Knox's Headquarters State Historic Site, in the town of New Windsor in Orange County, New York, consists of the Georgian house of the Ellison family, built in 1754, and the grounds around it. It is located on Old Forge Hill Road, just south of Route 94 east of Vails Gate. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1972.
Although most closely associated with Henry Knox, who was using it as his headquarters as the Revolutionary War drew to a close in the early 1780s, it was used as a general's headquarters throughout most of the war, by Nathanael Greene and Horatio Gates.
The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
Today, the house can be toured when the site is open. It is used to educate visitors about how 18th-century families such as the Ellisons actually lived. On holidays and special occasions staff dress in reproduction period clothing and give special events. Staff dressed as the 2nd Continental Artillery frequently demonstrate cannon use on the grounds during special events, as Knox was best known for his command of Continentalartillery.
The Jane Colden Plant Sanctuary along some of the trails in the nearby woods memorializes America's first female botanist, who also resided in the area.
While owned by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation the Ellison House is administered and operated by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, like many other state parks and historic sites in the mid- and lower Hudson region.
Famous quotes containing the words knox, headquarters, state, historic and/or site:
“Death is an incident producing clay. Use it, mold it, learn from it.”
—John Gilling, British screenwriter. Dr. Knox (Peter Cushing)
“What does headquarters think these guys came over here for, a sewing circle? They go up playing for keeps. Cops and robbers with rocks in the snowballs. Brass knuckles and lead pipes and a roughneck conviction they can lick any man in the world.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, “they” don’t want me, “they” accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, “they” don’t deserve me.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces—in nature, in society, in man himself.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)