Gathering at the River

On Saturday, Joan Davidson invited some people to gather on the banks of the Hudson River at Midwood to celebrate the restoration of two century-old icons. The first icon is an agricultural corn crib that was moved from nearby Southwood to its current location on the river's edge at Midwood and is being re-imagined as a boathouse. The second icon is the S.S. Columbia, a National Historic Landmark vessel and America's oldest surviving passenger steamer.

Built in 1902, Columbia is the oldest and grandest of only two surviving examples of the collaboration of two key figures during the Golden Age of Steam: naval architect Frank Kirby and painter/designer Louis O. Keil. Kirby developed an international reputation as an engineering innovator. Keil led a workshop of artists and artisans who worked to make the steamboats palatial and aesthetically pleasing. Over thirty years of working together, Kirby and Keil created some of the great Hudson River Day Line steamboats: Hendrick Hudson, Washington Irving, and Robert Fulton. Although the S.S. Columbia originally sailed on the Great Lakes, it has a connection to the Hudson River, and the plan is to bring Columbia to New York to be fully restored and put into service on the Hudson River, carrying passengers from New York City to communities along the river.

On September 18, Columbia was moved from the Rouge River in Detroit, where it had been moored for more than a decade, to a shipyard in Toledo, where it is now in dry dock and where work has begun on the hull. 

It is anticipated that Columbia will make the journey to New York in August 2015, traveling in tow from the Great Lakes through the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean, then down the East Coast to New York Harbor and on up the Hudson River to Kingston, where the restoration will continue. 

Hudson needs to get ready for the revival of historic water transportation on the Hudson in order not to miss the boat on this important initiative to promote heritage tourism.

The photographs of Columbia en route to Toledo and in dry dock are from the blog at www.sscolumbia.org, where you can follow the process of the project. The historic photograph shows the Alexander Hamilton at the Hudson waterfront.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CAROLE OSTERINK