Cornwall-On-Hudson

The sunken remains of numerous docks along the shoreline of Cornwall-on-Hudson attest to its early history as an active landing on the Hudson River. Furniture, goods, and lumber came upriver, and produce and meat sailed south. Along with these products was a flow of people, who arrived first in the town as visitors and later settled as residents. Among them was photographer Louis Chivacheff, an immigrant from Bulgaria who photographed residents and visitors from 1890 to 1920. A majority of the images in Cornwall-on-Hudson are from his body of work. Visitors came for the pure and healthful mountain air and were accommodated in small hotels and boardinghouses. They were entertained with dancing, lectures, plays, and fairs in Library Hall and Opera Hall Rink and heard concerts in the bandstand built by Mead and Taft in the 1880s. Boating, bicycling, lawn tennis, and hiking and picnicking on beautiful Storm King Mountain were the summer pastimes.