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Rhinebeck The area’s history and rural environment are the main drawing cards for visitors. Rhinebeck Walking Tour.
Copies of a walking tour developed in 1980, just after Rhinebeck was
listed on the National Register as “among the most cohesive and best
preserved historic environments,” are still distributed by the
Rhinebeck Historical Society at the Chamber of Commerce visitor center.
The tour points out prime examples among the more than 400 Colonial and
Victorian structures listed on the National Register, especially along
residential Montgomery, Livingston, Chestnut and Mulberry streets. “In
walking through Rhinebeck,” it advises, “one must be aware of the
varying architectural details. These are found not only at eye level, on
first floors, but on upper stories as well. Be sure to notice peripheral
pleasures, such as slate sidewalks, hitching posts, carriage stepping
stones, wellhouses, fences, outbuildings and large shade trees.” Rhinebeck claims half of an area
known as the Sixteen Mile Historic District, composed of 30 contiguous
riverfront estates associated with the landed gentry of the 18th, 19th
and early 20th centuries. Wilderstein Preservation,
Morton Road, Rhinebeck. This towering, 35-room Queen Anne
Victorian on a 40-acre riverfront site was owned and occupied until 1991
by the Suckley family, descendants of the early Livingston and Beekman
families. Its opulent interiors were decorated by J.B. Tiffany and its
grounds landscaped by Calvert Vaux, Frederick Law Olmsted’s partner in
the design of New York’s Central Park. The estate’s intricate
network of paths, rustic gazebos and sheltered garden seats offer
walkers scenic adventures and contemplation. Interior visitors are
intrigued by the legacies of its last occupant, Margaret Lynch Suckley,
a distant cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She worked with the
president as archivist at the Presidential Library in nearby Hyde Park
and often kept him company in Washington and on train trips. FDR called
her Daisy and she gave him his famous little dog, Fala. After her death
in her 100th year in 1991 at Wilderstein, friends cleaning her cluttered
bedroom found a battered suitcase beneath the bed. Inside were Daisy’s
diaries and the letters the pair exchanged. The resulting book, Closest
Companion, details their intimate friendship. (845) 876-4818. Open
Thursday-Sunday noon to 4, May-October. Adults, $10.
A few miles downriver from
Wilderstein, this Beaux Arts mansion of 65 rooms was the country estate
of Ruth Livingston Mills and her husband, financier Ogden Mills. Built
in 1832 and expanded in 1895 by architect Stanford White, it contains
gilded ceilings, marble fireplaces, ornate furniture and art objects
from around the world. The grounds sweep down to the river, offering
some of the best views along the Hudson. A paved path leads to an old
boathouse. (845) 889-8851. Open
Wednesday-Saturday 10 to 5, Sunday noon to 5, May to Labor Day,
Wednesday-Sunday noon to 5 through October. Adults, $5.
This 23-room Federal mansion dating
to 1805 is furnished with 200 years of Livingston family possessions.
The 434-acre riverfront property contains working pear and peach
orchards, towering black locust trees, and ornamental rose and herb
gardens. Woodland carriage and walking trails wind through the property
and down to the river. (845) 758-5461. Open daily except
Tuesday, 10 to 5, April-October, also Saturday-Sunday 10 to 5, Nov. to
mid-December. Guided house tour, $7; self-guided tour of grounds, $3.
Rural Pleasures. Motorists
beholden to busy north-south Route 9 miss the discoveries that await on
either side. To the west, awesome views accompany the road toward sleepy
Rhinecliff, a two-bit riverfront hamlet from days gone by with an Amtrak
station, quaint houses and not much else. A viaduct leads across the
tracks down to a boat ramp and dock at the Rhinebeck Town Landing. To
the east, civilization rapidly disappears into the relative wilds, woods
and vineyards of the eastern Hudson Valley. Bicycle touring is one of
the best ways to see and savor the landscape. Ferncliff Forest Preserve,
River Road and Mount Rutsen Road, Rhinebeck, (845) 8765-3196. This
192-acre sanctuary was part of a vast estate owned by John Jacob Astor.
Extensive trails lead to a pond, a lookout tower and foundation stones
from the original 59 farms that made up Astor’s 2,800 acres. Picnic
tables make it a good stop for hikers and bicyclists. The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome &
Museum, Stone Church Road & Norton Rd,
Rhinebeck. Endearingly indigenous to
old-fashioned Rhinebeck is this collection of hangars, bleachers,
booths, signs and antique "aeroplanes" that looks on busy days
like an old county fair, when pilots in biplanes barnstormed the
countryside. When our children were young, we joined the multitudes for
one of the weekend air shows and found it a lot of laughs. The oldtime
melodrama revs up the skies, as World War 1-vintage planes perform
daredevil stunts in a flying circus that culminates in a climactic
dogfight. Fifteen-minute barnstorming flights in a 1929 open-cockpit
biplane are available before and after the shows for $40 per person. The
Aerodrome’s new museum building and hangars are full of old airplanes,
engines, vintage cars, motorcycles and memorabilia. (845) 752-3200.
www.oldrhinebeck.org. Open daily 10 to 5, mid-May through October;
adults, $6. Air shows weekends at 2:00, mid-June to mid-October; adults,
$12. Entertainment.
