Catskill Mountain House overlook
— — the porch the mountain remembers.
Not only on a wall.
“The flat rock ledge above the Hudson Valley where a thirteen-column Greek Revival hotel stood for one hundred and forty years. The Mountain House came down in 1963 by order of the state, but the view it was built for has not moved. Pine Orchard, the locals call it. On clear mornings the river shows seventy miles south and the Berkshires sit blue on the far shore.
Catskill Mountain House overlook, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pine Orchard is a ledge on the eastern Catskill escarpment in Greene County, New York, about 2,250 feet above the Hudson River. From 1824 to 1942 the Catskill Mountain House sat on the ledge; Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and the Hudson River School painters used its porch as a viewing platform. The hotel closed during the Second World War, declined through two decades of vacancy, and in January 1963 the New York State Conservation Department burned the remaining structure. The site is now part of North-South Lake Campground in the Catskill Forest Preserve.
The overlook is reached by a short, level walk from the North-South Lake day-use area, the most visited campground in the Catskill Forest Preserve. New York State Parks charges a vehicle day-use fee in season. The Escarpment Trail continues north past Sunset Rock and South Mountain toward Acra Point. The closest village is Haines Falls; Kaaterskill Falls, painted by Thomas Cole in 1826, lies a short drive south on Route 23A. The view runs from the Taconics in Massachusetts to the Shawangunk Ridge.
The mountain has its seasons. The valley below leafs out in early May; the foliage on the escarpment turns the first week of October, a week ahead of the valley floor. The original Mountain House was a winter destination too — sleighs ran up from the river landings at Catskill village, and guests came for the ice on North-South Lake. The trail freezes hard in January and is one of the better cross-country lines in the eastern Catskills. Black bears feed in the blueberries on the ledge in August.