Ruins along the Hudson River

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2006

When artists of the Hudson River school, starting with Thomas Cole, set off from a young United States for Italy to witness at firsthand the wonders of ancient civilization, they found the ruins of temples, aqueducts, and civic buildings to be more compelling than they had ever dreamed. Imagine, then, what they might have discovered as subjects for canvas and brush were they alive today to see the crumbling factories, derelict insane asylums, moldering country houses, and abandoned churches that now dot the majestic 130-mile landscape between Albany and Yonkers, New York, along the east and west banks of the Hudson River. These buildings, or neglected vestiges of them, are the subject of a fascinating new study entitled Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape, by Thomas E. Rinaldi and Robert J. Yasinsac. Rinaldi works with the capital projects office of the Central Park Conservancy in New York City, and Yasinsac is a museum associate at Philipsburg Manor (a property of Historic Hudson Valley) in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

This erudite volume is much more than its title would indicate, for in order to understand these architectural ghosts, the authors correctly assume that the reader must know how these buildings functioned originally, whether built when Dutch patroons owned vast tracts of thousands and thousands of acres; or in the Gilded Age, when wealthy robber barons erected enormous houses following the railroad boom; or during periods when the river's potential as a shipping route or for harnessing water power made it ideal for heavy industry. Sadly, the factories from this last period and other commercial endeavors stripped the forests and polluted the river until, over the years, it became thick with sludge and poisoned by PCBs.

Between the boards of this book, the authors treat twenty-eight imperiled or vanished structures in depth and another eighty-five more briefly. Besides the north and south terminuses, Albany and Yonkers, they define the geographic scope of their study as bounded by the Taconic State Parkway to the east and the New York State Thruway to the west. Their county by county survey moves from north to south following the flow of the river. Each chapter contains a brief history of one of the ten counties covered, as well as more comprehensive historical discussions pertinent to the individual buildings. There is also a section devoted to "maritime ruins," or the hulls of schooners, sloops, barges, scows, steamers, and other vessels, crumbling piers, and the like.

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The ebb and the flow of the economy of the Hudson River valley reflected the life cycles of its industries, which were often established, eclipsed by technology, and then faded from existence, leaving desolate buildings in their wake. For example, commercial ice harvesting was a large operation in the nineteenth century, taking place mostly north of Poughkeepsie, where the river water did not contain salt, and in the lower Hudson Valley in lakes and ponds near the river--on which the ice was shipped on barges to consumers in New York City. By the 1880s there were 135 ice harvesting operations on the river, but when refrigeration put these companies out of business, many of the enormous windowless warehouses were abandoned, with just a few recycled into sheds for mushroom farming. Or take mills, which were an essential part of most early American communities, built along rivers since the first years of settlement. Grist, saw, and woolen mills all relied on overshot water wheels, which were supplanted by hydraulic turbines, steam engines, and finally electricity. The photographs in this book of what remain of the vast spaces in the empty mill buildings resemble paintings and photographs by Charles Sheeler. And there were other activities: Brick making was established as early as 1630 and iron foundries and quarrying operations were begun in the mid-eighteenth century, all long gone. When industry failed, sometimes entire towns and villages disappeared: Baileytown, Queensboro, Rockland Lake, and Doodletown are a few of the places that are no longer.

Lest one think that this book is all work and no play, there are a number of amusing tidbits tucked into the text. To wit: the grand romanesque revival house Wyndclyffe, built in Rhinebeck in 1853 by the affluent spinster Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, is said to have inspired the expression "keeping up with the Joneses." Dunderberg Mountain (across the river from Peekskill) is the home of the ruin of an unfinished roller coaster. Then there are the garden follies, which are today, in fact, ruins of ruins.

Two small annoyances detract from this otherwise excellent book. References to the many photographs are lacking in the text. And, there are a few repetitions: descriptions of the ice harvesting industry, for example, appear in more than one place.

While the title of the book ensures that buildings in peril are the central topic, the inclusion of buildings that have been rescued and put to other uses add a ray of hope. Successful reclamations include Dia: Beacon, a space for contemporary art created out of a 300,000-square-foot box-printing factory; Union Station in Albany, now a bank; and Saugerties lighthouse, now a bed and breakfast. The authors end with the statement that the "scores of other ruins along the Hudson will affect the quality of life on the river for generations to come."