Sites, museums boast deep history of influential American figures

By Nik Bonopartis
Poughkeepsie Journal

Though Samuel Morse’s telegraph is a far cry from the Internet, 24-hour television and even the telephone, without his ingenuity it’s probable none of those devices would exist. Locust Grove, the Dutchess County estate Morse purchased when the telegraph converted him from a starving artist into a wildly successful inventor, is one of the many historical grounds and museums that dot the Hudson Valley landscape.

A new, multimillion-dollar visitor’s center greets newcomers to the estate of the famous inventor, and also serves as a hub for educational and historical artifacts from the life of Morse.

In the gallery, artwork from Morse’s early life as a painter stands in contrast to the crude, early models of his telegraph and the many variations of the device that came later. As a link from Morse’s past to his future, a wooden canvas stretcher he used as a painter became the frame he used to fashion his patent model of the telegraph.

It was an apt basis for a device that, with a few dots and dashes, was able to fire off messages with cross-continental range.

‘‘The simplicity of Morse’s code allowed you to send anything, in any language,’’ said Ray Armater, executive director of Locust Grove.

The Georgian house Morse converted in 1852 to a Tuscan-style villa when he bought the Locust Grove estate provides an inside look into the daily life of that era.

The first floor of the house — the servant’s quarters — is markedly different from the other floors. Functionality is a main element of the lower floor, but the relatively good conditions the servants lived in reflected the era.

Many of the rooms on the west side of Morse’s villa open up to spectacular views of the Hudson River through floor-to-ceiling windows.

Locust Grove is just one of many museums in the Hudson Valley that boast deep history from some of the most influential American figures.

Dutchess County is also home to a huge piece of presidential history. The estate of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, features his Presidential Library and Museum. And just a stone’s throw from the FDR museum is the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, a celebration of perhaps the most famous First Lady in American history.

History buffs can also look into the military’s past at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Orange County — the famous institution features a museum, five historic chapels and the West Point cemetery, a resting place for American soldiers dating back to the Revolutionary War.

Back in Hyde Park, the Vanderbilt Mansion gives visitors an inside glimpse of the lives of one of the wealthiest families in American history. The sprawling 600-acre estate borders the east bank of the Hudson River, and visitors can tour the mansion or stroll the gardens that surround it in the spring and summer.

The home of another of America’s vastly wealthy families can be found in Westchester County. Kykuit was home to four generations of the Rockefeller family. Now a historic site of the National Trust, Kykuit has a breathtaking view of the Hudson River and occupies a landscape of extensive stone terraces, formal gardens, fountains and sculptures.

For more motion, visitors can head to Ulster County, where the Catskill Mountain Railroad carts sightseers on 1950s-era refurbished flat cars to the Empire State Railway Museum in Phoenicia.

At the Phoenicia Station, an 1889 structure now preserved as a site on the National Register of Historic Places, the region’s rich railroad history can be seen through restored engines, most notably a steam engine from 1910.

In Columbia County, visitors will find Clermont, a state historic site that was the ancestral home and estate of Robert R. Livingston, negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase.

Close by is Montgomery Place, built by relative Janet Livingston Montgomery in honor of her husband, Gen. Richard Montgomery, who died in the Revolutionary War.

The federal-style home and acres of gardens were home to Livingston Montgomery throughout her life and the home stayed in the Livingston family until 1985 when it was turned over to a preservation group, Historic Hudson Valley.

The site is on River Road in Annandale, Dutchess County.

At Dutchess Summit, the name of a Hyde Park hill, an era of history that many feel parallels today’s world is preserved at Top Cottage, the secluded retreat used by America’s most famous war-time president, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Conceived as a getaway from his parent’s home, where visitors and well-wishers inundated him during his down time, the president designed the Dutch-style stone structure and, with the help of an architect, built his vacation home on the 118 acres he explored as a little boy.

The cottage is marked in many ways by Roosevelt — from the porch that offers panoramic views of the surrounding landscape to the wheelchair ramps Roosevelt needed because polio had confined him to a wheelchair later in his life.

The cottage was the site of many historical meetings, including the June 1939 visit by England’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and a fateful meeting between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill where the leaders discussed using the atomic bomb to defeat the Axis powers in World War II.