Hudson—Germantown—East Park—Poughkeepsie; State 9G. 44.4 m.
State 9G runs along the river to a point north of Rhinebeck, where it crosses US 9 (see Tour 21) and then parallels that road on the east to Poughkeepsie. The upper section, locally called the Apple Blossom Trail because of the many orchards that line it, offers the most convenient approach to several of the historic Livingston homes.
Livingston Manor was established by Robert Livingston (1654–1728). Born in Scotland, he migrated to Holland and thence in 1673 to America. By 1686, when he was 32, he had accumulated by a series of purchases and grants a 160,000-acre tract along the east side of the Hudson, which was erected into a manor in 1686 by Governor Thomas Dongan. He bequeathed to his third son, Robert, who had saved the family from an Indian assassin, a 13,000-acre tract in the southwest corner of the manor, where Robert built a home and founded the Clermont branch of the family. The manor proper was inherited by Philip Livingston (1686–1749), second lord, a handsome, gay ‘breaker of hearts.’ His son, Robert (1708–90), third and last lord of the manor, had trouble with squatters from Massachusetts; militia was called out to protect his iron mines, which were a valuable source of supply during the Revolution. Upon his death in 1790, the prohibition of entailed estates forced the division of the manor among eight heirs.
The Livingston hold on the land was frequently, but unsuccessfully, challenged. The first challenges came from the democratic followers of the dictator Leisler. A century later, in 1795, several hundred inhabitants of the town of Livingston petitioned the legislature to investigate the Livingston title, stating that they leased the land upon conditions ‘tending to degrade your petitioners from the rank the God of nature destined all mankind to move in to be slaves and vassals.’ The manor had its share of antirent uprisings. In the end the estate was broken up only when the Livingstons chose to sell; members of the family still own much of it.
South from HUDSON, 0 m. State 9G runs in common with State 23 (see Tour 7) to the RIP VAN WINKLE BRIDGE, 3.9 m., and continues south past (L) CHURCH HILL (private), 4.8 m., reached by a winding lane through the woods. The house was the home of Frederick Edwin Church (1826–1900), famous member of the Hudson River School of landscape painters. As a young man, Church studied with Thomas Cole, founder of the school, at his studio in Catskill, across the river. Church imbibed Cole’s love of wild, romantic nature, and, although he traveled far to paint erupting volcanoes and snowclad mountains, the genuine grandeur of the Hudson led him to build his home atop this 500-foot hill with its superb vista downstream. The plans, in Persianesque style, were by Church himself, although he consulted Calvert Vaux, the architect, on practical matters. The walls of rough local stone are trimmed in cut brownstone and blue-stone. The entrance tower has surprisingly pleasing patterns in red, yellow, and black brick. The artist’s touch is especially evident in the colorful decoration of doorway, cornice, and roof; the latter originally had even a few gilded slates. One of the most attractive features of the house is the picture window in the hall, which frames the dramatic river prospect to the south.
At 5.3 m. is a five-corner intersection.
Right on the dirt road 0.6 m. to the entrance (R) to OAK HILL (private), the home of John Livingston (1750–1822). Upon the death of the last lord of the manor, his son John received a large tract on the northern boundary of the manor. He climbed the tallest oak to survey his domain and selected this fine site with its splendid view of river and mountains on which to build Oak Hill, a stately early Federal brick mansion with the typical central-hall plan two rooms deep. The simple lines of the exterior are now obscured by a nineteenth-century veranda and mansard roof. In a day when fireplaces were the sole source of warmth, older members of the family warned John that he would surely freeze to death in these spacious rooms with lofty ceilings. Many family portraits, much silver and furniture, and one cast-iron fireback marked RML (Robert, third lord, and Mary Livingston) were brought to Oak Hill when the manor house (see below) was demolished about 1800. The mansion is now occupied (1940) by John’s great-grandson, Herman Livingston.
At 7.3 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
1. Right here 0.4 m. to LINLITHGO STATION, at the mouth of the Roeliff Jansen Kill, once the busy river port and administrative center of Livingston Manor. The original manor house, erected by the first lord on a hillside above the settlement, was dismantled about 1800 by Robert Thong Livingston, grandson of the last lord of the manor.
2. Left from the junction 0.6 m. to LINLITHGO (145 alt., 200 pop.). In the center of the village stands the LIVINGSTON MEMORIAL CHAPEL, a plain brick structure built in 1870 by members of the Livingston family over the burial vault of the first lord of the manor and his wife Alida Schuyler. In recent years the bodies of eight generations of Livingstons, which once rested here, were removed to the family vaults in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church at Tivoli (see below). The chapel stands on the site of the Livingston Reformed Church built in 1722 through the initiative of the first lord.
