Historic Robert Jenkins House holds open house March 25

HUDSON — The Historic Robert Jenkins House, 113 Warren St., Hudson, holds the first of this year’s tour days 1-4 p.m. March 25. The 1811 house, built by proprietor Robert Jenkins, is on the National Register of Historic Places as Nationally Significant and is in the Front Street-Parade Hill-Lower Warren Street Historic District. The house is a fine early example of federal-style architecture in the Hudson Valley where Dutch architecture dominated during the 18th century.

The house is maintained as a chapter house where routine business of the Hendrick Hudson Chapter, National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution takes place. Beginning in 1900 when the chapter received it as a gift, the house was the site of the city’s first and only free public library until 1959 when the Hudson Area Library was established. Now, an historical and genealogical library is open to the public, still free of charge. The house is arguably Hudson’s museum. In 1900, a broad invitation to contribute to the new museum was issued by the Columbia Republican, which, in a lengthy story about the house, said “donations of books, pictures, relics and curios will be most acceptable, in fact anything of merit which will adorn, beautify or be of use.” The resulting historic collections include artifacts, documents, furnishings, and fine art.