Palenville, New York
Encyclopedia
Palenville is a hamlet
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...

 (and census-designated place
Census-designated place
A census-designated place is a concentration of population identified by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes. CDPs are delineated for each decennial census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places such as cities, towns and villages...

) in Greene County
Greene County, New York
Greene County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Its name is in honor of the American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene. Its county seat is Catskill...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. The population was 1,037 at the 2010 census.

Palenville is in the southwest part of the Town of Catskill
Catskill (town), New York
Catskill is a town in the southeast part of Greene County, New York, United States. The population was 11,775 at the 2010 census. The western part of the town is in the Catskill Park....

, located at the junction of Routes 23A and 32A. It lies at the foot of Kaaterskill Clove
Kaaterskill Clove
Kaaterskill Clove is a deep gorge, or valley, in New York's eastern Catskill Mountains, lying just west of the village of Palenville. The clove was formed by Kaaterskill Creek, a tributary of Catskill Creek rising west of North Mountain, and is estimated by geologists to be as much as 1 million...

, nestled against the base of the Catskill Mountains
Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, an area in New York State northwest of New York City and southwest of Albany, are a mature dissected plateau, an uplifted region that was subsequently eroded into sharp relief. They are an eastward continuation, and the highest representation, of the Allegheny Plateau...

. Kaaterskill Creek runs through the town, and is spanned by a locally famous swinging footbridge
Simple suspension bridge
A simple suspension bridge is an early type of bridge that is supported entirely from anchors at either end, and has no towers or piers. However, it may have saddles...

. The creek provides a number of swimming hole
Swimming hole
A swimming hole is a place in a river, stream, creek, spring, or similar natural body of water, which is large enough and deep enough for a person to swim in...

s in the summer months, and the Long Path
Long Path
The Long Path is a long-distance hiking trail beginning at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey and currently ending at Altamont, New York, in the Albany area...

 runs through the town.

History

Palenville was an important center of the Hudson River school
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...

 of the 19th century. Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century...

, Frederic Church, and other notable painters
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 stayed and worked in Palenville during the height of the movement. The famous painting Kindred Spirits
Kindred Spirits
Kindred Spirits is a painting by the Hudson River School painter Asher Durand. It depicts the previously deceased painter Thomas Cole and his friend poet William Cullen Bryant in the Catskill Mountains...

depicts Cole and William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...

 near Kaaterskill Falls
Kaaterskill Falls
Kaaterskill Falls is a two-drop waterfall located near in the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York, on the north side of Kaaterskill Clove, between the hamlets of Haines Falls and Palenville in Greene County's Town of Hunter...

, just uphill from the town. The famous Catskill Mountain House
Catskill Mountain House
The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel near Palenville, New York in the Catskill Mountains overlooking the Hudson River Valley, built in 1824. In its prime, from the 1850s to the turn of the century, it was visited by three U.S. presidents The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel...

 was also located just outside Palenville. Palenville is the fictional home of Rip van Winkle
Rip Van Winkle
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon...

.

Palenville historically is considered the 'First Art Colony in America' (as noted by Dr. Roland Van Zandt, author of The Catskill Mountain House). It is located at the base of the Catskill Mountains at the entrance of the Kaaterskill Clove. There you will find countless waterfalls and many of the motifs of the most famous of 19th century American artists. In fact, it was called the Village of Falling Waters.

With the coming of the twentieth century, the large boarding houses of the mountain top started to close their shutters, yet, Palenville and the surroundings remained a summer wonderland for the horde of city dwellers who peppered the bluestone lining the creeks, escaping the summer's heat and the city stench. Palenville was one of the Catskill's vacation meccas hosting nearly two dozen small and medium sized boarding houses and as many if not more hotels at that turn of the centuries. Palenville, the Kaaterskill Creek and the Kaaterskill Clove remains a popular subject for painters as well but times change and with the popularity of its vacation traffic, changes in taste, technology and all that progress brings the painters had long moved on by the time of the great wars. The artistic history of the hamlet had faded away by mid-century the same as the sounds of laughter and frolic filling its lanes faded each September when the shutters closed and all but a few 'locals' huddled-in for winter in the shadow of the mountain.

It was not until late in the 20th century that the history would be remembered and in a synchronistic moment an art gallery opened on Main Street Palenville and The Pine Orchard Summer Festival rekindled the creative campfire at this magical little hamlet.

Opening its doors in 1980 and hosting its first national juried show in 1981 the privately owned and funded Terrance Gallery exhibited more than 1200 artists from all over the country, in a call to revisit the historic gathering place of the 19th century painters. The Pine Orchard located on 60 acres (242,811.6 m²) along the Manorville road through fund raising and grants refurbished a chapel into a theater and hosted Opera, players, musicians,writers and artists. And also Shakespeare and the Circus arts where presented there by the Bond Street Theater group.
During those years many painters, professors and the public in general came to realize the specific importance that Palenville had held to many writers, poets, painters, playwrights, inventors, photographers and even early movie actors and movie makers - yes Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

, for one, made several movies in Palenville. And during those years also, there was hardly to be found a child not able to walk on stilts, ride a unicycle or tumble their way through the lanes of Palenville. And many of them grew into the creative arts as painters, musicians, song-writers and performers - the group 'Dripping Goss' for one who made the scene in NYC clubs before the new millennium had struck; Robert Goss (American Gothic Records) with his 45 rpm recording that sold throughout Europe in the '90s, some of which were recorded at The Turning Mill Studio in Palenville.

