The number who seek our village to spend the Summer months is annually increasing, and we are happy to say that the accommodations for visitors keep equal pace with the increases. Our hotels were never before so good, while the opportunities for private boarding are numerous and inviting.
The village has a combination of attractions for those who care to be a little quiet in the summer. In the first place it combines every convenience and luxury of the city, with the good air, fine scenery, pleasant drives, fishing, boating, bathing, and hunting, to be found in distant and secluded watering places. The Hudson is at no point on its whole length more attractive than it is here. The best of our boats, oar and sail, fishing tackle, and fishermen who “know the ropes” are at the ready command of visitors. The roads in all directions furnish pleasant drives, and our livery men are justly proud of the elegance and completeness of their turn-outs. As to walks and strolls, one need not go out of the village for the best to be found anywhere. Our streets are not only wide and clean, and straight and long, but the majority of them are shaded either by ornamental or old forest trees. We doubt if out of the city of New Haven can be found anywhere on the continent such a number and variety of grand old elms and beautiful maples as our village boasts.
If one’s mind runs to business, there is much to interest and instruct in the large number of our manufactories, which are turning out every day in vast quantities articles of the most common use the world over, but of the process of producing which not one man in a thousand in the world at large knows anything about. And while enjoying leisure and quiet, and good air, and all the advantages of the country, the visitor has his New York daily papers a little after noon; he is within a half hour’s ride by horse car of the great line of steamboats connecting the upper Hudson with New York; is within one hour’s ride by rail of Saratoga; two hours from Lake George; and six hours by the Hudson River or Harlem Railroads, will take him to the heart of the city of New York.
We might with profit enlarge upon the beauties and attractions of the village, and in doing so we could not excel in praise very much, that is always awarded by strangers who visit us The founders of the village had an eye to beauty and elegance. Of the principal, peopled streets running parallel with the River there are six. These are each seventh feet wide, over a mile in length, and straight as a surveyor’s chain could make them. The avenues are for the most part studded with dwellings, all having gardens, and shade trees line the whole length. We will venture the assertion that no village in the Union can show a greater number of beautiful and tasteful private residences than Lansingburgh; and we doubt if there can be found anywhere a community which has given equal attention to the cultivation of trees, shrubbery, and flowers.
It is not surprising, under the circumstances, that real estate in the village has largely increased in value of late, and is still on the advance. Nothing in the future is more certain than that the same causes which have given Brooklyn its magic growth, which have raised up large and flourishing communities in the vicinity of Boston, and which in the neighborhood of all cities are making the suburbs, which are accessible by horse cars, sought as places of residence—that the same causes are to operate here largely hereafter, and contribute not only to the value of property, but to our permanent resident population. And it is pleasant to reflect that this population will be of the altogether desirable class—families of considerable means, of taste, refinement and good morals—people who will take a pride in our local institutions of learning, in our churches, and all good works; those who, having made their home among us, will take a pride in the village, and favor progress and improvement.
We have heretofore submitted to our citizens the importance and necessity of meeting the new situation which the time is developing for us, in the right spirit. There should be a welcome for strangers; and as property here advances in value, those who hold it should be willing to favor projects looking to improvement. They can well afford to do it. Taxation for useful or necessary improvements generally returns itself in the enhanced value of the property taxed. Taxation even for ornamental purposes, is often the greatest economy. We have Bible authority [e.g. Proverbs 11:24] for saying that there is a parsimony which withholds, and it tendeth to poverty; and there is a liberality which scatters, and it tendeth to riches. Let those who own real estate in this village, and who expect that they and their children will spend their days here, think of these things.
Lansingburgh Gazette. June 25, 1868