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The Gilded Age Mansion That Helped Me Appreciate Home
My 15-year-old daughter and I share a voyeuristic passion for what goes on inside other people’s houses. We stare at them as we traverse the winding two-lane roads that are ubiquitous in the Mid-Hudson Valley, a rural area of New York state located about 90 miles north of Manhattan.
We speculate about the people living within the walls of sprawling colonials, Victorian homes and tiny bungalows, but also about the history of the houses, because the vast majority of them are old, particularly by American standards.
Many of the area’s homes range from 100 to over 300 years old. I promise that’s not an exaggeration. The town where we live, Kingston, NY, was founded in 1664. There is real history here and in the surrounding towns in neighboring Dutchess, Orange, Sullivan and Greene counties.
We muse, aloud, about generous wrap around porches with matching Adirondack rocking chairs or point out the decorative bird feeders that dot less-than-immaculate lawns — lawns that, like our own, contain a mixture of wild growth and cultivated areas punctuated by flowering shrubs or crabapple trees.
The best time to play this game is at night when glowing windows offer us a fleeting glimpse into people’s lives — the warmth of a scarlet couch, the curve of a dining room table, or the blue…
