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General View of the County

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The house was built at three different periods, and independent of the record, the external arid internal appearance are evidence of the fact. Originally it contained a large room with two bed-rooms on the north end, erected in 1750, ninety-six years since. Afterwards, but at what time we do not know, there being no record of it, probably about 1760, an addition was put up at the south end for a kitchen, of the same depth of the main building. This made a long narrow house, one and a half stories high, sixty by twenty-five feet, and is the east part. In 1770 an addition to the rear was put up, of the same length and breadth of the old part, which made the west half of the present building, and one roof thrown over the whole. The dates of the first and last additions are cut in the stone of the building. There is no hall or entry in it as is common in other dwellings, but the entrance from the east and west are directly into large rooms, of which in all there are eight on the first floor. The large room first erected, during the residence of Washington, had eight doors in it, from which there was access to almost every part of the building, including the cellar and garret, with a fire-place in which a small bullock might have been turned on a spit. In this part the ceilings are very low, the beams uncovered and neatly finished.

We attempt no special notice, no labored description of this aged and venerable mansion, nor yet any general reference to the many interesting Revolutionary associations which surround and endear it to the country. The theme has been exhausted by other pens, which we cannot hope to rival, and we leave it untouched lest we mar its moral beauty, and disturb the calm effect of that patriot grandeur which now so deservedly reposes on the public mind. We may remark, however, that the location is certainly among the most beautiful on the banks of the Hudson; and the view from it of the Bay, the village of Fishkill Landing, the Highlands, and the richly cultivated lands of Dutchess, sprinkled over and adorned with private residences, studded with trees or buried in clusters of evergreen, lovely and enchanting. The eye of the spectator—while it takes in at a single glance the broad bosom of the Bay some twelve miles long, covered, as it frequently is, by the canvass of a hundred vessels, of every size and description, ladened with the rich commerce of the country, floating to and from the city of New York—runs up and revels over the deep and numerous glens of the mountain mass before him, the objects of which change in hue and tint as it traces along the distant outline of the Alpine heights. At the north, the high promontory of the Dans Kammer, and the bold uplifted form of Butter Hill at the south, suddenly jut into the water of the river and cut off the Bay into a beautiful and quiescent lake, whose glassy surface sleeps, as it were, amidst the cultivated fields and granite formations which surround and hold it. Wappinger’s Creek in Dutchess, and Quassaic of Orange, both of noble name and ancient lineage, once sportive and free as the mountain torrent, now condemned to the servility of labor of by the active energy and capricious will of the white man, some slowly in the notes of Indian sorrow to mingle their dying wail with the deeper surge of the Hudson. Denning’s Point, fringe with a varied thread of shrubs and trees, and clad in summer verdure, lies in the waters of the Bay a Fairy Island—fit habitation for all the fabled race, whether gods or goddesses of waters land or air. These, with the thousand other objects, and frequently occurring incidents, which enter into and make up the varied and beautiful prospect, lie directly at your feet. Pollopel's Island, bare, crested and hoary, stands at the southern entrance of the Bay like some ocean sentinel raised up from the depths beneath to guard the mountain pass of the Highlands and regulate the flood of its waters. Nothing, save the glorious view of the setting sun, can surpass an early vision from this spot when the orb of the morning rolls up his burning disc, ere he starts upon his mid-day course, sheds abroad and covers with golden beams the mountain heights of the Beacon. Though nature has stereotyped a portion of this prospect by studding it with islands, planting it with everlasting hills, and laying their base with the ceaseless flood of the Hudson; yet the daily wants and business of the country, the art and skill of man in unison with the ever-changing influence of the vernal and autumnal air, the deeper shades of summer, and winter with hoary locks of drifting snows holding all in icy fetters bound, come in and stamp the whole with an ever-varying and eternal change. The glorious and majestic outline of the picture is painted by an Almighty hand, and, like all his works, palls not on the senses. He who fears and adores the one will love and wonder at the rich and luxurious garniture of the other. Reader, go look at and examine this picture, and when thou hast gazed and gazed again, as we have done, if the true spirit and love of nature are alive within thee, and thou art disposed to know and revere thy Maker, thou wilt come and tell us still of its increasing and new-born beauties.