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Ulster Publishing’s Explore Hudson Valley Magazine Spring 2019 Summerhouses of Mohonk Hudson River islands By the time we got to Woodstock Plus: Whaling on the Hudson Baker does Beethoven — with a lawnmower 2 • Spring 2019 Explore Hudson Valley ͘ THE GREAT HUDSON RIVER REVIVAL CROTON ȥȩˌȥȪ ˊˊ ʠ ͘ MAVIS STAPLES ANI DIFRANCO RAILROAD EARTH THE WAILERS IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE ͘͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ ͢͢ ͢ ͘ ͢ ͢ ͢Ȧ͢͢ ͢ ͢ ͢ʤ Plus, Fun and Exciting Family Activities All Weekend Long! Tall Ships and Small Boat Rides, Children’s Crafts and Activities, Green Living Expo, Circle of Song, and So Much More! ͘ ʡȬȬȬʟȫȥȬʟȨȦȩȧȥ͢ ʟ Explore Hudson Valley Spring 2019 • 3 The summerhouses of Mohonk Paying tribute to a Shawangunk icon on the mountain house’s 150th birthday John Burdick the ideal beauty of Mohonk and the cloistered concentration of n his underrated novel it, the tight insularity and depth Pattern Recognition, the of its micro-world. The problems father of cyberpunk fiction here are twofold. First, it is way I William Gibson offers for too chatty to be a logo; second, our consideration the postmod- it speaks to grandeur – certainly ern character Cayce Pollard. part of the Mohonk formula – but The novel’s protagonist makes a has little to say of Mohonk’s rustic comfortable living as a freelance and roughhewn modesty, without evaluator of corporate logos and which it might as well be Marriott. symbols. She does not design Thus enter the summerhouses, them, critique them or in any or gazebos as they are commonly way improve, edit or explain misnamed: the rustic, roughhewn them. She simply looks at a pro- structures that dot the entire Mo- posed logo and knows instantly honk campus, providing respite in her gut whether it has the viral and vistas for hikers. The sum- quality, the iconic and memetic merhouses are Mohonk’s flagship energy, to become a powerful feature, reminders that Mohonk is brand image, or whether it is not about nature per se; it is about a stillborn dud, a dead symbol. the first artistic cut by humans into Her talent is nothing more than nature, the DIY aesthetic impulses an extreme semiotic sensitivity to shape the wild with one’s hands. – an exaggerated form of the al- The Mohonk summerhouses mohonk mountain house archives lergic response to symbols that were inspired by the work of we all share to some degree. Pol- Summerhouse engraving by E.J. Whitney the landscape designer Andrew lard’s sensitivity pays well, but it Jackson Downing, whose sum- also forces her to limit her exposure to replaced it in a wall-to-wall institutional merhouse designs were a fixture at the brands at large and to grind the logos off rebranding. I have a feeling Cayce Pollard great family estates along the Hudson. the buttons on her clothes, lest she be would have been unmoved by that big A summerhouse differs from a gazebo made constantly dizzy and nauseated. glass pavilion/ship/pyramid thingy. mostly by being considerably more raw. When New Paltz’s venerable Mohonk So, consider Sky Top taken, actively The gazebos of Europe tended to be built Mountain House decided upon a logo, it engaged in the service of another brand. of finished lumber. They featured screens had several great options at its disposal, Mohonk has many more bullets in its and cushions, a few layers of insulation a crisis of options and no Cayce Pollard to holster. How about the famous aerial between person and the world of dirt and contract. First, there is the Sky Top tower: shots of the Mountain House and the flies. a powerful image boosted by a compact, deep-set, sculpted lake upon which it is Summerhouses like those at Mohonk iconic name, but one that has become situated? From above, the cliff-hugging were originally fashioned out of unfin- symbolically associated with the New Paltz hotel seems hardly less accretive and ac- ished poles by “rustic carpenters”: farm- community in general. The distinctively cidental than the geology that surrounds ers mostly, with good carpentry skills. notched stony protuberance that looks it. It is a stunning, irresistible image that The amateur artisans were instructed down upon the town was, in fact, exploited has been used as the