The Woodbine Inn, one of the last original boarding houses and Taverns dating from 1850s, reflects the area's colorful past and changing history. At various times a speakeasy, a jazz club, a punk venue and now renovated as an Inn and Arts Center, the Woodbine has been host to jazz and musical performances from the 1940s through present day, featuring such diverse talents as Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

's keyboard player Shorty Jackson, NRBQ
NRBQ
NRBQ is an American rock band founded in 1967. It is known for its live performances, containing a high degree of spontaneity and levity, and blending rock, pop, jazz, blues and Tin Pan Alley styles. Its best known line-up is the 1974–1994 quartet of pianist Terry Adams, bassist Joey Spampinato,...

, David Sancious
David Sancious
David Sancious is an American musician. He was an early member of Bruce Springsteen's backing group, the E Street Band, and contributed to the first three Springsteen albums, and again on the 1992 album Human Touch. Sancious is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known as a keyboard player and...

, the Felice Brothers and Murali Coryell
Murali Coryell
Murali Coryell is an American blues guitarist and singer. Best known for performing live in small venues in New York State, Coryell has also opened for George Thorogood, Gregg Allman, B.B. King and Wilson Pickett...

. It is rumored that the notorious prohibition gangsters Dutch Schultz
Dutch Schultz
Dutch Schultz was a New York City-area Jewish American gangster of the 1920s and 1930s who made his fortune in organized crime-related activities such as bootlegging alcohol and the numbers racket...

 and Legs Diamond
Legs Diamond
Legs Diamond can refer to:*Jack Diamond , the alias of Philadelphia/New York gangster Jack Moran*Legs Diamond , an American rock and roll band*Legs Diamond , a musical written by Peter Allen...

 were regular patrons of the The Woodbine Inn. The Woodbine has been fully renovated as Whole Inn Rental & B&B accommodation with a strong emphasis on the arts. A unique venue for weddings, anniversaries, special events and occasional high profile, invite-only performances. The Vintage Bar is no longer open to the public but is fully operational and enjoyed by private parties at the Inn. In the endeavor to keep creativity alive in Palenville, the Ballroom space provides weekly yoga, belly dance and dance fitness classes to the community, and the Woodbine's state-of-the-art kitchen has been used as a location for food pilot film shoots for local restaurants and chefs, as well as hosting occasional cooking classes for small groups. We like to think we are furthering the spirit of Palenville, class by class, and by encouraging like-minded creatives back into the area.

The Terrance Gallery and the Pine Orchard festivals have long since close their doors but the Palenville Library, the Woodbine Inn, and many new, old, full and part-time businesses and residences keep the candle alite. Painters again are coming to Palenville to enjoy its plethora of motifs and one day perhaps these newer canvases will join those from the 19th century that don the walls of museums throughout the world today.

Other noted artists who frequented Palenville and the Clove were: Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Addison Richards, John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett was an American artist and engraver. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget...

 and Sanford R. Gifford. Landscape painters of the 20th century, to name a few, included: Albert Handel, Barry Hopkins, Athena Billias, Michelle Moran
Michelle Moran
Michelle Moran is an American novelist. She was born in California's San Fernando Valley. She took an interest in writing from an early age, purchasing Writer's Market and submitting her stories and novellas to publishers from the time she was twelve...

 and Patti Ferrara. George H. Hall, who was a 'genre' painter, took up residence in Palenville towards the end of the 19th century; and Terrance J. DePietro, an abstract painter, who was early on influenced by the Hudson River School, maintained residence and a studio from the later part of the 20th century into the 21st.(He brought artists from Quebec, Canada, i.e. Nicole Lemelin and Remi LaRoche to find inspiration beneath the "shadow of the mountain".)

Palenville Interarts Colony

In 1982 the Bond Street Theatre from New York City came to recreate the home of America's first arts community as the 'Palenville Interarts Colony'. The Colony had a day named in its honor by NY State and received the prestigious Genius Award from the MacArthur Foundation, the first time an organization ever won this honor. The programme, led by Co-Artistic Directors Joanna Sherman and Patrick Sciarratta was generally called Interarts. As creativity attracts creativity, thus the Palenville Interarts Colony was born. Start-up funds came from the State of New York Legislature, who thought it a good idea to bring a major new arts center to a small town. This helped us to revitalize broken down buildings and create studios out of old walls. The vision and enthusiasm of a few initiators must be mentioned: painters Francis Cunningham and Allen Barber, director Torben Bjelke, Dave Brubeck and sons (who gave us two benefit concerts), Kevin Kennedy (who owned the camp), and, of course Bond Streeters all: Mary Dino, David Feder, Stephen Ringold, Luanne Dietrich, Fred Collins, Marlene Abraham, Michael McGuigan, and Directors Joanna Sherman and Patrick Sciarratta. Lasting 12 years, the Colony was a feather in their personal, creative caps – for which they received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation (“Genius”) Award in recognition of theior groundbreaking work. The award consisted of $50,000 for three years – and it is not a grant but a gift for, well, ‘genius’ work and service..

