Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION
take a cultural history cruise
HUDSON RIVER VALLEY, NEW YORK, & MORE
I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.
—Susan Sontag
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Going on a cruise with the National Trust for Historic Preservation is like getting Eva
Longoria to lead a tour of the
Desperate Housewives'
set—chock full of inside, front-row in-
formation not available to the average tourist. On a recent Hudson Valley Fall Foliage Cruise,
for example, National Trust precruise participants got to tour Philip Johnson's famous Glass
House in New Canaan, Connecticut, before it was opened to the public. They also got a per-
sonal tour of Edgewater, the residence of Richard Jenrette, a trustee who opens his charming
river estate once a year for the cruise.
On this popular cruise aboard the
American Glory,
a cozy 49-passenger ship with
200-square-foot cabins, 14 of them with private balconies, you'll tour the Hudson River Val-
ley, recognized as a national heritage area. And don't forget, the Hudson River itself has been
designated one of 14 Great American Rivers. Led by stellar study leader Richard Barons,
you'll get inside glimpses of Val-Kill, Eleanor Roosevelt's stone cottage on the banks of Fall-
Kill Creek; Kykuit, the hilltop paradise where four generations of Rockefellers lived; the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point; and the private home of Hudson River school painter Jasper
F. Cropsey. If you do the precruise trip, an insiders' view of New York's theater scene, you'll
get a private dinner with the grandson of Oscar Hammerstein II.
Even though the National Trust recently changed the name of its “study tours” to the less
daunting “National Trust tours,” you can be assured that the nearly 65 programs it offers each
year are all led by accomplished scholars of history and architecture. The Hudson River Valley
cruise, for example, has been led by Richard Barons, the director of the Southampton Histor-
ical Museum, who has been described by past participants as “marvelous,” “knowledgeable,”
and “lots of fun.” On its tour of the antebellum South, the trust hired famed architectural his-
torian John Meffert, past director of the Preservation Society of Charleston.
