Historian looks for Catskill’s lost past
The Daily Mail
June 26, 2009

Catskill attorney Ted Hilscher will return to the Beattie-Powers House Sunday at 2 p.m. to offer visitors a look at Catskill’s past.

Hilscher’s slide show and commentary, titled “Lost Catskill,” will focus on the Catskill Creek and Eastern Paving Brick Company buildings and two gas holder plants along Water Street.
“It was unbelievable, the traffic at the creek frontage,” he said.

Hilscher said bricks made in Catskill have been used in roads and walkways as far away as Savannah, Ga.

Gas holder plants, he believes, were powered by coal and used to pump gas to Catskill homes and buildings before electricity was used.

Hilscher teaches at Columbia Greene Community College and is a former Catskill Village trustee and Catskill Village Attorney.

He is the author of many articles on local history, including “The Parking Lots of Main Street, Catskill,” a study of the impact of the automobile on small-town America, published by Marist College in the Hudson River Valley Review.

Other lectures Hilscher has given include one about the Hudson River School at Columbia-Greene Community College and a look at Hudson Valley barns.

This Sunday’s slide show is part of a larger recognition of the Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial at the Beatie-Powers House.

An exhibit of photographs, maps and illustrations depicting 150 years of a changing Catskill landscape along Catskill Creek and the Hudson River runs through July 5.

The collection showcases 50 images that show factories and bridges that have long since been demolished, the many touring boats and barges that visited Catskill each day and even the the Catskill Point as an island at high tide.

Items in the collection were donated by the Greene County Historical Society, Robert Carl, Catskill Town Historian Richard Philp and Bell’s Cafe.

The exhibit is curated by Philp and Friends of Beattie-Powers House President Robert Hoven. It is sponsored by the Bank of Greene County, Athens Generating Company and through a New York State Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Quadricentennial grant with the Town of Catskill.

Visitors can view the exhibit from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday as well as next week.