The Kearney House
Information on this page current as of January 03, 2009
At the Alpine Picnic Area (directions)
Open May–October on weekend & holiday afternoons.
Also open for special events and by appointment.
Above: The Kearney House, looking pretty during "Punch & Pie at Mrs. Kearney's Tavern," a recreation of a nineteenth-century Hudson River tavern. (Click here to see more "tavern" pictures.)
Above: Click on the play arrow w to view our 45-second video, "Stoking the Kearney House Hearth." ("Madison's Whim" courtesy of Hesperus. Video: R.J. Bogumil.)
…click here to see more Kearney House videos…
Listed on the National and New Jersey State Historic Registers as the “Blackledge–Kearney House”—but more familiarly known as the “Kearney House” and formerly as the “Cornwallis Headquarters”—this house is the oldest building in the New Jersey Section of the Palisades Interstate Park. The house has been a Hudson River homestead, a riverfront tavern, a Park police station, and a “historic shrine.” Today it helps bring to life over two centuries of the story of the Hudson River and the women and men who depended upon it for their lives and livelihoods.
We hope you enjoy your visit to the Kearney House. Our docents are on hand to help answer any questions you may have.
See also "Some Paint, Some Mortar, a Couple of Mops and a Bucket of Water" and "On His Lordship's Mysterious Ascent."
The southern part of the house is the original structure, probably built around 1761. In that year, the colonists of the farming settlement called Closter, on the other side of the Palisades, built a road (the “Closter Dock Road”) through a mountain pass to the Hudson River. This road provided easier access to the river—and to New York City’s markets to sell their farm goods. The house may have been built as a dock master’s house, so that the busy Closter Landing could be supervised at harvest time.
In 1817, James and Rachel Kearney moved into this house. They had three children from Rachel’s first marriage (her first husband had died two years earlier), and they went on to have five more of their own. After James died in 1831, Rachel adopted a daughter—for a total of nine children she brought up in this house. Now widowed a second time and still with young children in her care, Rachel began running a tavern at the house.
The northern addition was probably added on in the late 1830s or early 1840s to make room for the tavern. Besides offering food and spirits, taverns played an important social role in nineteenth-century life. Rachel Kearney’s tavern would have served as a meeting place for the crews of the sailing vessels that arrived and departed daily from the Closter Dock, as well as for the local workforce of quarrymen, dock workers, and tradesmen. Gossip, strongly argued political opinions, the latest joke—all would have been shared within these walls.
The upstairs door in the new addition may have been for lodgers at the tavern, giving them their own entrance to a room separate from the family’s space. The Palisades Interstate Park acquired the house in 1907, and in 1909 extended the porch to serve as a grandstand for a dedication ceremony for the new Park. During the next two decades, the Park used the house as a police station.
Our video, A New Deal for the Palisades, featuring rare footage of the Palisades from the 1930s and 40s, is now also available on DVD—click here for details.
Some of our favorite articles from Cliff Notes, the bimonthly visitor's letter edited by the staff of the Kearney House since 1998, are available here.
...click here to find out about our popular lecture programs...
Kearney House
Office at Park Headquarters, second floor
Tel: 201 768-1360 ext. 108
Eric Nelsen
Director / Historical Interpreter
Email address: enelsen*Lindsey Foschini
Historical InterpreterVeronica Sison
Historical InterpreterJennette Zitelli
Historical Interpreter*Staff email addresses (when available) = first initial + last name (no spaces, no periods) "at" njpalisades.org
Kearney House Videos
by R. J. Bogumil
Click on the play arrow w to view our 5-minute video, "A Traditional Kearney House Thanksgiving with Thaddeus MacGregor."
Click on the play arrow
w to view
our
5-˝-minute video, "Kearney House Recreation."