NEW YORK, NY — December 17, 2009 — The Open Space Institute has acquired a strategic 62-acre parcel that lies directly adjacent to Lindenwald, the historic Columbia County home and estate of Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States.
Sitting just beyond the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site’s boundaries, the property had been highly regarded for protection by the National Park Service, as it adjoins Lindenwald and lies entirely within its viewshed. It is also nearby the Luykas Van Alen House, a restored 18th-century homestead and museum depicting Dutch rural life in colonial America.
“This agricultural land occupies the beginning of a key vantage point from the historic core of Lindenwald that extents to the north of the site, across Kinderhook Creek to the village of Kinderhook,” said Dan Dattilio, superintendent of the Martin Van Buren National Historic Site. “Views of open agricultural lands like these are considered resources related to the site’s historic setting and are important components of the visitor experience.”
The parcel was acquired by OSI’s land acquisition affiliate, the Open Space Conservancy.
Acquisition of the property, currently being farmed for hay and corn, and mixed with fields of lush, green grasses and woodlands, also secures one of the only remaining unprotected parcels within a several-mile corridor alongside picturesque Kinderhook Creek. Working with Kinderhook officials over the course of the last decade, OSI has helped protect and expand the scenic, recreational, agricultural, and historically significant corridor that surrounds the creek as it winds through the village of Kinderhook and on to Stuyvesant.
“This is a corridor that is full of historically significant properties, all linked together by the Kinderhook Creek,” said OSI President Joe Martens. “OSI’s goal has been to maintain the agricultural character of the landscape, as it was in Martin Van Buren’s time.”
In the last 10 years, the organization has conserved approximately 800 acres in the immediate vicinity of Lindenwald, and has provided a home for Roxbury Farm, which cultivates 225 acres of farmland, wetlands, and woods beside Kinderhook Creek. With more than 1,000 members in the Capital Region and New York City, Roxbury operates New York’s largest Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.