Newburgh Facts
Fact 1: Native Americans were said to use a regular crossing route on the Hudson River at a point between current-day Beacon and Newburgh well before the Europeans arrived. King George's royal charter in 1743 approved a ferry line to carry passengers and goods for profit. The American Revolution brought national importance to this ferry which made it possible to keep communications open between patriots in New England and the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Though ferry service stopped with the building of a bridge in 1963, a new ferry was established in 2005, taking passengers to Beacon to access Metro North rail to NYC.
Fact 2: George Washington really did sleep here. And did a lot more! The crossroads nature of this area convinced General Washington to set up headquarters here before the battle of Yorktown. He lived and worked in a small fieldstone farmhouse in Newburgh with an extended entourage that included his wife, Martha (for twelve months), officers, slaves and servants from April 1782 to August 1783. The home was protected by the Hudson to the east, forts at West Point to the south and the cantonment at New Windsor to the west.
Fact 3: Washington's headquarters were in a home owned by Jonathan Hasbrouck who built the first two rooms around 1724, and added other rooms circa 1750. The home's irregular exterior with long sweeping roof and clipped peaks called jerkin heads, lends a medieval touch that was commonly found in the 15th and 16th century landscape art of Western Europe. The property, acquired and opened by the State of New York in 1850, was the first publicly operated historic site in the US. The home is now furnished to reflect the times during Washington's 18-month stay and is open for guided tours.
Fact 4: Ferries continued to operate between Beacon and Newburgh until the 1950s when bridge construction was proposed. After much deliberation and construction the Beacon-Newburgh Bridge was opened officially when Governor Rockefeller cut the gold ribbon on November 2, 1963. The original bridge won the 1965 American Institute of Steel Construction "most beautiful bridge" award for long span bridges.
Fact 5: Check out the view. A scenic panorama of the Hudson River can be had from the area near the Stone Monument in Newburgh. To the south, you can see the Hudson Highlands in the distance with their very strategic separation channel that forces the river to narrow by West Point.
Fact 6: Jurassic Park in Newburgh? Yes, if you count the life-size bronze replica of a torosaurus at the Yellow Bird Gallery. When it was alive sixty-six million years ago, it measured about twelve feet high, twenty-one feet long and could weigh as much as 18,000 pounds, with a neck frill that extended five feet over his back. This was the last of the horned dinosaurs and sported one of the largest skulls of any land animal that ever lived. The artful rendering was engineered and cast by Dick Polich, Yale graduate and owner of Yellow Bird Gallery on Newburgh's waterfront. The sculpture passed through Newburgh on Labor Day weekend in 2005 and eventually made its way to Yale to stand guard in front of the Peabody Museum.
Fact 7: "A pleasant place to build a town." At least that is what Henry Hudson's first mate's journal entry notes. Hudson, an Englishman sailing under contract to the Dutch government, was the first European to explore the river as far north as Newburgh in his ship, the Half Moon. He came up the river into Newburgh Bay in 1609, yet despite giving the area high marks, sailed away the next morning.
Fact 8: What do Downing Park and Central Park in NYC have in common? The park was named after Newburgh's native son Andrew Jackson Downing, respected horticulturist and pioneer of the public park movement. Downing had advocated the creation of Central Park, and was designing the Mall in Washington, DC, when he died in an accident at the age of 38 in 1852. He mentored the creators of both parks: Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. Many of Downing Park's features are similar to Central Park, just on a smaller scale.
Fact 9: Newburgh incorporated as a city in 1865, an exciting time of change for the city and the country. Frederick Douglass visited Newburgh in 1870 to deliver what would become a memorable speech. Just 25 years later, the New York State Women's Suffrage Convention met in Newburgh's Palatine Hotel (now destroyed) to bid farewell to their outgoing leader, Susan B. Anthony, on her 80th birthday.
Fact 10: What can $200 and a few cooking pots, scissors, cloth and shoes buy? A city of course!
In 1684, the English crown took over for the Dutch West Indies Company as the colonial government. It was then that provincial Governor Dongan "bought" Newburgh and New Windsor for the aforementioned sum.
