I Love NY, the official tourism board for the State of New York, recently sponsored a trip for the Knockturnal to visit Coxsackie and put us up at the James Newbury Hotel for the weekend.
After eating a hardy breakfast in the hotel lobby, we set off to take a tour of the Bronck House, the oldest standing building in the Hudson Valley and former home to the Bronck family. In the 1640s, Pieter Bronck, originally a Swede, married Hilletje Jans, a Dutch citizen, and together they moved to New York before it was even known as New York! Back then the land was still part of the Dutch colony of New Netherlands. For three payments of beaver hides, they purchased a plot of land in the Hudson Valley from the native Mohican tribe and built a house from local rubblestone which went on to house eight generations of the Bronck family. The family line ended in 1939 when the last direct descendent of Pieter died and donated the property to the Greene County Historical Society to be converted into a museum. During the hour and a half tour, our tour guide Dick took us through all three of the Broncks family houses built many years apart, which bore signs of the family’s increasing wealth. We explored three of the Bronck barns, each in a different style. There was a Victorian horse barn, which was a simple four-sided wood building typical of what you think when you hear the word “barn,” but there were also the Dutch barn built with sturdy H-shaped support beams made to last and the thirteen-sided barn, a big silo with a series of doors winding up almost to the ceiling for when the barn got filled with hay. The thirteen-sided barn also serves as storehouse for antique buggies and wagons, farm tools, and even treadmills donated from Green County and beyond, and we learned a lot about the history of farming in general thanks to the tour.
During our tour of the Bronck Houses we worked up an appetite and decided to go grab lunch at Gracie’s in Leeds, New York. The restaurant was packed and with good reason. We were seated by the window and ordered the Full Breakfast, made up of two eggs, a hashbrown patty, and an Impossible sausage with a side of biscuit and honey butter. It was the perfect lunch. The menu also features a large offering of sandwiches, burgers, snacks, and desserts. Their fresh-baked doughnuts were flying off the shelves. We had the butterscotch banana cake, a sweet and delightful treat.
Following lunch, we went back to the hotel to relax, and pretty soon it was time for dinner. We decided to eat dessert first and stopped by Coxsackie Creamery, an ice cream shop on Reed St., which severs Jane’s Ice Cream. The shop had black and white checkered floors and bubblegum pink walls. Old newspaper articles from the town’s hundredth anniversary were laminated into the tables. I really enjoyed my cone of mint chip ice cream. There were also vegan options. We met and chatted with founder Sharon Mahota, who worked as a social worker for forty years, then retired and entered the ice cream business.
Last but not least, we had dinner at Patrick Henry’s, a tavern which serves cocktails, wood-fired pizza, and elevated pub food. Located on the James Newbury Hotel premises, Patrick Henry’s was bustling and lively. We ordered the white clam signature pizza, the beat and chevre salad, crispy cauliflower, and thick-cut fries with blue cheese. It all was very affordable and portions were huge.
