You enter the door from the right side of the building (into what was formerly the basement). Admission is free and there is a small gift shop near the counter. This floor is comprised of one small display area and a media room with chairs and a large television. The display areas are all plaques detailing highlights of Hamilton’s life and The Grange. ile we were here, two groups of school kids were also taking a tour.

I especially liked this plaque.

The media room shows a 20-minute educational video on the life of Alexander Hamilton. It’s geared toward schoolchildren and for people unfamiliar with Hamilton. After the video, a park ranger, Mr. L. Strain, fielded questions from the school kids. The questions were very poignant, such as “Why did Hamilton purposely turn his gun away from Burr during the duel?”

After the kids had gone, we were treated to a nice little tour of the upstairs. This is what I was waiting for– as a fond admirer of architecture and history, I love wandering through old homes and seeing how everything once was “in the old says.”

Hamilton’s house is very small (HOW he and Eliza ever squeezed eight kids and their adopted orphans in here is quite the mystery) but very elegant. When you go up the stairs, you enter the original entry hall to the house. The floors are rather moderne, painted canvas tiles in a cosmopolitan style. A large painting of a young Hamilton looms over the hall (Hamilton did not display a portrait of himself, however).

Two formal rooms flank the hall: the parlor and the dining room. Both are magnificent with enormous windows and cheery colors.

Very few of Hamilton’s belongings are here. Many of his articles were given to family members after his and Eliza’s deaths. This pianoforte, however, was Hamilton’s.

The museum had a reproduction of the lovely silver wine cooler that George Washington gave to Hamilton in 1797. The original belongs to a private collector.

I found it sad that so few of Hamilton’s personal mementos are here. They all seen to be scattered and haphazard, which is indicative of the honor due Hamilton as a brilliant and sacrificing founding father.

Hamilton saw clients in this house (he practiced law after the Revolution, or, as he called it, “the art of fleecing my neighbors.”). He had a small study off the formal rooms. The vibrant green color is the same color Hamilton chose for this room. It’s quite a sensory experience! The color is reminiscent of his early years in the West Indies and must have been a very cheerful room during gloomy, cold New York days.

We stayed and chatted for quite some time with Mr. Strain who was delightfully knowledgeable of Hamilton’s life. He even knew of Hercules Mulligan, one of our favorite characters from the Revolutionary days! Mr. Strain showed us a video of how the Park Service moved The Grange from its old location on Convent Avenue to here. The house was elevated 30 feet in the air and rolled down 141st Street! The video and learning about the move was perhaps my favorite part of the visit.

Thus ended our visit. It was so short and brilliant, much like Hamilton’s life. I hope the museum continues to grow and is able to acquire more of Hamilton’s possessions.

Admission is free and the paths outside the house are very pleasant.

Surrounded by the exquisite Blue Mountain and other Adirondack peaks, the Adirondack Museum sits nestled on the side of a mountain. The front of the museum faces Route 28, a well-maintained and easily accessible road to the museum. The rear faces the illustrious Blue Mountain Lake, with a deck offering incredible views of the lake and forested splendor beyond. Throughout the museum grounds, modern buildings and reconstructed Adirondack cabins house zillions of Adirondack paraphernalia and history.

View of Blue Mountain Lake from the observation deck.

As soon as you enter the museum’s main building, you are greeted with a full-sized sailboat. The boat perfectly epitomizes the Adirondack experience: luscious natural materials, superior craftsmanship, emphasis on the region’s hardy self-sufficiency, and the main mode of transportation amongst the park’s innumerable lakes and rivers.

We perused the building’s many display areas before embarking on the museum’s many trails to other buildings on the campus. The main building had a lot of “odds and ends.” I liked the variety and several displays brought back such memories, like this old 1960s Enchanted Forest felt hat. Oh, how I always wanted to see giant 20-foot tall Paul Bunyan at Enchanted Forest! I was a girl growing up near Syracuse and I would watch the television commercials for the place with great interest. Today, Enchanted Forest is a water amusement park, but I do think ol’ Paul stands in the Storybook Lane part of the park.

The museum is filled with local paraphernalia.

I got a kick out of some of the old advertisements, like this old Camel cigarettes one:

The museum has a large building with an impressive display of boats, boat making and more. After chatting with a very informative museum usher about the region and perusing the many life-sized boats in the building, we sat to watch a ten-minute video on how canoes are made.

