A City is Born
In the spring of 1783, a group of seafarers from Massachusetts and Rhode Island concerned about British retaliation for the American Revolutionary War sought safer harbor for their vessels. They found it on the banks of the Hudson River. Thomas and Seth Jenkins purchased a large tract of land then known as Claverack Landing. By that fall, the soon-to-be founders of the City of Hudson, most of whom were Quakers, began arriving in ships with their families and possessions. Some even brought with them houses that had been framed out in Nantucket.
The founders, who called themselves Proprietors, set to work designing the city at their first meeting in 1784. In 1785, the City of Hudson became the first city to be chartered in the new United States.
Hudson's Cyclical Economy
By 1788, Hudson had become a commercial city with warehouses, wharves and docks, ropewalks, and the din of industry. Its economic mainstays were whaling, sealing, and international trade. However, increased petroleum use in the mid-1800s meant less demand for whale oil and this, combined with the railroad transecting the north and south bays in the late 1840s, created a short period of economic decline.
Yet even as the railroads sealed the fate of one era, they fostered the beginning of a new one and enabled new industries to prosper. Knitting and cotton mills opened and brickyards flourished, as did breweries and an iron works. But by the end of the 1800s the industrial economy of the city once again began to sputter, culminating with the closing of the cement industry which had arrived about 1900 and dominated the economy until the Great Depression.
Hudson's economy stayed depressed until the late-20th century. Many of Hudson's elegantly simple buildings and mansions rode through time unappreciated, neglected, abandoned, and – for some – demolished. Despite neglect and the passage of time, planned demolition and ill-considered destruction, the city of Hudson retains much of its superb architectural heritage.
Hudson Now
Today, Hudson has reinvented itself as it had twice before in the 18th and mid-19th centuries. The city, with its historic architecture and unique character, is avidly appreciated for its elegant antique shops, art galleries, and restaurants. The long-time residents and new devotees of Hudson who have saved and restored this walkable and picturesque small city are unquestionably the spiritual heirs of the original city Proprietors.
-- source: Historic Hudson
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