money shot in every to use the materials they could find at as a formal icon by SUNY-New Paltz for “I Love New York” television commercial hand – American chestnut, usually – and years, before this crystal-palace business for decades, speaking eloquently of both to use their imaginations regarding the 4 • Spring 2019 Explore Hudson Valley design of the house. This is my favorite fact about the Mohonk summerhouses. Mohonk’s summerhouses were originally With one notable exception, they were truly improvised. No two are alike, and no fashioned by “rustic carpenters”: farmers mostly, designs exist on paper except for the one exception: the two-level summerhouse in with good carpentry skills. The amateur artisans the main garden. were instructed to use the materials they could fi nd Beginning in the 1870s as the Smiley twins began to develop their new property, at hand and to use their imagination. No two are alike. the original summerhouses featured roofs of thatched rye straw. It was a point of dis- pute between the brothers. Albert wished to change over to chestnut shingle, argu- thatched grass roofs dominate the photo available-but-less-attractive white cedar: ing that shingle roofs were less obtrusive, evidence of Mohonk’s first 100 years. The red for the visible parts, white for the more in keeping with the environment. last of the thatched-roof summerhouses substructures. Brother Alfred prevailed, apparently, as were seen in the 1980s, though most had A testimony to the charming anachro- been replaced by hemlock slab roofs first, nism and eccentricity that Mohonk has and then later cedar shakes by the 1960s. somehow managed to maintain through The chestnut tree blight of the 1910s portions of three centuries, and under began the move toward red cedar con- the ever-increasing pressure of corporate struction, but not for another 20 years, modernity, nobody is entirely sure how All Animal as the ever-industrious Smileys harvested many summerhouses there were. The first Veterinary Services the dead chestnut trees and stockpiled the were built in 1870s. Mohonk seems fairly Dr. Eleanor Acworth, DVM wood for use in summerhouse construc- confident that none have been added since tion. Several generations later, the use 1917. Best guess is that 125 survive out 2264 Rt. 32 Modena of red cedar led to dwindling supplies a high of 155, but “It is doubtful,” wrote 845-255-2900 and Mohonk began a cedar reforesta- Ben Matteson and Joan A. LaChance in AllAnimalVeterinaryServices.com tion initiative in 1996, with the goal of The Summerhouses of Mohonk in 1998, planting 200 new seedlings annually. In “whether anyone today would be able to the maintenance of the summerhouses locate each and every one.” Why do I find today, red cedar is mixed with the more- that so comforting? 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The Mohonk’s official logo in the 1970s, locked British retaliated to the down by trademark in 1983. Mohonk’s embargo by systemati- official historian Larry E. Burgess notes cally attacking Colonial that, while the first formal use of the sum- ships and ports, with merhouse logo on marketing materials Nantucket, set well off occurred in 1970, a version of the iconic the coast and the busiest design had been used around Mohonk as hub of the New England early as the 1870s: a fact recognized in the whaling fleet, particu- trademark certificate. larly vulnerable to these From a semiotic perspective, the Mohonk depredations. logo is a 10, a knockout. They’d have to Some Nantucketers fled carry Cayce Pollard out on a stretcher. ♦ to Nova Scotia, others to North Carolina. Two Whaling’s surprising prosperous Nantucket- born Quaker brothers Hudson River heyday named Seth and Thomas Jenkins, who had mer- cantile interests in Provi- By water, the trip from the Port of New dence, decided to seek York to the City of Hudson is a journey will lytle promising dockage far- of about 117 miles. One wouldn’t think One wouldn’t think that people in the business ther west, off the coast, that people in the business of hunting of hunting whales far out at sea would ever have and began exploring like- whales far out at sea would ever have imagined Hudson to be an auspicious place to set ly sites along the Hudson imagined Hudson to be an auspicious up shop.