On the Road to Connecticut

Rolling on toward New England, we left Stroudsburg Pennsylvania and headed up PA Hwy. 209 through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.  We did note that the road was in bad shape and the area along the river didn’t look very appealing…  

As we cruised north and east toward New York State and beyond, we passed through the town of Milford Pennsylvania.  This attractive hotel caught our eye… 

The Hotel Fauchere was founded by Swiss/French emigre Louis Fauchere.  Prior to coming to Milford, he’d worked as a master chef at New York City’s famed Delmonico Restaurant… Once he moved to Milford, he operated a small inn and restaurant.  His success with that venture led to the construction of Hotel Fauchere.  It opened in 1880 and he and his family owned and operated it until 1976.

 

Now updated and reopened, this 18 room boutique hotel also contains the upscale Delmonico Room Restaurant and Bar Louis.  I had a look and the hotel was booked for October…so it’s a popular place.  91% of guests who reviewed this hotel on TripAdvisor rated it 4 stars or higher.  To learn more about the hotel and its restaurants, go to https://hotelfauchere.com/.

There is a very large group of buildings in Milford Pennsylvania that are part of the Milford Historic District in the National Register of Historic Places.  This beautiful and ornate Victorian ‘stick’ style structure is the Armstrong Home on East High Street. 

The home was built in 1898 as a summer house for the Armstrong family who lived in Manhattan.  Subsequently, it became the Windsor Hotel and then a school for special needs students. From what I can tell, by 2013 it had been converted into 6 large apartments… In any case, it is well maintained!

This is the first Pike County Courthouse.  This 5-bay Georgian vernacular sandstone structure was built in 1814.  It may still be in use today, serving as the County Jail for the Sheriff’s Department.  However, I did note an article in a 2017 article that indicated that a new jail and Sheriff’s office might have or will soon replace these needs for the county.   

In years past I took the train into downtown Chicago on occasion when I worked in the city center.  It was OK…not that long of a ride.  However, when we spotted this railyard in Port Jervis New York, 95 miles from Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, I stopped to compare my puny commute to this one.  I checked to see how long it would take just to commute to Hoboken New Jersey and I was stunned to find that it took between 2 hours and 9 minutes and 2 hours and 35 minutes…one way!  Yikes!

Nevertheless, despite the time and distance, this is one of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad’s end of the line rail yards.  The cost of an unlimited monthly pass to Hoboken would be $404.00 or $4,848.00 per year.  It was Sunday so much of the rolling stock was just waiting for Monday morning.

There are 124 stations on Metro-North’s 5 commuter rail lines with over 385 route miles of track.  Combined, this commuter rail system has an average weekly ridership of over 300,000 passengers.

Note:

·         Historically, the first passenger train passed through Port Jervis New York on May 14, 1851.  Passengers included President Millard Fillmore and Senator Daniel Webster.

This old diesel locomotive is parked on an old Erie Railroad roundhouse turntable adjacent to Metro-North Commuter Railroad’s parking lot, rolling stock and boarding platform.  The turntable is ‘hidden’ behind a strip shopping center and a chain pharmacy store.  An historic marker was installed here in late 2014…but I didn’t find it.  The railroad roundhouse that was paired with the turntable was apparently lost to arsonists… The turntable had been restored in 1996 after years of disuse, and from what I’ve read in 1998, it was the center of a big celebration involving a steam locomotive and 30,000 visitors.  It’s obviously been neglected for many years since that event. 

As for Erie Railroad diesel locomotive 833, in the late 1990s it had been serving at Conrail as #4022 when it was purchased by the New York and Greenwood Lake short line railroad.  It was repainted with the old Erie Railroad livery and there were plans to run excursion trains locally, but those plans never came to fruition.   I also found a photo of this locomotive on display on the roundtable at the North Carolina Transportation Museum as a ‘participant’ the “Streamliners in Spencer” event in May of 2014.  Why is it sitting here just abandoned?

New York and Greenwood Lake Locomotive 935 and several old passenger coaches are also ‘stored’ on the site in Port Jervis.  The railroad ceased all service in 2012.  The rolling stock at Port Jervis was slated for use as a planned passenger excursion rail service along the scenic upper Delaware River, but that plan failed to materialize… The locomotives are in decent shape but the several coaches have reportedly been heavily vandalized.  They do look sad don’t they?  The coaches shown in the photo are the ‘Pride of the Delaware’ and ‘Chestnut Hill’.  The site is wide open to anyone who wants to visit…or to further vandalize the equipment.

After leaving Port Jervis, we took mostly 2 lane roads across southern New York until we got to the Bear Mountain Bridge, also known as the Purple Heart Veterans Memorial Bridge.  This toll suspension bridge carries US Highways 6 and 202 across the Hudson River just south of the United States Military Academy at West Point New York.

When the bridge was completed in 1924, at 2,255 feet in length, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world…for all of 19 months.  At that point it was surpassed by the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia.  The Bear Mountain Bridge was the first suspension bridge to have a concrete deck.  For some reason tolls are only charged for eastbound vehicles…$1.50 for a car.

Laurie and I had to stop at an overlook viewpoint to take a couple of photos of the Hudson River Valley.  It was a hazy day but the views were pretty decent… At this point we were only 50 miles north of Manhattan.

The Hudson River is only 315 miles long but it is navigable by ocean going ships for up to 134 miles, as far north as the city of Troy, which is located just above Albany.  The lower half of the river is a tidal estuary, deeper than the body of water into which it flows, i.e. New York’s harbor.  The navigable portion of the river is really a fjord formed during the most recent North American glacial period…26,000 to 13,000 years ago. 

 As we drove through Peekskill New York, Laurie snapped a photo of this handsome building.  The Dramatic Hall/Peekskill Central Market building dates back to 1837.  The building initially served as a grocery store.  In the 1860s the Peekskill telegraph office was here as well.  Then in 1870, a small stage was built on the third floor and it was called the “Dramatic Hall”.   A hardware company occupied the structure for many years followed by a glass company in the 1970s and 1980s.  

The building sat empty for about 20 years until it was completely restored in 2012.  The first floor is being used as retail space and the upper levels have been refurbished and now serve as a beautiful event space for weddings, anniversaries, etc.  To view this spectacular space at 900 Main Street in Peekskill, just go to http://www.dramatichallpeekskill.com/index.html.

…and on into Connecticut!  Once we passed Danbury and merged onto I-95 heading for our hotel in Waterford, we remembered what traffic around big cities and along the northeast corridor could be like!  We don’t miss this hassle, that’s for sure.  It got particularly bad as we approached New Haven, so we decided to take a lunch break and get of the Interstate.  But that’s a post for another time…

Just click on any of the photos if you’d like to enlarge them…

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave