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ALMANAC WEEKLY

A miscellany of Hudson Valley art, adventure and ideas | Calendar Ca l e n da r & C Classifieds l a ssifieds | Issue 12 | Mar . 23 – 30 MUSIC

STAGE

SHOW

HISTORY

Bob Dylan to play at Hutton Brickyards opening

Anne Frank musical at Culinary in Hyde Park

Glam jam: Ziggy Stardust on stage in Rhinebeck

Woman on a white horse: Suffragist Inez Milholland

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ICE HOUSE PHOTO BY ANDY MILFORD | ABANDONEDHUDSONVALLEY.COM

A romance with ruins Founders of Abandoned Hudson Valley to speak about fascinating remnants of our collective past

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bandoned Hudson Valley (AHV) is the avocation of Liz Cooke and Andy Milford, who are dedicated to sharing ideas and images of the abandoned, imperiled and forgotten places in the Hudson Valley. AHV is also an online community of photographers and writers who shoot pictures and gather history and anecdotal accounts about these extraordinary local places. Some subjects are well-known and accessible (Bennett College and Bannerman Castle, for example) and others are hidden and dangerous to explore. AHV members seek to record the condition of crumbling structures on their website, abandonedhudsonvalley.com, before they’re demolished by the ravages of time or the wrecking ball.

In many ways, AHV is similar to the long established local history hunters’ website hudsonvalleyruins.org, created by Robert Yasinsac and Thomas Rinaldi, authors of Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape. There are a lot of people who do this, Cooke says: people whom you can trust, who are ethical and will respect the places and not disclose locations (some places are fragile and vulnerable). “We just want to photograph something unique and beautiful in its own tragic way. There are some places about which we really want to know more.” She mentions an old stone house in Kingston that was scheduled for demolition, but after AHV photographed it, some preservationists came in to save it. “It was an important house, but was completely invisible.”

Cooke started out 2013 with a Facebook page that featured photos of the Hudson River State Hospital and Letchworth Village, work she did with her iPhone. “I was completely energized by being in this place,” she says of the abandoned psychiatric hospital, “this massive, Gothic building. I was really moved, and it looked like people were interested, as well. Within three or four days, I had 5,000 ‘likes.’ These places captured people’s imaginations.” She cites Richard Nickel’s Kingston Lounge as an inspiring website filled with photographs of abandoned and deteriorating buildings in the New York metropolitan area. “I would go to Kingston Lounge and see his work, and after moving up here from Brooklyn, I stumbled into this treasure-trove of

amazing places. I was a photographer for many years. I’ve always been interested in subcultures and unseen things. It’s crazy, how much there is to shoot here.” At some point, the Facebook page stopped being only about Cooke’s work. Others have stepped in and expanded both the historical data and the photographic archives. AHV is open to new members to participate by writing about and photographing new locations, or by working at more administrative tasks, such as marketing, curating and event planning. The organization invites the submission of photographs to be added to the archives or written work in the form of story ideas, features about abandoned locations and guest columns. Of particular interest are the real-life Continued on page 6


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