NEW TO MARKET IN TIVOLI, N.Y. (Northern Dutchess): A sweet c.1900 house on a quiet side street, asking 249K. They don’t come up all that often. For details, go here.
THE FIRST TIME I SAW TIVOLI, I thought I had traveled back in time to the 1960s and landed in northern California.
Tivoli (pop. 1100) is impossibly cute, its main street lined with front-porch Victorians marching
down to the Hudson River. As practicalities go, the town is fairly useless. There’s no bank, drug store, supermarket, or gas station — just a good Mexican restaurant; a bakery, right, in an old house that makes wonderful scones and baguettes; and a couple of art galleries and antiquarian bookstores.
In the 19th century, Tivoli was a transportation hub; it had a ferry landing and a railroad station. Now it has neither. Three miles off Route 9, it’s a definite detour, and that’s as it should be.
The chi-chi Madalin Hotel and Madalin’s Table, below, opened in 2006, but Tivoli just goes its low-key, hippie throwback way.
casaCARA: Old Houses for Fun & Profit 
One of my farmers (I was a Market Manager with Greenmarket last year) lives in Tivoli. Wonder where their post office is?
Plus, you’ve forgotten “Tivoli Day” in the summer, when the whole town cleans out its respective attics and drags them out onto the street for sale. One of the best garage sales up here.
It’s right on Broadway (i.e. Main Street), your typical old small-town post office. There’s also an atmospheric old library.
Right, Astor, thanks – the last weekend in July – an annual event I wouldn’t miss for the world.