Area Attractions
What to do and see
Witness the breathtaking views of the Hudson River Valley from the Gilded Age mansions dotting its shores...step back in time to the sites of our nation's fight for independence...then fast forward to airshows highlighting the biplanes and barnstormers of the early 20th century.
Art
- Vassar’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
- Arts at Vassar events at Vassar College open to the public
- Dia:Beacon modern art museum
- Storm King Art Center and sculpture park
- Katonah Museum of Art
History
- Olana, home of 19th century artist Fredric Church
- Franklin D. Roosevelt home and Presidential library
- Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt’s Hyde Park home
- The Vanderbilt summer estate at Hyde Park
- Kykuit, the Rockefeller home in Sleepy Hollow
- Staatsburg, Ruth and Ogden Mills’ Beaux-Arts mansion
- Clermont, home of Robert Livingston, who co-invented the first steam-powered-boat with Robert Fulton
- Locust Grove, the Samuel F. B. Morse home
- Sunnyside, the country home of novelist Washington Irving
Outdoors
- Hike The Appalachian Trail and James Baird State Park
- Rock-climb at the Shawangunk mountains
- Golf on Vassar’s own 9-hole course or the Robert Trent Jones designed course at nearby Casperkill Golf Club
- Visit over 20 wineries along the Hudson Valley Wine Trail
- Innisfree Garden - 150 acre public garden with a lake, surrounded by cliffs, low hills, waterfalls and streams.
Theater
- Vassar’s Powerhouse Theater and Martel Theater
- Poughkeepsie's venerable Bardavon Opera House
- Paramount Center for the Arts in nearby Putnam County
From the country homes of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to the artifacts of early Quaker days, explore a lifetime of history in Dutchess County and the Hudson River Valley, a National Heritage Area.