About 1,200 of the German Palatines brought over in 1710 by Governor Hunter to make tar and other naval stores were settled on Livingston land in and around GERMANTOWN, 11 m. (180 alt., 300 pop.), then called East Camp. Robert Livingston contracted to furnish bread and beer, to be delivered to the settlers at his manor house, at the rate of sixpence a day for adults and fourpence for children, and he also supplied flour and meat and made cash advances. The colonists were dissatisfied, asserting that they had been promised individual tracts of land in the Schoharie Valley, and a threat of revolt was put down by Governor Hunter with a show of force. The enterprise, however, failed because of mismanagement; in 1712 government subsistence ceased and the immigrants were told to shift for themselves. They scattered to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to Rhinebeck on the Hudson and to the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys; some of them accepted Livingston’s terms and settled in the four villages of the manor.
At 14.9 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right here 1.7 m. to (R) CLERMONT (occasionally open; watch for sign at gate), the lower Livingston manor house. In 1729–30 Robert Livingston (1688–1775), who had been given a 13,000-acre estate here by his father, first lord of the manor, erected a substantial stone house. Judge Robert R. Livingston (1718–75), who inherited the estate, died in the same year as his father. The burden of administering the manor in the unsettled years of revolution fell on his widow, Margaret Beekman Livingston, and she proved heroically equal to the task. After the British burned Clermont in October 1777, she had it rebuilt the next year in its original form. The exterior has undergone numerous face liftings, but the interior escaped alteration. From the central hall with its fine staircase, mahogany doors in delicately carved frames lead to well-proportioned rooms with 12-foot ceilings.
Margaret Livingston’s six daughters all married men who attained eminence in the affairs of State and Nation. Her eldest son, Robert R. Livingston (1746–1813), served as chairman of the committee instructed by the Continental Congress to draft the Declaration of Independence, first Chancellor of the State of New York, and chairman of the State convention that ratified the Federal Constitution. As Chancellor he administered the oath of office to President Washington on April 30, 1789. While Minister to France under President Jefferson, he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase. Having obtained from the legislature exclusive rights to steam navigation on the waters of the State—a monopoly that was not broken until 1824—he financed Robert Fulton’s successful experiment with the Clermont, which was named for this estate. Chancellor Livingston was one of the founders of the American Academy of Fine Arts and its president in 1808. Interested in the improvement of agriculture, he imported fine cattle, introduced Merino sheep, and cultivated fruit trees. The mansion he built for himself just south of here burned down in 1909.
At 16.6 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right on this road 0.9 m. to TIVOLI (152 alt., 713 pop.), where in 1798–1802 Peter de Labigarre, who came to America after the French Revolution, built the Chateau de Tivoli, the first unit of a projected model community. Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin, an expatriate officer of the guard at the court of Louis XVI and an itinerant draftsman and portrait painter, drew the plan for the settlement. It was more visionary than practical. Two extant copies show a gridiron of 60-foot streets named Friendship, Chancellor (after Livingston), Liberty, Plenty, Peace, etc. The plan was so ill-adapted to the precipitious site that Zephyre Square, the central unit, would have been excavated in a hillside. Of the eighteenth-century dream only Flora Street, a road down to the riverside station, and Diana Street, a tiny private concrete driveway, remain. The scheme collapsed after De Labigarre’s death in 1807, and Chancellor Livingston bought the property at a foreclosure sale.
CALLANDER HOUSE (private), entrance at head of Flora St., a large frame structure with thick, brick-filled walls, was built in 1794 by Henry Gilbert Livingston. Long known as Sunning Hill, it has always been occupied by members of the Livingston family.
ST. PAUL’S PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH (L), Wood Road, was erected in 1868. The present stone structure was designed and supervised by Robert E. Livingston, grandson of the chancellor. A thick covering of ivy hides the Victorian Gothic details. In 1922 substantial modifications were carried out and the chancel and transept windows received memorial stained glass executed by Charles J. Connick of Boston. In a semicircle behind the church are eight burial vaults, several of which are owned by Livingston families.
At 18.9 m. is the junction with a macadam road.
Right here 0.3 m. to WARD MANOR (R), a 2,000-acre property donated by Robert B. Ward, prominent baker, to the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. Besides serving as a home for the aged, it also contains summer camps for boys and girls.
BARD COLLEGE (L), 0.7 m., since 1928 a unit of Columbia University, was founded by Dr. John Bard in 1860 as St. Stephens College for sons of Episcopal clergymen. The CHAPEL OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, begun by Bard in 1857 as a parish church and memorial to his son, burned in 1858 and was rebuilt by Charles Babcock, associate of Richard Upjohn. The interior has been redecorated by Ralph Adams Cram. Just to the north stands a quaint carpenter-Gothic Sunday School, now the music building.