The Colony provided facilities and inspiration to over 1500 artists, and produced performances by New York city based artists who resided there: Paul Zaloom, Charles Moore African Dancers, Sachiyo Ito Japanese Dance, Bread and Puppet Theatre, Eiko & Koma, Gail Conrad Tap Dance, the Chinese Acrobats of Taipei, the Brubecks, and many more, as well as the first US International Conference on Theatre Anthropology featuring key speakers Eugenio Barba, Richard Schechner, and Edith Turner.

Between adjudicating and facilitating artists’ applications for residency, producing other artists’ shows, managing the household, staff, and fundraising, the resident theatre company was also creating and performing its own new works, such as Of Sand and Thunder (1987, directed by Carey Perloff), The Case Of the Missing Universe (1988, directed by Pat Sciarratta), Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1989, directed by Marlene Abraham), Heartbeast (1989, directed by Stephen Ringold, with his new ensemble), and Nightmare On Wall Street (1990, directed by Polina Klimovitskaya). Patrick returned to the stage after many years to perform a one-man show, Feynman (1995, directed by Peter Von Berg), about the famous physicist. Meanwhile, Michael spent a year performing The Tempest in New York City’s famed Delacourt Theatre, with Patrick Stewart, then at the Broadhurst on Broadway directed by George Wolfe. The arts community had a real and direct effect on visual and performing arts during its run.

The Colony brought the actors into the richly creative worlds of sculptors, poets, painters, musicians, dancers, and writers, and gave the founders an opportunity to make this distinctive world open to a local, rural community that had never experienced this type of serious, engaging, international art up close. In recognition of its success with all constituencies: theatre and other residents, artists, and visitors, former Governor Cuomo and then NYSCA Chair Kitty Carlisle Hart succeeded in naming a day in its honor throughout the state in 1984.

Demographics

As of the census
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common...

of 2000, there were 1,120 people, 433 households, and 287 families residing in the CDP. The population density
Population density
Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...

 was 337.2 per square mile (130.3/km2). There were 551 housing units at an average density of 165.9/sq mi (64.1/km2). The racial makeup of the CDP was 96.16% White, 0.45% African American, 0.27% Native American, 1.07% Asian, 0.27% from other races
Race (United States Census)
Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, as defined by the Federal Office of Management and Budget and the United States Census Bureau, are self-identification data items in which residents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether or not they are...

, and 1.79% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.23% of the population.

There were 433 households out of which 30.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.0% were married couples
Marriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 living together, 10.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.5% were non-families. 25.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45 and the average family size was 2.94.

In the CDP the population was spread out with 25.5% under the age of 18, 6.1% from 18 to 24, 32.0% from 25 to 44, 24.5% from 45 to 64, and 12.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 97.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.7 males.

The median income for a household in the CDP was $40,833, and the median income for a family was $51,250. Males had a median income of $32,353 versus $23,542 for females. The per capita income
Per capita income
Per capita income or income per person is a measure of mean income within an economic aggregate, such as a country or city. It is calculated by taking a measure of all sources of income in the aggregate and dividing it by the total population...

 for the CDP was $18,848. 7.4% of the population were living below the poverty line, none of which were under eighteens, over 64, or families.

Notable residents past & present

  • George H. Hall, artist
  • Hannah Arendt
    Hannah Arendt
    Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...

    , political theorist
  • A. A. Bondy
    A. A. Bondy
    A. A. Bondy is an American folk/alternative artist from Birmingham, Alabama, and the former lead singer and guitarist in the rock band Verbena, which he founded in the early 1990s...

    , musician and singer/songwriter
  • Rufus Palen
    Rufus Palen
    Rufus Palen was a U.S. Representative from New York.Born in Palenville, New York, Palen moved with his parents to Fallsburg, where he received a limited schooling. He engaged in the manufacture of leather, and held several local offices.Palen was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-sixth Congress...

    , congressman
  • Rip Van Winkle
    Rip Van Winkle
    "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon...

    , fictional resident
  • Dripping Goss musical band
  • Brian Goss, musician; Dripping Goss, others
  • The Felice Brothers
    The Felice Brothers
    The Felice Brothers are a folk rock/country rock band from Upstate New York founded in 2006.-History:The Felice Brothers got their start as a band playing in the New York City subway,. The sons of a carpenter, they would play together on Sundays at their father's afternoon barbecues...

     musical band
  • Darrell Whitbeck, artist, musician
  • Michael Billera, performance artist, lyricist, member of The Warm Jets, Aunt Wayne, Spincycle Lava
  • Robert Goss, founder of American Gothic Records, musician; member of The Warm Jets, Crippled & The Burnout

External links

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