Boats were extremely important before the automobile and road system, and are still a very popular method of transportation around here. In old times, residents crafted their canoes to be extremely lightweight. This allowed them to carry the canoe across portages, or carries — swaths of land between the numerous lakes and rivers. Here’s Adirondack Abe, the epitome of the traditional Adirondack resident.

We sauntered over to another building on the campus. This one soon became my favorite, as it was filled with information about the geology of the Adirondacks region.

We loved this interactive map of the park! You could press buttons for various locations, and lights on the map would display the location.

That’s a mighty impressive mount.

We also took a brief tour of the artwork of Arthur Tait, a New York City painter who illustrated the Adirondack region in paintings and lithographs. He contributed to making the park a summer destination for wealthy Americans before and after the Civil War era (mid 19th century).

More quirky displays awaited us in other rooms. To view larger sizes, click the photo to go to my Flickr photo page and select “more sizes.”

This bottle was a pleasant surprise. Fort Schuyler was the original name of Utica, NY. It’s the home of the FX Matt Brewery where they make the famous Saranac beer. We toured the FX Matt Brewery in Utica, NY. I had no idea that Utica, NY, had a brewery before FX Matt!

This is a 3,000 year old steatite bowl! Fascinating!

The room also held dozens of old postcards showing interesting natural and commercial places of interest in the area. We sat and looked at them for a long time. The collection is marvelous!

I have so much more to tell you about the Adirondack Museum, but it will have to be in Part 2. Stay tuned for more!

Sunrise, by Frederic Church

Moonrise, by Frederic Church

Many of the Hudson River School paintings depict clear scenes or illusory hints of Biblical themes and events. I love the Voyage of Life series because of the stories each painting tells, that of a man eventually finding his faith in God and the joys of heaven after a tempestuous life of sorrow. It’s simply…. beautiful.

Frederic Edwin Church was a young student of the illustrious Cole, staying with Cole’s family in Catskill, NY, and studying painting. This area of New York State bursts with inspiration, as it has been the birthplace of such legendary notables as Rip Van Winkle, Uncle Sam, and numerous other tales of fact and fiction.

Church was born in 1826 in Connecticut. Early on, his artwork showed immense talent. In 1848, he became the youngest associate of the National Academy of Design, an honor he still retains. Church married Isabel Carnes in 1860, and the couple purchased a parcel of land with magnificent views overlooking the Hudson River, the Catskill Mountains and the Taconic Hills.

CLick the photo to go to my Flickr website for a larger view.

The couple built a simple little cottage that they named “Cozy Cottage.” The structure still stands, but it is not available to tourists.

Two children were born early on to the young couple: Herbert in 1862 and Emma in 1864. Church painted two beautiful works after the birth of the children: Sunrise for Herbert and Moonrise for Emma. (See the two small images at the beginning of this post). Tragically, both children died in 1864 from diphtheria, and the parents never completely recovered from the horrible loss. Even after four more children were born to the Church family in later years, Frederic hung his Sunrise and Moonrise paintings in the family room, next to the fireplace where he often brooded and mused.

The family traveled all over the world, returning home with crates crammed with furniture and knick-knacks. Construction of a new home, perched high atop the mountain, had begun in 1867. Church designed the home himself in an eccentric mish-mash of Persian, Moorish, and Victorian styles. The home is colorful and lively. I just adore the design.

Photography is strictly forbidden in the house, so I nabbed a few photos from the Olana Historic Site website to give you an idea of the interior of the house.

The home is furnished with all the Churches’ possessions from all over the world. Church’s paintings saturate the decor. The dining room was the only room not filled with Church’s works; rather, it held dozens of paintings from other men all around the world, pigmented vignettes of his travels. I identified several Dutch masters’ works and a few Italian and German paintings, too.

The name “Olana” first appeared on a letterhead written by Isabel Church. According to the Olana website:

Scholars have linked the name to a translated volume of Strabo’s Geographica, a Christmas gift from Isabel to Frederic. Strabo’s publication describes the geography of the Roman Empire and references the city “Olane,” as one of the “treasure-storehouses” on the Araxes River, which offered a view of Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark was said to rest. It is likely that the Churches appreciated the associations this name had their own Persian-inspired stone “fortress” situated high above the Hudson River with majestic views west to America’s promised land.