The quaint hexagonal gatehouse (R), at 0.9 m., marks the entrance to BLITHEWOOD (private), an estate established in 1795 by General John Armstrong (1758–1843), who married Chancellor Livingston’s sister Alida. Armstrong was the author of the famous ‘Newburgh Addresses’ (see Tour 21A), U.S.senator 1801–4, Minister to France 1804–10, and Secretary of War 1813–14. In 1810 the place was purchased by John Cox Stevens (1785–1857), another brother-in-law of the Chancellor and one of the first influential amateur sportsmen in the United States. His yachts Trouble and Black Maria were built in a cove on the estate; in 1844, on his yacht Gimcrack, anchored off the Battery in New York harbor, the New York Yacht Club was organized. Stevens headed the syndicate that built the America, which in 1851 won the Hundred Guinea Cup at Cowes, England. Six years later this ‘America’s Cup’ was presented as a perpetual challenge cup to encourage friendly competition with British yachtmen. Sixteen British and Canadian challenges between 1870 and 1935 failed of their purpose, and the cup has never left the United States.
Robert Donaldson, who acquired this property in 1835, employed the landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing to lay out the grounds. Downing built the gatehouse and planted the magnificent white pines along the driveway; the turf he planted is still in place. Dr. John Bard lived here after 1853; in 1899 Andrew C. Zabriskie erected the present late Georgian mansion.
At 1.6 m. is the entrance (R) to MONTGOMERY PLACE (private), built in 1805 by the widow of General Richard Montgomery, Janet Livingston, sister of the Chancellor. After Montgomery fell in the assault on Quebec in 1775, Mrs. Montgomery completed Grassmere (see Tour 21); but later, wishing a summer place near her family, she erected the Chateau de Montgomery. The house, with stuccoed walls, has the typical square plan of the Federal period. Mrs. Montgomery willed the estate to her brother Edward Livingston (1764–1836), author of the Louisiana Code, and Secretary of State and Minister to France under President Andrew Jackson. His widow had the architect Alexander J. Davis enlarge the house. Downing described the grounds as ‘richly wooded, picturesque valley with dark, intricate, mazy walks, and musical with waterfalls.’ The present owner and occupant (1940) is General John Ross Delafield, Livingston’s great-grandson.
The QUINN HOUSE, 2.1 m., is a one-and-one-half-story gray stone structure of the early eighteenth century. The stone slave house still stands at the north end of the building.
On State 9G at 23.2 m. is the entrance (R) to ROKEBY (private), a two-story brick house erected during the War of 1812 by General John Armstrong, then Secretary of War, who had sold Blithewood. His only daughter married William B. Astor, the ‘landlord of New York,’ son of the first John Jacob, and wealthiest man in America in the sixties.
At 25.5 m. State 9G crosses US 9 (see Tour 21).
In EAST PARK, 38.2 m. (233 alt., 204 pop.), just beyond the intersection, is the WILLIAM STOUTENBURGH HOUSE (R), a one-and-a-half-story stone building erected in 1750–65. In the two-story barn adjacent, Otto Berge carries on the handicraft work in furniture begun by Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Val Kill Center.
Left from East Park on a macadam road 2.6 m. to the junction with another macadam road; left here 1.6 m. to the CRUM ELBOW FRIENDS’ MEETING HOUSE (R), a well-preserved, austere white clapboard building erected about 1780. The small east section was first constructed, but it soon became inadequate and was augmented by a larger western block, the line of separation appearing plainly in the roof. The modern concrete floor and turned porch columns add an incongruous worldly touch. In prosperous days Quakers from the vicinity overflowed the hard benches on the main floor into the steeply stepped tiers in the gallery, now boarded up. Elias Hicks (1748–1830) frequently spoke here and engaged in those controversies that led in 1827 to the division into the Hicksite and Orthodox branches of the Friends. These names are somewhat misleading, since it was Hicks who insisted that the personal ‘inner light’ was still the true guide and that those who sought to live by the letter of the law as laid down in the Bible and interpreted by the elders were following false principles.
South of East Park the FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT ‘DREAM’ COTTAGE can be seen (L), half-hidden among the trees on the highest hill east of State 9G. The one-story fieldstone structure was designed by President Roosevelt and built in 1938. He picked this high hill offering magnificent views of river and mountain for a retreat. Here in 1939 the President and Mrs. Roosevelt entertained the King and Queen of Great Britain at a frankfurter roast.
POUGHKEEPSIE, 44.4 m. (175 alt., 40,237 pop.) (see Poughkeepsie), is at the junction with US 44 (see Tour 5), US 9 (see Tour 21), and State 55 (see Tour 40).