This Month’s Featured Articles…

There is a theme that seems to run through the constant reinvention of The Stissing Center in Pine Plains, NY. “Gift.” Kodak used the tag line “The gift that keeps on giving” for years in its promotion of cameras and film.  The Stissing Center could rightly request secondary use. Originally created as “Memorial Hall” in 1914 as a gift from philanthropist Mary Ellen Lapham Saunders who presented the building to the town in honor of her maternal grandparents with whom she had lived in Pine [...]

I knew interesting things were afoot at the iconic building that is 2 Main Street in Millerton, NY, when I came in to speak with Svend Lindbaek about his plans there, and the first thing he did was put Dexter Gordon’s album Montmartre 1964 on the turntable. “Do you like jazz?” he asked, expecting no other answer than yes – which I do, very much. “It has meaning for me,” he said, referring to the year it was recorded and, of course, the place, Copenhagen, [...]

An abandoned bluestone quarry in Saugerties, NY,  became home to Opus 40 – an extraordinary sculpture park and museum that boasts 6.5 acres of earthwork sculpture and more than 50 acres of meadows and forest. Considered by many to be “the Stonehenge of North America,” the impressive site welcomes more than 20,000 visitors each year. It all began with one artist. Rather than overlooking the idle quarry, Harvey Fite saw possibility. The bluestone quarry, which once supplied New York City with building material, could be [...]

In the winter of 1863, Lewis H. Starr was a 36-year old laborer from Sharon, CT. Finding it hard to support his wife and son, Starr took advantage of the cash inducements offered to men to join the Union Army. Starr traveled to Bridgeport, where he enlisted in the 29th Connecticut Infantry, a unit comprised of African American soldiers. Starr was wounded in a skirmish at Kell House, Virginia, in October 1864, but it was a hernia he suffered while performing manual labor for the [...]

Clermont State Historic Site, located in Germantown, NY, has belonged to the State of New York since 1962. We spoke with Susan Boudreau, historic site manager, and Jennifer Hemmerlein, executive director of Friends of Clermont, to learn about this historic location and how it has changed over time. In our interview, the two described the site’s origins and current programs, while emphasizing plans for the site that will, as Susan puts it, “create longstanding change to the way Clermont interprets its story by broadening the [...]