Rhinebeck, NY, A Village on the Hudson

What is important about Rhinebeck, NY?  It was the location of Chelsea Clinton’s wedding on July 31, 2010.  To folks from New York City, Rhinebeck (which is in Duchess County near Poughkeepsie) is “upstate” New York.  To folks who actually live in upstate New York, Rhinebeck (and Poughkeepsie) are most decidedly downstate.

Rhinebeck, like many villages along the Hudson River and elsewhere in New York State, dates to early Colonial days.  It has been a manufacturing center and since the mid 19th century, has been a place where the wealthy have often had summer homes.  One of its manufacturing products was carriages, coaches, and sleighs.  Many folks have never been to Rhinebeck but would imagine that the wealthy had nice carriage houses to store the carriages and nearby stables, with many of these having been converted to modern day garages with automatic garage door openers, to allow for storing the modern day “horseless carriage” (although it is also possible that many carriage houses still are used for sleighs as New York still gets enough snow to justify it for rich people).

The early settlers in Rhinebeck would probably not understand the current obsession with cars but they would likely understand the idea of status symbols, as a carriage manufactured in Rhinebeck would most likely have been a status symbol.  The early settlers might wince at seeing a beautiful carriage house converted into a modern day garage, complete with an automatic garage door opener.  But they would definitely understand the need for protecting products from the weather, whether pricey carriages and sleighs or pricey cars and boats.  They probably even had problems with home owners occasionally driving the carriage while intoxicated and damaging the carriage doors somehow.  Even though most folks today know not to drink and drive, it does still happen and garage doors whether automated garage doors or regular, manually opened garge doors, wind up damaged as a result.  Whether the damage leaves a gouge out of the carriage or the damage leaves a scratch down the side of the BMW, the next day most likely means someone is remorseful and someone is angry and they may well be the same person who caused the damage being angry with themselves.

So now that Chelsea Clinton’s wedding is complete, Rhinebeck will once again recede from the national consciousness and revert back to being another sleepy village on the Hudson River.  A small town, near New York City where the locals will go about their day to day lives without the intrusion of the tourists and national media.  Oh there will be tourists, as this area will always have tourists who come for the slower pace, the beauty of the architecture, or just to see where some history may have been made.  

Just not as many tourists as this weekend brought them.