In Columbia County, you can learn to appreciate the opportunities presented by being caught behind a slow-moving tractor.
For one, it allows you the chance to scribble on your dashboard pad the variety of interesting places along the rural routes wending their ways through the small villages, hamlets, and farmland: If you’re on Route 66, for example, there’s the sign for Grazin’ Angus Acres, whose grass-fed Black Angus meats seem a great idea around barbecue time; and the Hudson-Chatham winery, which seems a pretty tasty idea at nearly any time.
Along Route 9, through Valatie and Kinderhook, you could easily fill your small notebook jotting down just the historical markers: The Burgoyne House (where the British general was entertained for an evening as a prisoner during the Revolutionary War), the Dutch Reformed Church (organized in 1712), the Benedict Arnold House (where the famed hero/traitor was allegedly cared for after being wounded in the Battle of Bemis Heights in 1777), and many others. They seem to sprout along this route like summer wildflowers.
And if you happen to be stalled at the traffic circle there, the life-sized sculpture of eighth US president and Kinderhook native Martin Van Buren, chilling nonchalantly on a park bench, might tempt you out of your car for a photo op.
But aside from the appeal for the note-taking agritourist or the history buff, there’s another reason to be thankful for the poky John Deere: Look to the right. Look to the left.
It’s spectacular.
The open and gently rolling land of Columbia County has a wealth of well-known scenic points: There’s artist Frederic Edwin Church’s breathtaking Middle-Eastern-influenced mansion, Olana, overlooking the Hudson; the High Falls on the Agawamuck Creek in Philmont; the miles of trails and the picnic spots at the Greenport Conservation Area.
But an A-ha! moment can arrive in the form of the blinking hazards of a forest-green traffic obstacle. Stop virtually anywhere in Columbia County and you’ve got a lush, unspoiled rural vista before you.
Which makes the artsy urbanity of the county seat all the more compelling.
Urban Chic
As you approach the art gallery a couple stroll past you, the woman explaining into her phone, “No, we can’t even find a place to stay. We’ve been calling around but everything’s completely booked.” At the same time, you’re passed in the other direction by a scruffy hipster in a Civil War cap and a keffiyeh.
To your right, a group attend to a small motorcade of heavy-duty baby strollers, one woman dipping at the knees to soothe her front-slung infant rhythmically to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love,” which plays from speakers at the outdoor theater across the street. (Later, these speakers will broadcast the audio for Chaplin’s film Modern Times, which will be screened in an open-air courtyard for free.)
Inside the Carrie Haddad Gallery, the art on display—that of photographers Gary Schneider, David Lebe, Robert Flynt, and Warren Neidich—reinforces the sense that you are among the culturati. (Schneider, alone, has work on display in the Guggenheim, the Met, the Fogg, and the Art Institute of Chicago.) But at the same time, there is an openness, a kind of social porousness to this crowd that one does not associate with Manhattan. The opening is both surprisingly upscale in content and surprisingly easygoing in context.
Much has been made of the city’s arts-led revival in recent years, and the evidence is ample. Though the seeds were planted back in the middle `80s by antique dealers opening shops along Hudson’s Warren Street, it has been in recent years that a kind of cultural critical mass has been obtained. Transplanted city folk and weekenders patronizing the variety of retail and dining establishments on now-thriving Warren have added an air of sophistication to the small city (most evident in the latter portion of the week).
Frontier Town
What is less commented upon, however, is the way in which Hudson retains its own character: This is not simply Williamsburg North or the Greenwich Village Bargain Basement. Hudson has both a distinct history of its own as an important small urban center and, as the seat of Columbia County, a relationship to a largely rural and agricultural setting that distinguishes it from that other city downriver.
Though much praised for its architectural elegance (it’s been called one of the richest dictionaries of architectural history in New York State), there’s still roughness about the place, which can be seen as either unfulfilled potential, or opportunity. It’s frontier.
So, it is, perhaps, not so surprising, after all, that there was a fire-eater in the Hudson offices of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce.
Stephanie Monseu is the cofounder of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, an anarchic combination of traditional traveling circus, sideshow, and vaudeville variety troupe. She and her partner Keith Nelson relocated to Hudson from Brooklyn three years ago due, in part, to the gentrification of Williamsburg. Though the Bindlestiffs (slang for hobos, by the way) had enjoyed significant audience and critical success, they simply couldn’t keep up with the pace of development and escalating real estate prices. This is far from uncommon, and though frustrating—even devastating—for artists in the Big Apple, it’s been a boon for certain upstate communities. “In my peer group, people are looking for space,” says Monseu. “Everyone knows spaces are at a premium in New York; and everybody knows Hudson.”
Lest the statement be interpreted too narrowly, President and CEO of the Chamber, Dave Colby, adds, “Hudson’s becoming a world-renowned community.”
Flourishing Arts Scene
It’s not an empty boast. Hudson and Columbia County are regular fixtures now in the Travel/Escapes and Lifestyle sections of the New York Times and in magazines such as Travel + Leisure. In 2006, Budget Travel magazine named Hudson one of the 10 “coolest” small towns in the United States.
As slippery a word as it is, it suits the place. There’s something decidedly cool about Hudson, something hinted at by the pairing of Monseu—who, tattooed and draped in a scarf against the conference room’s AC, looks every bit the outer-borough artist—and Colby, whose jacket and tie are more insider than outlier. These superficial, sartorial differences aside, Monseu and Colby are, as regards the appeal of Hudson and Columbia County, on exactly the same page.
