Rhinecliff, New York is easy to miss. This small Hudson River hamlet sits on a bluff in the town of Rhinebeck, and the 2020 census counted just 380 residents. But Rhinecliff has drawn more than its share of famous people. Vice presidents, Gilded Age millionaires, celebrated novelists, and modern artists have all lived, visited, or married near this quiet corner of the Hudson Valley.
Here are the most notable figures in Rhinecliff history, and why this tiny riverside community has attracted them for more than three centuries.
The Kip Family: Rhinecliff’s Founders
Rhinecliff’s story begins with Dutch settlers. Europeans founded the settlement in 1686 as Kipsbergen, and its founders included Hendrikus and Jacobus Kip, who crossed over from Kingston on the Hudson’s western bank. The group bought roughly 2,200 acres, including four miles of river frontage, from three members of the local Sepasco tribe.
The Kips left a physical mark that survives today. The Kip-Beekman-Heermance Site contains the ruins of a house built around 1700 by patentee Hendrick Kip, which later belonged to Col. Henry Beekman Jr. and then his grandson, Col. Henry Brockholst Livingston. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Levi P. Morton: Vice President and Governor
The most prominent resident in Rhinecliff history is Levi Parsons Morton. Morton served as Benjamin Harrison’s Vice President from 1889 to 1893 and as Governor of New York from 1895 to 1897.
Morton bought Ellerslie, a grand estate near Rhinecliff on the Hudson’s eastern bank, in 1887, and it became the center of his family’s life in the valley. The mansion was designed by celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt in 1886–1887. Morton even wrote official letters from there: an 1892 letter he signed as Vice President carries the address “Ellerslie, Rhinecliff-on-Hudson”.
Morton had an extraordinary career before settling in the Hudson Valley. As U.S. Minister to France, he drove the ceremonial first rivet into the Statue of Liberty in 1881, and in 1884 he accepted the statue and became the first American to climb to its top. He remained devoted to his riverside home for the rest of his life. Morton died of pneumonia on his 96th birthday in 1920 and was buried at Rhinebeck Cemetery.
Morton’s wife, Anna Livingston Reade Morton, has her own place in history. She served as Second Lady of the United States from 1889 to 1893 and as First Lady of New York, and she died in Rhinecliff in 1918.
The couple’s most lasting gift to the hamlet is still open today. The Mortons built the Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff in memory of their daughter Lena, and it was dedicated in 1908. Ellerslie’s manor house is gone, but the library has outlived the estate and continues to serve Rhinecliff residents. If you visit Rhinecliff today, the library on Kelly Street is the best place to connect with the Morton legacy.
The Astor Family
No family defined Hudson Valley wealth quite like the Astors, and they were Rhinecliff neighbors for generations. The riverfront around Rhinecliff is lined with large estates, many built in the mid-1800s by prominent New Yorkers such as William B. Astor, and these estates provided seasonal work for Rhinecliff residents.
The family’s seat was Ferncliff. John Jacob Astor IV built Astor Courts as a guest house and sporting pavilion for Ferncliff, whose main house dated to the 1850s. Famed architect Stanford White designed it, modeling the Beaux-Arts building on the Grand Trianon at Versailles, and it was one of his last projects before his murder in 1906. John Jacob Astor IV himself is remembered as one of the wealthiest men to die aboard the Titanic in 1912.
His son, Vincent Astor, carried the family’s Hudson Valley connection into the 20th century. The Museum of Rhinebeck History holds a photograph of Vincent Astor seeing off Franklin D. Roosevelt as the President boarded Astor’s private yacht, which FDR used more than once. Wikipedia lists Vincent Astor among the notables associated with Rhinecliff.
Edith Wharton
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edith Wharton knew the Rhinecliff area as a girl. The nearby Wyndcliffe mansion was built in 1853 as a weekend and summer home for New York City socialite Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, who was Wharton’s aunt.
According to biographer Louis Auchincloss, Wharton often visited as a child and later portrayed Wyndcliffe as “The Willows” in her novel Hudson River Bracketed. For literary travelers, Wyndcliffe’s romantic ruins offer a glimpse of the Gilded Age society Wharton spent her career dissecting.
The Suckleys
Just outside Rhinecliff stands Wilderstein, the riverside home of the Suckley family for three generations. Thomas Suckley and his wife, Catherine Murray Bowne, built the house in 1852, naming it Wilderstein after an old Native American petroglyph they found on the grounds; in 1888 their son Robert expanded it into a Victorian mansion with a third floor, a gabled attic, and a five-story round tower. The family’s most famous member was Robert’s daughter, Margaret “Daisy” Suckley, a sixth cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although Wilderstein lay less than a dozen miles from FDR’s Hyde Park estate, the two did not meet until 1922, when his mother, Sara, invited Daisy to visit while he recovered from polio.
Freeborn Garrettson and the Livingston Legacy
Religious history also runs through Rhinecliff. The Wildercliff estate was home to noted Methodist circuit rider Freeborn Garrettson and his wife, Catherine Livingston, of the Clermont Livingstons. The Garrettsons were famous for opening their home to traveling preachers. Part of their land had a notable second life: portions of the property later became part of Levi P. Morton’s Ellerslie estate.
Chelsea Clinton’s Rhinecliff-Area Wedding
In 2010, the world’s attention turned to the Rhinecliff area. Chelsea Clinton married Marc Mezvinsky at Astor Courts in 2010, in a ceremony held on July 31. Former President Bill Clinton walked his daughter down the aisle, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in attendance.
Rhinecliff was the natural gateway for visitors. Amtrak trains run directly from New York’s Penn Station to Rhinecliff, about five minutes by car from Astor Courts, and the historic estate sits on the Hudson near the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge.
Modern Artists: Natalie Merchant and Annie Leibovitz
Rhinecliff’s pull on creative people continues today. Singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant and photographer Annie Leibovitz are among the notables linked to the area. Merchant, the former lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs, and Leibovitz, one of America’s most famous portrait photographers, reflect the Hudson Valley’s modern reputation as a retreat for artists seeking quiet, beauty, and easy access to New York City.
Why Famous People Keep Coming to Rhinecliff
Rhinecliff’s appeal has always come down to location. Its bluff offers sweeping Hudson River views, and its riverfront setting made it a transportation hub from the very beginning. That tradition continues with the hamlet’s Amtrak station, which offers service to New York City, Albany, Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, and other cities.
The hamlet also has its own landmarks. The Rhinecliff Hotel opened around 1855, and the local post office took the name Rhinecliff in 1861.
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