Photo: Chris Shields

Summer Getaways: Columbia County

History and art make this day trip worth the drive

Frederick Church was born a wealthy man, and spent most of his comfortable life honing his skills as a celebrated painter, yet his opus is arguably his home, Olana, which he commissioned to be built on a meticulously landscaped hill overseeing the Hudson River. He designed the house alongside architect Calvert Vaux, drawing inspiration from the major cities of the Middle East, blending ornate Moorish details with contemporary American design, as the Web home for the historic site reads. Any bourgeois lucky enough to afford the gasoline required for a day trip this summer should rightly begin a tour to the art galleries and cultural highlights of Columbia County with an early-morning visit to this “Persian fantasy” just south of Hudson on 9G.

Warren Street in Hudson is a natural next stop for the dallying day-tripper. Dozens of antique shops, spacious and extravagant to cozy and quaint, fill the storefronts along the main thoroughfare of this little, post-industrial city. These aren’t those chintzy antique barns that sell $40 hats from the 1950s, though, so if you are looking to do some “antiquing,” be warned. Many of these stores are world-class, and they sell real antiques—you know, like a $36,000 suite of hand-carved Louis 16th side chairs from the 1790s, or a delicate, $1,400 alabaster floor lamp. Even a simple, proletarian French olive jar runs $425, but that is because it is more than 100 years old, and perfectly maintained.

Seeded among the antique dealers along Warren Street are a wide variety of appetizing restaurants and galleries, so grab yourself some lunch and then take in some art. There are so many galleries to visit, including the Hudson Valley Arts Center and the spaces of Deborah Davis and Nicole Fiacco, that it would be cumbersome to name them all. However, the Carrie Haddad Gallery, for one, never fails to impress. The first gallery owner to open her doors at the beginning of the Hudson renaissance of the early 1990s, Haddad features works by local and regional artists, but has a reputation that attracts big-city collectors. Opening on June 27, Frolic is a “fun exhibit of mixed media works of art including hooked rugs, play dough cut outs, drawings on doilies, as well as works on paper and canvas.” June 27 might be the day to visit Hudson, as John Davis Gallery will also hold an opening for a new show, featuring the sculpture work of Renee Iacone Clearman, that evening.

The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse perched on stone in the middle of the Hudson River outside of Athens can either be a quieting destination, or a small adventure. You can pretend that the responsibility of providing safe passage though roiling storms for the slowly moving river barges is yours, along with romantic life of isolation, or you can just have a picnic with your children.

Driving the back roads and country lanes of Columbia County is a luxury in itself, offering a resplendent afternoon for the city-dweller. Continue your day trip by driving over to Kinderhook. You can visit the home of the eighth President of the United States (and side-chops impresario) Martin Van Buren, as well as the home of the Columbia County Historical Society. The CCHS houses a collection of recent-history artifacts, like a water cooler that was originally used in a schoolhouse in Livingston, an early 20th-century baseball uniform and glove, and, my favorite, a gilded and painted “fancy chair” circa 1815.

—Chet Hardin

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