Help us to Reopen the Hoyt Carriageway Bridge!
We invite you to join us in an effort to restore and reopen the Hoyt Carriageway historic truss bridge over the railroad tracks in Staatsburg for public use. Closed since 2015, the bridge will reestablish a connection along the Calvert Vaux-designed carriageway into Mills Norrie State Park and to The Point, Vaux’s creation for the Hoyt family in 1855. Vaux was one of America’s premier landscape architects, perhaps best known for his partnership with Frederic Law Olmsted in the design of Central Park in New York City.
Calvert Vaux Preservation Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and the official NY State Friends Group for The Point, received a Hudson River Valley Greenway Trails Grant ($13,000) to prepare a Historic Structure report as the first step in assessing and reopening the bridge.
In order to begin work, we must raise an additional $18,000 in support of the grant.
What would be gained by reopening this 1912 Warren truss bridge and providing people the opportunity to once again approach The Point as Calvert Vaux intended? Perhaps Francis R. Kowsky, in his book Country, Park, and City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux, describes it best: “Following this three-quarter-mile approach road today, one can still appreciate the care with which Vaux adapted its twistings and turnings to the singularity of the ground. Along this shady lane, we can almost hear Vaux reciting the words that he wrote on planning rural drives. ‘A single existing tree,’ he said, ‘ought often to be all-sufficient reason of slightly diverting the line of a road, so as to take advantage of its shade, instead of cutting it down and grubbing up its roots.’
Please join the Staatsburg/Hyde Park community by contributing to this grassroots effort to restore and reopen the bridge. This Historic Structure Report is Phase 1 of the project; Phase 2 will address the actual reconstruction process. Our goal is to have the bridge reopened for pedestrians and hikers by Memorial Day 2022.