Area Sites

Millbrook Country House is located in Hart's Village, Millbrook's most historic neighborhood, and the house itself first appeared on a map in the 1867 edition of Beers Atlas. Millbrook was once a manufacturing center, but little if anything remains to suggest that past today. The present population is about 1,500, and the village has benefitted from proximity to the Hudson River with its busy commercial towns and stately houses, yet maintained its own character at the center of northern Dutchess County's horse culture and as a center for antiques.

The natural setting that the village enjoys is one of the Hudson Valley's prettiest. The gently rolling hills of nearby horse farms and large estates lend the area a particular grace, and the country lanes that wind throughout, past classic red barns and Millbrook's characteristic stone walls, are an open invitation to cyclists.

Millbrook School

Millbrook is surrounded by distinguished private secondary schools, beginning with its own Millbrook Prep School, which boasts a new performing arts facility as well as its unique Trevor Zoo, specializing in endangered species. Also nearby are Kildonan and Maplebrook in Amenia, and Trinity Pawling School in Pawling, while The Hotchkiss School, Salisbury School, Indian Mountain School, and Kent School are only 30 to 45 minutes away in western Connecticut.

Fisher Center

At the university level, Vassar, Marist, and Bard colleges draw students from all over the United States, and are cultural resources for the entire Hudson Valley region. Bard’s Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank O. Gehry and inaugurated in May, 2003, is the newest Hudson Valley venue for exciting theater, dance, music, and opera.

Millbrook has become a nationally recognized center for
ecological study, with two high-level research facilities: Rockefeller University's branch devoted to the field study of birds and the Institute for Ecoststem Studies (IES). The latter, located barely 2 miles from MCH along Route 44A, has created Cary Arboretum, with easy trails for walkers and hikers through pine forest, past fern glens and old hayfields, and along Wappinger Creek. Year-round, the institute's Continuing Education Program offers a rich range of classes and weekend seminars--from Garden Photography to Wild Plant Identification and Spring Mushrooms--that are open to the public for small fees.

Innisfree

In addition to the small botanical garden at Gifford House, the IES visitors' center where the arboretum trailheads are located, two unique and very beautiful gardens on a grand scale anchor Millbrook: Wethersfield and Innisfree. The former, created on ten acres in the 1940s and 1950s from the dairy farm of philanthropist and environmentalist Chauncey Stillman (1907-89), is modeled on the formal Italian prototype; the latter, once the private garden of Walter and Marion Beck, is based on an Eastern tradition derived from Chinese paintings, the "cup" design. Both offer many hours' happy wandering.

MCH is also fortunate to be situated on the Dutchess Wine Trail. We are 3 miles down Valley Farm Road from Millbrook Winery and Vineyards, which sponsors many musical, film, and gastronomic events especially during summer and autumn. And we are only a few miles farther from Clinton Vineyards in Clinton Corners and Cascade Mountain Winery in Amenia. Allison Vineyards is about an hour away, in Redhook. All are open to the public for tours and tastings.

Orvis Sandanona

For the sportsminded, the 400-acre Orvis Sandanona complex--complete with 19th-century-style lodge, which is also only minutes from MCH--is a premiere venue for afficionados of sporting clays shooting and fly-fishing. The sporting clays course is considered one of the most beautiful and challenging in the world, and for newcomers to the sport Sandanona's Shooting School is open January-December. With two private ponds and a trout stream on the grounds, Sandanona's Fly-Fishing School offers classes March-September.

For cycling, walking/hiking, cross-country skiing, and snow-shoeing, in addition to the many charming lanes surrounding Millbrook, there is the Harlem Valley Rail Trail. It runs from Amenia, only 10 miles away, up to Millerton, passing through scenic farmland, wetlands, woods, beaver ponds, and rolling pastures. Also nearby, with its own exit off the Taconic Parkway, is James Baird State Park, with several miles of hiking and cross-country trails, reservable picnic pavilions, and--not least--a Robert Trent Jones-designed golf course, with clubhouse and restaurant.

Farther afield but still easily accessible from MCH, there's a wealth of historic and artistic sites in the Hudson Valley area east of the river:

To the South:

the fabulous 500-acre sculpture park of Storm King
(as of May 2003) the Dia art center at Beacon. Rising from a 1920s printing factory, its 240,000 square feet of glass and skylit exhibition space will contain an important collection of large-scale contemporary sculptures and paintings from America and abroad
Boscobel, a fine Federal house meticulously restored under the supervision of Berry Tracy when he was curator-in-charge of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The period furnishings, including pieces by Duncan Phyfe, are prime examples of the artistry of New York cabinetmakers. Outside are an apple orchard, formal rose garden, summer Shakespeare festival, and views across the Hudson to West Point.

To the West:

the Hudson's pride of great stately houses, ribboning along the river's eastern bank. They include FDR's Springwood and Eleanor Roosevelt's Val-Kill; the Vanderbilt Mansion; Mills Mansion; Montgomery Place; Wilderstein; and Olana, home of Hudson Valley landscape painter Frederic Church, among others.
Vassar, Marist, and Bard colleges as well as the Culinary Institute of America and its complex of restaurants.

To the North and East:

the many horse farms that have become synonymous with Millbrook and create a landscape of particular beauty
private hunting clubs such as Mashomack Preserve at Pine Plains, where summertime polo matches also take place, and Tamarack Preserve near Amenia
world-class music, at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony near Lenox, MA; and at Music Mountain, renown for its weekend chamber series, in Falls Village, CT.