico Hills that was home to four generations of the Rockefeller family. When former governor of New York Nelson A. Rockefeller moved here in 1963, he began a transformation of the grounds by installing his collection of 20th-century sculpture throughout the elaborately terraced beaux art gardens, which still enchant visitors.

Modern magnate Roy R. Neuberger (who made his fortune in mutual funds) started the
Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College in the 1970s by donating 108 first-rate modern and contemporary works. The collection has since grown to 6,000 pieces, including a fine collection of Dada and Surrealist objects as well as African art.

Feel like a king by staying among all these treasures at Tarrytown’s Castle on the Hudson, a turreted replica of a Norman castle built in 1894 by New York journalist and Anglophile General Howard Carroll. Its thick granite walls and hand-hewn oak beams now hold six luxury suites, as well as a less royal 24-room annex.

W
HERE
: from 18 miles (Yonkers) to 160 miles (Albany) north of New York City;
www.hudsonvalleyarttrail.com
.
D
IA
:B
EACON
: Tel 845-440-0100;
www.diabeacon.org
.
When:
Thurs–Mon, mid-May–mid-Oct; Fri–Mon, mid-Oct–mid-May.
O
LANA
: outside Hudson. Tel 518-828-0135;
www.olana.org
.
When:
grounds, daily; check website for mansion hours.
S
TORM
K
ING
A
RT
C
ENTER
: Mountainville. Tel 845-534-3115;
www.stormking.org
.
When:
Apr–mid-Nov.
K
YKUIT
: Sleepy Hollow. Tel 914-631-9491;
www.hudsonvalley.org/kykuit
.
When:
closed Tues, mid-May–early Nov.
N
EUBERGER
M
USEUM OF
A
RT:
Purchase. Tel 914-251-6100;
www.neuberger.org
.
When:
closed Mon.
C
ASTLE ON THE
H
UDSON:
Tarrytown. Tel 914-631-1980;
www.castleonthehudson.com
.
Cost:
from $330 in the annex.

Founded in 1960, the Storm King Art Center showcases a sculpture in a natural landscape.

America’s Châteaux

New York

Perched atop the prettiest bluffs of the Hudson River’s undulating, tree-covered right bank, with sweeping views of the majestic waters below, is America’s most astounding collection of great estates
, many built in the 19th century by the rich and powerful as high-status getaways. Others, like the Roosevelt family’s Springwood in Hyde Park (see p. 157) and Clermont in Germantown, served as the permanent residences for the Hudson Valley’s most prominent Old Money families. Fortunately, descendants took great pains to see that the estates survived, and the houses remain furnished much as they were, as though the families would be walking through the front door at any moment.

Among the area’s pleasure palaces, none is more showy than the beaux arts Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, built in 1895 by Frederick William Vanderbilt, heir to the great shipping and railroad fortune. (The site was chosen for its proximity to the Roosevelts, though the Vanderbilts used the flamboyantly
opulent 54-room limestone mansion for just a few weeks in spring and fall. For the rest of the year, a staff of 60 was left to care for the house and gardens, for which the estate is still known.)