The house is lovely, simply exquisite. Our tour guide, Ellen, was filled with interesting information about the home and the Churches. I was delighted that Mark Twain often visited the home, reading portions of his works for after-dinner entertainment. The family also gave small skits or plays on the large wooden landing before the stairs, a heavy colorful tapestry serving as the “curtains” of the stage.

Colorful stencils and Persian tiles peppered the walls. I noticed that many of the door frames were stenciled with curly writing, which appeared to be Farsi (my husband spent time in Iran as a boy and introduced me to some of the culture). I asked Ellen about the meaning of the stenciled words, to which she replied, “It’s all gibberish!” There were only two places in the house that had “real” Farsi: above the door as you enter “All are welcome”; carved on the pink marble fireplace in the family room “I muse while it burns.”

The Churches lived here until the couple died in 1900. Frederic willed the property to his youngest son, who married and lived at Olana for the rest of his life. His widow remianed here until 1964, at the age of 96.

After her death, Olana narrowly escaped the auction block. The widow willed the home to a nephew, who didn’t like the house and wanted to sell all its contents at auction. A group of motivated people scrounged financial support to purchase the home. New York State pitched in, and Olana was preserved intact and deemed a state historic site. Most of the home is restored, but the children’s nursery, servant’s quarters and kitchen are not and therefore unavailable for viewing. This was a great disappointment, because I like seeing the kitchens and nurseries best of all in historic homes.

I have so much more to tell about the home and our visit, but it would fill books. The best thing I can say is go see the house for yourself. You won’t regret it. The 250-acre property also features numerous trails for hiking. Picnic tables and benches provide repose for visitors.

You can see more photos of Olana at my Flickr photo page here.

The coupon site is PricePickle.com. Like any other coupon site, PricePickle.com has reams and reams of coupons, discounts and promo codes for all sorts of online products: computer ink, t-shirts, perfume, books, electronics, etc. But they also have a section dedicated to travel, a whole spotlight on the illustrious City Sights NY.com! Check out this page for City Sights NY Coupon deals.

Last summer, I spotted CitySightsNY.com ticket agents. Oh, I was so tempted to take a tour! I have mentioned them here before– CitySightsNY.com offers tours of New York City, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and the Boston Freedom Trail! I’ve heard that the tours are excellent. I’d like to try their double decker bus tour (sitting on the upper deck, of course!). Unfortunately, I had neither the time nor the money at that moment. Hopefully, I’ll be able to take advantage of the experience next time, especially now that I’ve discovered some good discounts and coupons! And we are definitely going to take the Freedom Trail in the future.

If you’re in New York City or Washington or Philadelphia and have been wanting to relax on a nice tour of the city, check out PricePickle.com for a great listing of discounts. You can also surf the site for coupons for rental cars and travel gear and everything travel! Very nice

First, a little history. Utica is a very proud city, and they are very, very proud of the Matt Brewing Company. This company started up in 1888 by German immigrants. It is the second-longest running brewery in the nation, and it’s undying devotion to the city has saved the city through quite a few financial plights. The brewery even continued it’s operations during the Prohibition (secretly, of course). The password for getting into the brewery’s “speakeasy” was the inauspicious phrase “Joe sent me.” LOL, no one would notice that in Utica, New York!

The brewery sponsors the Utica Boilermaker every year. The Boilermaker is THE event in Utica. It attracts people from all over the world.

The Boilermaker 15K Road Race was established in 1978 by Earle C. Reed. Reed was looking for a way to give back to the community that had supported his family’s business, Utica Companies (ECR International). The race began with just over 800 runners and a budget of $750. Now, the Boilermaker is the largest 15K in the nation with more than 10,000 runners.

The name is credited to the late Frank S. Owens, Jr., former Vice President of Advertising at the F. X. Matt Brewery. It was he who suggested the name, combining the nature of Reed’s company, Utica Boilers, with an old-time drink that was made by dropping a shot of whiskey into a mug of beer.

The Analytic Distance Runner shows the men’s Boilermaker field as the most competitive in the world for 1993, 1995-2005, and the women’s field as most competitive for 1996-2003 and 2006.

At the end of the Boilermaker race, everyone gathers to the brewery for free Saranac beer.

The thing looks like a music box, and lo and behold, it is! Kind of… It’s from Germany, judging by the engraving on the metal disk. I think it was considered to have been the German jukebox of the 1800s. I couldn’t tell what song was engraved on the large metal disk, but I strongly suspect it was a rousing rendition of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”

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