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A Mountaintop Retreat With an Artistic Air
 NY Times
September 9, 2005
By AMY GUTMAN

THE mountaintop hamlet of Cragsmoor clings to New York's Shawangunk Mountains, west of the Hudson River, as tenacious as the dwarf pitch pines native to its landscape. It's a community of winding roads, sweeping views and rustic shingle-style cottages, many built by members of the Cragsmoor Art Colony in the late 1800's. Taking stock in 1906, a local newspaper, The Cragsmoor Journal, found it a "harmonious community active-minded and deeply interested in the best art, literature, drama and music." The harmony survives. Cragsmoor, which has fewer than 500 full-time residents and perhaps half that many part-timers, is a welcoming and generally tolerant place. "There's one of everything here," said Sally H. Matz, president of the Cragsmoor Historical Society. Her family's ties to the community go back several generations.

Bob Shulman arrived 17 years ago with a ponytail and tattoo. "I'd never seen so many straight people," said Mr. Shulman, who works as a grip on films and commercials and now splits his time between Cragsmoor and the Vinegar Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn, But despite his reservations, he succumbed to the lure of Cragsmoor's natural beauty, paying $200,000 in 1988 for Winahdin, a five-bedroom shingle-style house with mountain views that was built by the American Impressionist Charles Curran, and soon found himself becoming part of the community. Only a few years later, he was the host of Bird Cage, a library fund-raiser (patrons drop donations through the bars of a decorative bird cage) first held in the 1950's.

Cragsmoor is no longer the bargain it once was. In the last five years, housing prices have edged ever closer to those in Woodstock and New Paltz, said Carolyn Peters-Baker of R. J. Smith Realty in neighboring Ellenville. But newcomers are still drawn to the seclusion and striking landscapes. After searching in several upstate New York counties, Matthew Franks, a lawyer, and his wife, Norene Franks, who live on the West Side of Manhattan bought a three-bedroom house in Cragsmoor last year for $336,000. "Nothing could beat the view and the space," Mr. Franks said.

The Scene
As the only residential community on the Shawangunk Ridge, Cragsmoor, a hamlet of roughly four square miles, is in many ways a world unto itself. The two rural roads that lead there also end there; no one is ever just passing through. Cragsmoor's center consists of little more than the small but well-stocked Free Library and a post office. The absence of shops and restaurants fosters a strong social network. Informal parties, barbecues and community fund-raisers follow one another in a continual round. "The community has to provide for its own togetherness," said Victoria Drake, a Manhattan-based freelance harpist who, with her partner, Lonnie Coplen, is doing a "labor-intensive renovation" of an old kit house in Cragsmoor.

The library, the Historical Society and the Volunteer Fire Company all thrive on volunteer support from locals and weekenders. In the heyday of the art colony, women strolled the roads with glowing lanterns, paying evening visits to friends. Such scenes are easy to picture, thanks to the preservation of many period structures. Cragsmoor's homes range from year-round Federal houses to summer-only shingle-style Victorian, Craftsman and Colonial Revival houses. The Chapel of the Holy Name, built in the 1890's and popularly known as the Stone Church, is lovingly maintained, and another church building, the old Cragsmoor Federated Church, is now home to the Cragsmoor Historical Society. In 1996, the Cragsmoor Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Several Cragsmoor buildings - including the Free Library, the Stone Church, and Mr. Shulman's Winahdin -were designed by Frederick Dellenbaugh, an explorer and painter who was one of the art colony's founding members.

Pros
Sam's Point Preserve, a ruggedly beautiful tract of 4,700 acres, acquired by the Open Space Institute and managed by the Nature Conservancy, has trails, a small glacial lake and magnificent views of the surrounding region from Sam's Point, a precipice from which Samuel Gonsalus, a trapper and fur trader, is said to have leapt in 1758, having been chased by people of the Lenape tribe. A thicket of hemlock trees cushioned the fall, legend has it, and he lived for another 60 years.

Ruth Diem, the senior president for human resources of the Hearst Magazines, and her husband, Jeff Slade, are among many year-round visitors to the preserve, using it for cross-country skiing, hiking and picking blueberries or cranberries.

Ms. Diem and Mr. Slade see Cragsmoor's sense of community as another distinctive asset. "Like a lot of people, we came looking for an old house within easy distance of the city," said Mr. Slade, a recently retired lawyer. "What we didn't know - and what's important - is that there's this incredibly open and welcoming community."

A smaller preserve, Bear Hill, is also in town. And Cragsmoor is also renowned for hang gliding. Lessons are offered by Mountain Wings, a training school based in Ellenville.

Cons
Cragsmoor's isolation can prove problematic in winter, when high winds and ice storms create treacherous driving conditions and cause electrical power failures.
Getting the paper or a half gallon of milk means at least a 15-minute drive down the mountain to Ellenville. Pine Bush, home to a supermarket where many Cragsmoor residents shop, is almost half an hour away.
In summer, black flies are an irritant, causing some residents to wear netted hats.
Except for road repair and snow plowing, the hamlet offers few public services. There is no public garbage collection.

The Real Estate Market
Because Cragsmoor is so small that there are rarely more than half a dozen houses on the market at any one time, prospective buyers may have to wait for a suitable property. The entry point for a three-bedroom house in good condition is somewhere "in the mid-$200,000's," Ms. Peters-Baker said. The median sale price for houses from January 2004 through March 2005 was $194,000. Sellers, like buyers, may have to wait for a match. A three-bedroom house in need of some work, on about four acres, was on the market for about five months before being sold in June for $243,500, reduced from $259,000; an 1889 three-bedroom house with Shawangunk Ridge views, on two-thirds of an acre, sold for $285,000, down from the asking price of $299,000 last April after more than three months on the market.

For those unwilling to search for the right house, open land can be found for building. On the market this week was an 18.7-acre parcel bordering Sam's Point Preserve, restricted by deed to a single home, listed with R .J. Smith Realty at $299,000.

www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/realestate/09haven.html