The Kearney House
Information on this page current as of January 12, 2012At the Alpine Picnic Area directions
Open May through October on weekend & holiday afternoons, 12–5 pm, and for special events.
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The Kearney House
Kearney House brochure (2 pages, .pdf file)
Above: The Kearney House, looking pretty during “Punch & Pie at Mrs. Kearney’s Tavern,” a re-creation of a nineteenth-century Hudson River tavern. (Click here to see more “tavern” pictures.)Listed on the National and New Jersey State Historic Registers as the “Blackledge-Kearney House”—but more familiarly known as the “Kearney House” or the “Cornwallis Headquarters” (it was once thought that the British general had stayed here in 1776)—this house has been a Hudson River homestead, a riverfront tavern, a Park police station, and a “historic shrine.” Today it helps bring to life two centuries in the story of the Hudson River and the families who depended upon it for their lives and livelihoods.
The Kearney House has been preserved by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission with the ongoing assistance of the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs.
The southern part of the house was built first, probably after 1761, when the colonists of the farming settlement called Closter, on the other side of the Palisades, built a road (the “Closter Dock Road”) through a pass in the cliffs down to the Hudson River. This allowed them to ship their farm goods to New York City’s markets by sailboat.
The house may have been built to be a dock master’s house, to supervise the busy river landing 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 would have five more of their own before James died in 1831. Rachel also adopted a daughter— for a total of at least nine children she brought up in this house. Widowed a second time, and with young children in her care, Rachel began to keep a tavern at her house.
The northern addition was
probably built around the 1840s to make room for the tavern. Besides offering food and spirits, taverns played an important role in nineteenth-century life. Mrs. Kearney’s tavern would have served as a meeting place for the captains and crews of the sailing vessels that arrived and departed daily from Closter Landing, 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 enlarged the porch to serve as a grandstand for a dedication ceremony for the new park.
Through the 1920s, the Park Commission used the house as a police station.
See also:
“On His Lordship’s Mysterious Ascent”
“Some Paint, Some Mortar, a Couple of Mops and a Bucket of Water”
“Making a (Historic) House into a Home”
“Beyond the Reach of Devastation”
Video: R.J. Bogumil. “Madison’s Whim” courtesy of Hesperus.
Staff
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.
2012 Area Information & Fee Schedule (.pdf file, 4 pages)
