The Hudson River Historic District, also known as Hudson River Heritage Historic District, is the largest such district on the mainland of the contiguous United States. It covers an area of 22,205 acres (34.6 square miles, 89 km²) extending inland roughly a mile (1.6 km) from the east bank of the Hudson River between Staatsburg and Germantown in Dutchess and Columbia counties in the U.S. state of New York. This area includes the riverfront sections of the towns of Clermont, Red Hook, Rhinebeck and part of Hyde Park. This strip includes in their entirety the hamlets of Annandale, Barrytown, Rhinecliff and the village of Tivoli. Bard College and two protected areas, Margaret Lewis Norrie State Park and Tivoli Bays Unique Area, are also within the district.
From the colonial era to the early 20th century, it was characterized by the large "country seats" built by members of the Livingston family and other wealthy individuals, such as Clermont Manor and Montgomery Place, both National Historic Landmarks. For most of that period, these estates were worked by tenant farmers, with much of the rest of the population concentrated in the small riverside communities. This semi-feudal arrangement is still reflected in land use and architecture within the district today, since it has not seen major redevelopment.
In 1990 two separate historic districts were combined and expanded into a National Historic Landmark District (NHLD), in recognition of this unique history and character. Only 2% by acreage of the properties within the district are not considered historic.
Read more about Hudson River Historic District: Geography, History, The District Today, Aesthetics, Cultural Legacy, Contributing Properties
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“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“There are knives that glitter like altars
In a dark church
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There’s a woden block where bones are broken,
Scraped clean—a river dried to its bed”
—Charles Simic (b. 1938)
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—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
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—Rebecca West (1892–1983)