Catskill Walking Tour

Catskill Walking Tour. Harrison Street. Although Dutch colonization along Catskill began in 1649 with the purchase of land from the Algonkins, the wooded hillside east of the village was not extensively developed until the middle of the 19th century. James Powers, whose Greek Revival mansion on Prospect Avenue is site #23 on your walking tour, purchased substantial tracts of land that by the 1830s extended from the Hudson River to Broad Street, from William Street to Harrison Street, where you are standing now. Orange Street, eventually renamed Prospect Avenue, and Harrison. Street were laid out in 1840-41., On the hill behind you was the elegant Prospect Park Hotel which advertised "the finest and most varied scenery of any house in America", "views of five states" and "salubrious mountain air" despite being eleven miles from the Catskill Mountains. Built in 1873, this "pioneer among modern summer hostelries" where "wealth and fashion long held sway" was purchased by the Franciscans in 1908, burned to the ground in 1914 and is now the site of St Anthony's Friary., Prospect Avenuc today is the spine of the East Side Historic District, an extensive neighborhood that contains many rare survivors of textbook perfect American vernacular architecture dating from the late 18th cthrough the early 20th centuries. - Richard N. Philip, Village Historian, 2007, [Captions:] , - Prospect Avenue , - Prospect House Hotel, showing Lover’s Lane , - Catskills and Powers House