Hudson River Cottages

We began our day in Hudson, NY, on the Hudson River, but we had not yet seen this great river.  We remedied that by going first to Promenade Hill Park. 

And then we set out south on the east bank of the river to visit more summer homes of the rich and famous.  First up, Olana, Frederick Church's castle.  He was a Hudson River School landscape painter.  

His house,

and his view.

And his meadow.

Next up, Clermont State Historic Site.  This was the home estate of the Livingstone family from 1728 to 1962.

It was Clermont money that funded Fulton's steamship, hence the name Clermont.

The Hudson view.

Montgomery Place was also a Livingstone Mansion.

I made myself at home.

We didn't take any house tours of these first places, because guided tours take forever, and we had an agenda.  As with the other places, we found the most magnificent old trees and park like grounds.

The Hudson view.

Olin Mills was a wealthy business man who built the largest of the Hudson mansions, here at the Staatsburg State Historic Site.

Unfortunately, that's all I can show you, because it is getting very late, and the Internet hook up is so slow that it has made me crazy just doing this much.


I can tell you that we toured the house and grounds of the Vanderbilt mansion, which are preserved as a National Park as a cultural preservation of the Guilded Age.  The Vanderbilt kids pretty much spent themselves out of their fortunes, but they had a grand time impressing everyone while doing it.
Edited:  I was able to add a few more photos this morning.


The Vanderbilts were quite comfortable here for a few monthes in spring and fall.

And then we came to The Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, Springwood, site of the home of the President's mother, and later of Franklin and Eleanor.   We had a wonderful guided tour of the house.  The presidential library is there too, the first such to be built, and actually built at the end of Roosevelt's second term, so he used it as a study during his third and fourth terms. 

 FDR's birth bed.

Franklin was born at Springwood, and the bed in which he was born is there.  So too are the graves of Franklin and Eleanor.


But the best, and the least grand, was saved for last.  Val-Kill, the little house on a stream in the woods, where Eleanor found sanctuary, and where she called home after Franklin died, was a simple pine paneled cottage in the real sense, and yet it was visited by kings and princes and prime ministers, not because it was grand, but because Eleanor was there.


This is Eleanor's front door, through which the world entered, and all were richly received, high born and lowly, rich and poor, important and ordinary.  All people were important to eleanor Roosevelt.

Tonight we are in Albany, having come back up the west side of the Hudson.  I hope to one day finish posting the photos from this part of the journey.  But for now, good night.