Historic Rhinebeck under 400K

THE CHELSEA CLINTON WEDDING EFFECT on real estate prices in Rhinebeck, N.Y., if ever there was to be one, seems like a non-starter. As we head into the best time of year for house-hunting — the dead of winter, when only the most serious shoppers are on the case — the mid-Hudson Valley is still very good value, especially compared to eastern Long Island, where for $400,000 your choices are nil but for the dreaded ranch.

In the Rhinebeck area, venerable architecture is not too much to ask for 400K. Were I in the market for an upstate place at this moment — and gosh, maybe I should be — I’d look at these two, a rare brick Federal-style farmhouse for 379K, above, and an 1830s Carpenter Gothic, offered at 399K, right. The listing agent for both is Paul Hallenbeck.

Brick houses are fairly unusual in this part of New York State (most are frame). To find a stately 1849 farmhouse on River Road, very near the Hudson River and the Bard College campus, is a double-whammy (there are no ‘bad parts’ of River Road). The 1.1 acre lot is high and open; the house has 3BR, 2baths, and original details including woodwork, floors, doors, and built-ins, with updated mechanicals, baths, and windows (pics below). Period barn and wildflower meadow included.

Rhinebeck village has almost exclusively old houses, many with some pedigree. The 3BR, 2-1/2 bath on Montgomery Street (all pics below) is an 1830s Carpenter Gothic reminiscent of Washington Irving’s Sunnyside in Tarrytown. It’s on 1.4 acres, with mature trees and a fenced garden; the house has 9-foot ceilings and a large porch, and there’s a classic red barn. The taxes are high for the area at $8,306/year (twice that of the house above), which is a drag.

For more pics and info on both houses, go here.

Note: I am not a real estate broker, nor do I have any financial interest in the properties mentioned on this blog. I just like spreading the word about old houses on the market and what I feel are viable investment opportunities.

Saugerties Village Victorian 230K

A READER, MARSHA FULTON, WRITES: “I have a 1903 Victorian house for sale on Main Street in Saugerties, N.Y. I wonder if you would list this property on your blog? My husband’s job required us to move to Montana right at the worst time in real estate.”

Sure, Marsha. I love Saugerties, and the 3BR house, on a .11 acre [note the point] corner lot, looks charming and in great shape. Saugerties, on the Catskills side of the Hudson River, is within a half hour’s drive of Rhinebeck, Hudson, Woodstock, and Kingston. Old-fashioned and relaxed, the town has funky antique stores and decent restaurants; I’ve enjoyed Miss Lucy’s Cafe and Cafe Tamayo.

Marsha and her husband used the house as a full-time residence for six years, renovating all the while. They stripped and stained the original staircase, fully remodeled 1-1/2 baths, and insulated and finished the attic. The kitchen got new appliances and other improvements, and they replaced the old oil furnace with a new, efficient gas furnace in 2006.

She also created a garden from scratch. “There wasn’t one plant of any kind in the back yard when we bought the house,” she says (why is that so often the case?) Her brother-in-law, an artist and teacher from Manchester, England, visited one summer and hand-built a fence from a design the two of them created together.

I think Martha puts her finger on something important when she writes that the house “has such a warm feeling.” It served them especially well at the holidays, when extended family would visit, with plenty of room for all. “I would make a huge Thanksgiving meal and then we would walk around the corner to see the Christmas lights in Seamon Park. At night, I had everyone I loved safe and secure under one roof.”

There’s more information and pictures on this well-loved, well-priced home, plus lots of gushy copy and exclamation points, here.

Hudson River Victorian 399K

Get your turret and wraparound porch right here!

I IDENTIFIED IMMEDIATELY with Phyllis of Reclaimed Home when I first read her blog (subtitle: Low Impact Housing and Renovation Options for Thrifty New Yorkers). She and her husband are serial renovators; they’ve bounced back and forth between Brooklyn (first Park Slope, now Bed-Stuy) and the Hudson Valley (Kingston first, more recently Beacon) for years. She’s also a real estate broker and funny as hell.

Phyllis and her husband are about to bounce again, back to the city full-time, and have just put their outrageous c. 1900 Queen Anne house in Beacon, N.Y. (best known as home of Dia:Beacon, the contemporary art museum) on the market.

It’s 4BR on 1/4 acre and loaded with period detail: fabulous woodwork and staircase, vintage hardwood floors throughout, wavy glass windows, ornate antique radiators, fireplace mantel, old school bathtubs, original plaster, and lots of colorful Bradbury wallpaper. Not to mention upgraded mechanicals and a pretty backyard.

Go here and let Phyllis tell you all about it, give you the run-down on living in Beacon, and show you lots more pictures.

The official listing is here.

Anomalous April

View of the Hudson River and Catskills from Montgomery Place

THIS APRIL IS A STRANGE ONE in the Hudson Valley. The forsythia is not quite finished, which is normal for the time of year, but the lilacs are already in full bloom; ordinarily that doesn’t happen until mid-May. Forsythia and lilacs simultaneously? Weird.

Things are generally much greener than they ought to be. Loomis Creek Nursery’s e-mail newsletter says  the growing season is at least two weeks ahead, due to unseasonably warm weather early in the month, and yesterday at Montgomery Place, the romantic Hudson River estate whose gardens I popped over to see, I overheard the woman who runs their farm stand saying this is the earliest spring since 1945. I believe it.

Montgomery Place, designed by A.J. Davis in the mid-19th century, is actually rather unpretentious, of modest size, with a grand open-air verandah

I just wonder what will happen from here on. Will the lilacs stay in bloom longer than usual while the calendar catches up, or fade and be gone by Mother’s Day? Will the peonies be out in May instead of June, and the day lilies in June rather than July? Remains to be seen, I guess.

Above and below, the gardens at Montgomery Place were designed in the 1920s and ’30s. The brick pathways between beds have delightful scalloped edges.

For my purposes, the season being a bit ahead is not a bad thing. I’m up here to divide perennials from the Dutchess County property where I gardened for several years. Dividing perennials has never been my favorite thing, but this year it’s imperative, both because I have lots of bare dirt to fill at my new place on Long Island, and because certain things, like threadleaf coreopsis and rudbeckia (black-eyed susans to lay folks) have been getting out of control and taking over the central island bed, below (as it looked last September).

I spent most of Saturday digging, and amassed a huge number of pots filled with catmint, lamb’s ear, coreopsis, astilbe, cimicifuga, mint, epimedium, and more. In the end, I took only a small amount of rudbeckia because it is very late to show, even this year, and I wasn’t sure what was what.

Add to that a bunch of stuff from a local couple who sell fresh eggs and potted-up plants from their own garden, for a relative pittance: a kerria japonica bush, a viburnum, bee balm, obedient plant, iris tubers, more astilbes.

Now the big question is, how much can I get in my car?

Quirkytown

THE HAMLET OF BARRYTOWN, N.Y., on the Hudson River in northern Dutchess County, is kind of a cabinet of architectural curiosities (which makes Frank Gehry’s titanium-roofed concert hall on the nearby Bard College campus — one of the few recently built structures in the area — almost fit in).

There are a number of churches and houses, some of them octagonal, in Carpenter Gothic style, with carved wood trim that is an earlier and simpler version of Victorian gingerbread.

It’s worth a drive around. There’s lots more where these came from, and not a ranch or split-level among them.

Here’s a link to an 1880 Barrytown house on the market now, with an old-fashioned second-story balcony.

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