Hudson River Historic District - Cultural Legacy

Cultural Legacy

The district has had an impact on American culture and history beyond its art and architecture. In 1807, Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat, stopped at Clermont for an hour on its maiden voyage up the Hudson. It was the first commercial steamship voyage; the boat itself would later be renamed Clermont in recognition of Robert Livingston's patronage and investment.

Several statesmen have called the district home besides the many from the Livingston-Beekman family. Egbert Benson, a congressman, federal judge and New York's first attorney general, built his law practice in what would later be Tivoli. John Winthrop Chanler, another congressman, married Margaret Astor Ward, who had inherited Rokeby through her Livingston / Astor forebearers. His son Lewis served as a state assemblyman and lieutenant governor. Another son, William Chanler, also served briefly in Congress. Another son, Robert, was Dutchess County sheriff and an accomplished painter. John Watts de Peyster, Civil War general, military historian and adjutant general of the New York National Guard, also spent some of his formative years at Rose Hill in Tivoli, and later built the firehouse now used as village hall. Another New York Civil War figure, Charles S. Wainwright, lived at The Meadows.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ancestral home in Hyde Park is just south of the district, but some of his Delano ancestors were longtime residents of the Steen Valetje estate. As a child, his wife Eleanor lived at Oak Lawn, the Tivoli estate of her grandmother Mary Ludlow Hall, for several years after the death of her mother.

The district has had a role in literature as well, both as a setting and a residence. Henry James, a frequent visitor to his uncle's home at Linwood, makes several references to Rhinebeck and other locales within the district in his writings. Edith Wharton, likewise a childhood visitor to her aunt at Wyndclyffe, used the district as a setting in many of her works. Thomas Wolfe lived in a gatehouse at Fox Hollow while writing Look Homeward, Angel, and Aldous Huxley lived there for a time in the 1930s.

Bard College has played an increasing role in the district's cultural impact. Its faculty has included Hannah Arendt and John Dewey, and the former is buried there with her second husband Heinrich Blücher. The college's alumni have included many figures in late 20th-century popular culture. Two of them, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, cofounded the rock group Steely Dan, and wrote two songs about Bard and places near it: "My Old School", from Countdown to Ecstasy; and "Barrytown", on Pretzel Logic. In 2003, the Frank Gehry-designed Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts brought innovative contemporary architecture back to the district. The irregularly-shaped metal panels on its roof echo the view of the Catskills across the river, the district's original attraction.