A Tourist 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 interpret the nationally significant 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 Village 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, usually housed in historic buildings.
Signature and stalwart of the village 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 successful Bogardos structure 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, located across 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 nearby Hyde Park, initiated all four of his successful gubernatorial and presidential campaigns form its very front porch.
The significantly larger complex provides venues for sightseeing, dining, and accommodation, amidst a preserved, colonial atmosphere.
The Tavern at Beekman Arms, located 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 several separate dining areas.
The upper floors contain the original inn’s meticulously restored and elegantly appointed 1766 rooms, although accommodation is available in numerous affiliated structures. Amid exposed brick walls and high ceilings, for instance, guests can stay in the village’s original firehouse, while the Townsend House, which opened in 2004, features the design and architecture influenced by Rhinebeck’s other historical structures. The Guest House, located 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 complex which surrounds a courtyard. Many rooms feature 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 Center 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 landscape and to pay tribute to the origins of summer stock, it replaced the temporary tent under which seasonal performances had been given between 1994 and 1997, opening 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 exquisite views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains beyond it.
2. Museum of Rhinebeck History
Located 3.5 miles north of the Village of Rhinebeck on Route 9, the Museum of Rhinebeck History, housed in the historic Quitman House, was founded in 1992 “to encourage understanding and appreciation of Rhinebeck history through the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of materials significant to Rhinebeck” by means of letters, books, journals, clothing, furniture, photographs, postcards, and artifacts. Open from mid-June to October 31, it features two annual exhibits, previous 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 nearby Old Stone Church for the Reverend Frederick H. Quitman, who had served the Lutheran congregation for more than three decades.
Henry Beekman, who had settled 35 Palatine German families in the area in the early-1700s, had been given most of the land by royal grant, and the nascent community developed round a single log church until the 19th century, at which time commerce had taken root three miles south in the village 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 figure 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 elaborate Queen Anne-style mansion overlooking the Hudson River it is today.
The interior retains all of its original 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 design the outdoor landscape in Romantic style, had already had a long list of similar accomplishments, among them other Hudson River estates and Prospect 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 original 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 village of Rhinebeck itself, Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome offers a time portal to the grass fields and fabric-covered aircraft which represent 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 Standard 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 single crude building serving as a “hangar” on a patch of farmland he had subsequently purchased. Additional aircraft acquisitions—and parts of them—had expanded the mostly biplane lineup, after considerable restoration and reconstruction.
Three metal, quonset hut-like hangars, built between 1963 and 1964 and located 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, across from a new museum facility 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 entrance 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