Clermont State Historic Site — Attraction in Town of Clermont

Clermont State Historic Site is a nice historic site that offers very much. If planning to visit the mansion offers a tour that you can take. There are also nice walking trails and you can walk the grounds of the estate, which has nice gardens. The views of the Hudson River and Catskills from here are some of the best in the area. The mansion tour is about 45 minutes long. It goes over Clermont's history primarily in the Gilded Age. Most of the furniture and decorations reflect this era. The library is probably the best room in the house. The view from the porch (originally the front of the house) is serene. This viewpoint is also how the house got it's name Clermont, meaning "clear mountain." The paintings in the house of different Livingston family members are also unique. The tour guide was very good and knew the information about the house very well. Claremont was originally established in the 1700's by Robert Livingston, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The ruins of another mansion are also found on the property. The visitor center does a good job describing the historical importance of the Livingston's to US history. The first commercially successful steamboat created in the US was named after the estate. The nature trails around the estate are very good and Clermont is a nice place to enjoy a walk. They offer some nice views of the Hudson and views of the gardens around the mansion. You can also picnic at the estate and there are many picnic benches and grills available. Altogether, a great historic...

Beat up and moldering. Not enough state and non-profit money to keep these old Hudson River houses in good condition. And I’m not sure they’re all worth saving. Springwood (FDR estate) and Wilderstein (privately funded) might be exceptions. To some extent all of them are monuments to the vulgarity, bad taste, and excess of the guilded age. Even Clermont had substantial alterations in the 19th Century and is no longer an intact colonial/federal period structure. And I am not at all sure that spending taxpayer dollars on these places is defensible. However, they are part of a complex historical legacy of which we should all be aware. The Livingstons of Clermont at one time owned nearly a million acres of land in the Hudson Valley that they leased out under oppressive land tenancies until, after tenant revolts, they were abolished by the state of New York in about 1830. The Livingstons were also slaveholders who had enslaved people working at Clermont until slavery was finally abolished in New York in the 1820’s. On the bright side, one must also acknowledge and admire the extraordinary service of Chancellor Robert Livingston to the creation and establishment of the...

Drove over an hour to see the "Holiday Candlelight Tour" of the Clermont Mansion. What a disappointment...a quick shuffle through 4 rooms with an aloof tour guide....tour lasted about 15 minutes with very little history provided....live models were dressed in attire of the times and were rather distracting as one anticipated a live enactment rather than a window dressing....the culmination of the tour was being herded into a small room with folding chairs and a table of cookies and cider....the tour guide sat with acquaintances and there was no further interaction... exiting the event with another couple who drove from Albany to "do" the candlelight tour it became evident....their disappointment, as well as ours, was agreed upon...