In Unrelated-to-Food News: Rhinebeck House Tour

On Saturday, some friends and I piled into the "Monte" (an '88 Chevy Monte Carlo) and headed out to the country, Hudson Valley to be precise. I had never been there, but I always welcome a respite from the city. Rhinebeck is a picture-perfect Norman Rockwell painting of a town. The overcast morning gave way to a glorious afternoon of sunshine, only to be aided by the start of the changing leaves. It was a perfect fall day.

We bought tickets for the Rhinebeck house tour. Overall I was disappointed in the houses on the tour. From the outside, many of the houses were intact Victorian houses, but once inside any charm was lost to modernization in the form of Home Depot suburbia. There was one house built in the mid 1700s that I did love. It was a small stone farm house with beamed ceilings and the widest plank floors I've ever seen. Sorry, no inside photography was allowed. Here's some shots of the outsides of the houses on the tour.



First house on the tour. It's a b&b. Squat and funny looking I thought.



Tiny Victorian.



Not on the tour, but I was impressed with the paint job that was in progress. As a brownstone owner, I can attest to the difficulty of finding good contractors, let alone an excellent painter.



Not on the tour, but I thought it was elegant.



Heh. Another one not on the tour.



Nice from the outside. This is two houses in one. They built an enormous extension onto the old original house.



I don't know if you can see this, but the hand-carved date on this tombstone is from 1775. I thought that was kind of cool.



I really liked this house. Believe it or not, it's a Sears & Roebuck house from the late 1920s. It came entirely flatpacked and perfectly pre-measured. Nice prefab. The owner built a stone foundation and put the house up over it. It felt very solid and had nice details like wood floors and a spacious foyer. Until 6 years ago, the house had been in the same family. I fear the current owners are making some unfortunate decisions to "modernize."







These last three shots were of my favorite house on the tour. The mansion, Wilderstein, was also on the tour. The amount and intensity of detail in that house was mind boggling. My camera's batteries died on me, so I have no shots unfortunately.