John Vanderlyn paintings in the Senate House museum gallery.
A new permanent exhibit will be unveiled at the season’s opening of the Senate House State Historic Site in Kingston on Saturday April 8 from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. “Kingston’s Stockade: New Netherlands’ Third City” is the first major change in exhibitry in the main building at the site in many years. It will interpret the earliest period of colonial settlement in the city, the so-called Stockade era.
Governor Pieter Stuyvesant ordered the building of the original stockade in the spring of 1658.Ulster County clerk Nina Postupack’s office has loaned Stuyvesant’s original order, stored in the county Hall of Records, for the unveiling of the new exhibit. Other 17th-century documents and objects including Native-American artifacts, farming implements and actual pieces of the stockade will also be on display. Artist Len Tantillo has painted a view of what the area may have looked like at that time.
Touchscreens will give visitors an opportunity to investigate the new exhibit further. The state-run facility at 296 Fair Street will be open starting Wednesday, April 19 Wednesday through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m.
The Senate House State Historic Site is one of 28 facilities administered by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission in New York and New Jersey. For information, call the site at 338-2786 or visit the state parks website.