In its 200-seat tent out Route 308 east of town, The Center for
Performing Arts at Rhinebeck stages upwards of 50 performances, from
musicals to magic shows, in July and August. A permanent year-round
structure was in the works. From fall through spring, the Rhinebeck
Chamber Music Society presents Saturday night concerts monthly at
various locations. Upstate Films, hailed as the ultimate in
way-off-Broadway for moviegoers, shows alternative and international
films not often seen in this country in one-going-on-two screening rooms
at 26 Montgomery St. It’s in the rear of the Starr Building, from
which Starr Cantina dispenses Mexican fare and entertainment out
front. Across the street, La Parmigiana offers pizzas and Italian
food inside a renovated church. The ever-busy Dutchess County
Fairgrounds entertains half a million visitors at its annual
agricultural fair in late August. It also hosts weekend crafts, antiques
and folk art shows and special events. Shopping. The Antiques
Market & Art Gallery behind the Beekman Arms displays the wares
of 30 dealers on two floors. An old wooden sign inside the front door at
our visit advertised the Beekman Arms: “modest rates, dinner $1.”
Forty more dealers show at the Rhinebeck Antique Center, 7 West
Market St., and serious antiquers will find plenty of other haunts. Shopping is best along East Market
Street. The Rhinebeck Department Store “continues the
tradition” of the former Hudson Valley Department Store. You’ll find
a Rhinebeck T-shirt among its wares, which seem to be mostly clothing. Identities
offers women’s apparel and sportswear. Offbeat designer apparel is
shown at Haldora and The Elegant Villager. Side-by-side
stores are Summer Moon (“a natural place for home and body”)
and Winter Sun with handworks and clothing from around the world.
The Omega Bookstore sells texts of particular interest to those
who attend the workshops in personal growth and development at the
lakeside campus of the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, 260 Lake
Drive. Earth’s Rewards offers New Age gifts, crystals, incense
and a group meditation room. Bread Alone, an offshoot of a bakery
based across the Hudson in Boiceville, is a retail store and café with
a Tuscan country look. The organic breads,
pastries, soups, sandwiches and coffees are highly rated. Kitchen
& Home has two floors of an old house crammed to the ceilings
with high-tech kitchen ware, gadgets, cookbooks, oils and vinegars,
ceramics, birdhouses and much more. Beyond the corner United Smoke
Shop are the Heritage Art Gallery and Habitu for
home/life/gifts. “There’s a lot to see,” the shopkeeper advised,
as we eyed everything from cards to picture frames to hand-painted
birdcages. Downtown Rhinebeck also has a branch of the Hammertown
Barn and an annex called Hammertown Home on Montgomery
Street. Hidden down Garden Street are The
Hamlet of Fine Craft and Art, featuring Hudson Valley works; Galeriá
Borikén, showing Puerto Rican and Latin arts and crafts; Kiddlydivy,
a children’s boutique specializing in natural fibers, and Rhinebeck
Health Foods. Extra-Special
The Rhinebeck Post Office, 14
Mill St., Rhinebeck. Who’d expect a post office to be a
special place? Adjacent to the oldest inn in America, this was erected
in 1939 as a replica of the first home in Rhinebeck, built in the late
17th century by Dutchman Henrick Kip. Open the old wood door of the
stone building and you’re in a most un-post-office-like fantasyland of
paneled walls and brass chandeliers. Antique airplanes are suspended
from the beamed ceiling, lintel stone is displayed in a glass cabinet,
and historic photos and documents are framed on the walls. All around
the perimeter of the upper walls are what everyone locally calls “the
murals.” They were painted by artist Olin Dows and depict – somewhat
obscurely for the uninitiated – the story of the people, landmarks and
development of Rhinebeck. The thirteen panels show such sights as the
Kip brothers buying Rhinebeck from the Indians and John Jacob Astor’s
first car being towed uphill by a team of farm animals. The panel of
“contemporary Rhinebeck” (1939) includes a group listening to
radio news. The post office was dedicated by none other than Rhinebeck
neighbor Franklin D. Roosevelt in the company of the Crown Prince of
Denmark, Cabinet Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. and Postmaster General
James A. Farley. The foreword to the Rhinebeck Historical Society’s
little picture book about the murals called it “without doubt the most
thoroughly dedicated small-town post office in the western
hemisphere.” (845) 876-4073. Open Monday-Friday
8 to 5, Saturday 8 to 3. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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