Local Travel: Catskill
by Jane Dodds

Not long after moving from the city to the outback of Tivoli some years ago, my then-preteen daughter looked out through the vista-enhancing glass doors we had bashed a hole in the wall to install and said with disgust, "everything is so green." That's kinda the point I did not say. Possibly because I was already feeling the first stirrings of that unique confinement disorder that can be brought on by full-time existence on the mid-Hudson Valley's vast, now nearly year-round sea of green. Travel to New York City or someplace more far flung is the obvious remedy for this condition. But when time is short, a little local travel can also provide relief from the scenery that surrounds us, as well as those cow paths of our daily lives, Routes 9 and 9G. One of my favorite local destinations is Catskill, the richly historic but once near-spectral river town on the Hudson's west bank that has been steadily increasing in liveliness over the last few years. Here are some suggestions for taking the escape route to Catskill.

Getting Started: The Rip Van Winkle
If you think you are taking the sleek Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge to get to the other side of the river, you aren't. Instead, you will cross the Hudson via that more charming, oversized fishnet of a bridge, the Rip Van Winkle, which opened in 1935 to better connect Catskill and Hudson. But not so fast. You're also going to get out of the confined space of whatever automobile you are driving (constant residence in which may, in fact, be a contributing factor to your need to escape) and take the pedestrian walkway. That's right: you're going on foot. There is a patch of gravel on the north side of Route 23 where you can park.

As you cross the bridge, take the time to look down on Roger's Island, a 650-acre area of wetlands, shallows, mudflats, and a tidal forested wetland that is used by diverse fish and wildlife. Consider that some 10,000 canvasback ducks are among other waterfowl that have been estimated to feed and rest here while migrating. And in the 19th century, two warehouses for storing ice harvested from the river were located here.

Spring Street and Environs
Once you've traversed the bridge, continue west a couple of blocks and turn left at Spring Street. At #218 you'll find Cedar Grove, the home of Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole (1801 48), who settled in Catskill in the mid-1830s. Built by the uncle of the Catskill girl Cole married, the 1815 Federal-style house is much cozier than Olana, built by Cole pupil Frederick Edwin Church directly across the river. The house, grounds, and Cole's first studio can be visited Thursday to Sunday 10 am to 4 pm from May through October. In addition to rooms where the family lived and art by Cole and other Hudson River school artists, an exhibition of paintings by painter and close friend of Cole's, Asher B. Durand, is on view through October 28.

Continuing south on Spring Street you will come to the Thompson Street Cemetery. If you're given to wandering in old graveyards, you can find here the resting sites of Thomas Cole and his family—with Catskill views —as well as the graves of several locals who served in Congress during the 19th century.

That the political elite of the time chose Catskill for burial reflects its growth and importance following the Revolutionary War. From the beginning, it has been the original Greene County seat. If you travel Spring Street to Bridge Street and explore some of the cross streets, you'll also see the prosperity of 19th-century Catskill reflected in many of its Victorian houses. At Bridge Street, turn east toward the river and walk to the aptly-named Prospect Place, where you get a majestic view from the grounds of the 1839 Greek Revival-style Beattie Powers House. A trail from the grounds through the woods leads to Dutchman's Landing, a riverfront park within Catskill Point.

Catskill Point
If you are too tired after all this walking to confront nature (and don't think I don't know that many, if not most, of you are in cars at this point), you may take a paved surface downhill to Main Street. At the corner of Main and Bridge, you can either go right and explore the north, "downtown" end of Main Street first, or left and follow Main Street to it origin at the Point. We'll begin with the Point, the place that gave rise to Catskill.

The Point is a natural landing site created by the confluence of Catskill Creek and the Hudson. The deep mouth of the creek has provided safe harbor for ships since the Dutch first arrived in the mid-17th century. It is also a natural pathway into the region and the Catskill Mountains. In fact, the earliest Dutch settlers initially established Old Katskill up the creek near what is now Leeds because of the then-swampy nature of the Point. Less fussy Dutch stayed and built homes and mills along the Catskill in the vicinity of the landing and its settlement of native Americans, a group that had been bought out by the end of the 17th century.