“Hudson is full of smart and resourceful people managing to put out a really good product in spite of challenging times,” says Colby. “And the Chamber is pointing out how valuable these cultural businesses are as an economic force.”
“Wherever the arts are flourishing, people are coming and spending money,” says Monseu. “We understand the economic value of our contribution to where we live and work.”
The pair have numbers to back up this enthusiasm: A collective of 24 county arts organizations—including community and equity theaters, multimedia performance spaces, a festival orchestra, and more—branded as PerformColumbia, commissioned a study using the Americans for the Arts Economic Impact Calculator to get some hard statistics. Using information reported by 15 of the 24 member organizations, it was determined that the group’s collective expenditures in the county were $2.57 million; audience expenditures were $3.48 million. The total economic impact for 2005 was measured at $6.05 million. By 2007, this figure had grown 11 percent per year, on average, to $7.93 million.
And, as the two are quick to point out, the member organizations of PerformColumbia include artists and presenters in Chatham, Ghent, Spencertown, Valatie, Copake, and locations throughout the county. Though the renaissance may be most easily viewed in a single stroll along Warren Street, it’s not just the county seat that can lay claim to culture.
City as Eye Candy
“We use Hudson as a showpiece; kind of like a trophy wife,” says Seth Powell, owner of Soundcheck Republic recording studio in East Chatham. Though wry, Powell is unstinting in his praise of Hudson. “It’s great. I love to walk out-of-towners down Warren Street. Especially for the free outdoor festivals. The Winter Walk? Incredible. It’s like something out of Dickens. And Flag Day? Do you even remember Flag Day from when you were in school? No. It was like Secretary’s Day. But in Hudson? I can’t even describe it. It’s huge.”
Hudson’s dynamism noted, Powell admits that, personally, he’d just as soon live at the “top of a private mountain” as in a city, so the comparative quiet of his place works well for him, his family, and his clients—who have included such pop music luminaries as Graham Parker, the Figgs, and Melora Krieger of Rasputina.
Though Powell’s “day job” is as a detective for the Albany Police Department, he knew that he did not want to reside full-time in that city. “I knew I wanted the space for the studio, and I like the pace of the living here. It’s an easy commute to Albany and to New York, but you get this lifestyle. For me, and I think for a lot of the
people attracted to the area, it’s the best of all worlds.”
So, it’s not just the area’s artistic produce that draws tourists and encourages transplants, clearly. It’s the quality of village or country living. There’s also the, well, the produce produce.
Tom Crowell, the communications and outreach manager of the Columbia Land Conservancy, an organization whose mission is “protecting the countryside, the open spaces, the ‘rural’ character” of Columbia County, points to county’s wealth of “agricultural tourism” opportunities, “Hudson’s got the restaurants and a lot of the cultural stuff, but people also want the bed & breakfasts, the you-pick [orchards], and the farm stands. Towns are really starting to incorporate this stuff into their strategic plans, and we’re here as a resource to help them be responsive to their communities.”
For 22 years, the land conservancy—one of the largest staffed conservancies in the state, if not the country, according to Crowell—has worked to preserve access to the natural areas of Columbia County while honoring the traditional settlement patterns that differentiate it from the “crowded cities and suburbs that surround it.”
The organization holds conservation easements on more than 20,000 acres of privately held land, manages 2,000 acres of public conservation areas, and offers environmental education to more than 3,500 children and adults each year. This educational component is indispensable, says Crowell: “It’s really important that people, especially those new to the area, understand what it means to live in a farming community: There will be tractors in the road, and manure spreaders in the fields. You can’t have the field without it.”
The fields nor the harvest. And as many residents and visitors already know, the yield of Columbia County agriculture is significant—and tasty. And as with the cultural producers, this means business for the county.
Columbia County Bounty is an organization formed to promote and support networking connections between local agricultural producers and culinary businesses. As stated in their directory—an excellent resource and guide to the many restaurants, caterers, farm stands, and specialty products of the region—their mission is “to educate our community about the preservation of our local farms through the purchase and use of local and regional sustainable foods and products not only from Columbia County but from the entire Hudson Valley.”
This educational effort is evident at the grass-roots (and grass-fed) level and also at the highest levels of New York State government.
Noah Sheets is the head chef at the executive mansion in Albany, and part of his responsibilities have been in locally sourcing the food used at the mansion. On the one hand, this is in service of “greening” the process (the mansion is the first governor’s residence to receive a Gold LEED certification); on the other, it’s had direct culinary benefits as well. Sheets refers to Columbia County as an agricultural “powerhouse,” citing his own reliance on its organic farms and providers, such as Beth’s Farm Kitchen in Stuyvesant, Little Seed Gardens in Chatham, and Hawthorne Valley Farm in Ghent.
The long hours of summer daytime mean that it’s still light when you hit the road after the gallery opening. Even so, the farming is probably done for the day. The hands may have headed into Hudson themselves for the night, to catch a band at Jason’s Upstairs Bar or to grab dinner at Red Dot, Mexican Radio, or Swoon, or regional brews at Spotty Dog Books and Ale.
Traffic’s not likely to be bad.
Maybe you’ll put your own hazards on just the same.
Look to the right. Look to the left.
RESOURCES
City of Hudson www.cityofhudson.org
Columbia County www.columbiacountyny.com
Columbia County Bounty www.columbiacountybounty.com
Columbia County Chamber of Commerce www.columbiachamber-ny.com
Columbia County Lodging Association www.staycolumbia.com
Columbia County Tourism www.bestcountryroads.com
Columbia Land Conservancy www.clctrust.org
Perform Columbia www.performcolumbia.com
This article appears in August 2009.