Products shipping from the Point in its 19th-century heyday included butter, potash, hay, wheat, clay bricks, furniture, tanned hides, and ice. Mail and news came in and out via watercraft, as did increasing numbers of tourists bound for Catskill Mountain resorts as the century progressed and turned. While the automobile brought a steep drop in river travel in the 20th century, significant numbers of tourists and passengers still landed at the Point through the early 1950s. At that juncture, the Point and the town entered a decline that lasted over 50 years. With federal and state funding, volunteers and architects restored and reshaped the Point right before the turn of the century. It opened in its current form in 2001. A vestige of the earlier time remains, though, in the form of an immense marshmallow-like petroleum storage tank that has also been pressed into service at times as a projection screen.

Today jazz, shad, and ginseng festivals, along with live music and theater events, are all staged on the park land here. And a 9,000-square-foot warehouse and freight master's house have been restored and repurposed to house an interpretive center focused on the history of the Point; community events, and a farmers' and artisans' market. The market operates Saturdays from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm, June through October.

If you are famished, you may want to take a table—either creekside or inside—at the Catskill Point Restaurant and Bar (7 Main St.), which is almost at the Point's tip. If you have traveled by boat, the eatery has its own dock, and there are also public docks up the creek a bit at the what's called the Hop-o-Nose Marina. (Accounts conflict about the name's origin, but there may once have been a Native American named Hop and a rock formation on the creek named for his prow). On Friday and Saturday nights, Catskill Point Restaurant also offers a live jazz and blues club, Stella's Lounge.

Main Street
The brick buildings of Catskill's business district date primarily from the 19th century, when they served businesses run by the prosperous occupants of houses up the hill. As you walk the length of Main Street, look for the three sets of stairs that residents could and can still take to travel back and forth between public and private realms.

You can find an excellent historical walking tour of Main Street on The Heart of Catskill Association's website (www.catskillny.org; click Community, then click the walking tour). But stick with me here in the present, if you didn't eat on the Point and are now hungry, would like to pick up something old or new for household use, want to see some art work, or have some more mundane needs to fill like getting a haircut, buying a box of No. 10 envelopes, or even shopping for a refrigerator. I mention these latter types of things to underscore that, so far, Catskill's revival has not meant its evolution into a one-business habitat, the fate of some other resurrected Hudson River towns. That may be because its change has been due to a converging mix of factors, among them community involvement by old and new residents and business people, a chamber of commerce on a mission, and the construction of a new county building that has added some 800 people to the scene each weekday. The wake of the latter has meant the opening of several new coffee shops and a weekday breakfast and lunch café, MOD (395 Main), that is co-owned by a lifelong Catskill resident.

As for eating, Main Street has several good restaurants, including my favorite, Wasana's (336 Main St.). Its fare is tasty authentic Thai, with lots of vegetarian dishes. Prices are reasonable, owners nice, and it's BYOB. The unpretentiously christened Oscar's Sushi (400 Main) rose from its origins in a shopping center in Coxsackie to offer diners more ambiance and a fresh array of sushi, at reasonable prices and also BYOB.

If galleries are your port of call, at this moment Catskill has eight of them, including the stalwart, nonprofit Greene County Council on the Arts (398 Main), which has maintained open gallery doors since the 1980s. Newer to the street is BRIK Gallery (473 Main) that occupies beautifully opened up spaces in an 1805 building at the top of the street. The gallery presents the work of established and not-so-established artists and frequently brings in outside curators. I've seen several spirited exhibitions there, as well as at M Gallery (350 Main).

For my part, while I do like art, I sometimes develop an absolute craving for a new bowl or a chipped plate—a desire that has been satisfied many times over the last 20 years that I have been visiting Catskill at the junkshop with no name at 404 Main Street. A newer shop, among several, that offers new house-oriented items at good prices is Bowerbird (393 Main). While the store is not in the business of dealing art, it has borrowed and displays some large cheery-in-the-Matisse-sense works on paper by the artist, Ann Agee, that are worth a look inside, even if you are not seeking a new set of mood-elevating placemats.

During your Catskill visit, you might also want to take in a movie at the Community Theater (373 Main). On Thursday nights, independent films are shown, a quiet emblem of recent change. Another, more ambiguous sign that something is afoot in Catskill can be seen on Water Street, which runs behind Main along Catskill Creek.The enclosed bridge over the street formerly connecting the old Oren's furniture store (361 Main) to its creekside warehouse has been stripped of its cladding and re-enclosed all in glass. The bridge will soon connect to condos. Floating above the street it is a beautiful thing.

For now, enough said.