The best collection of house museums anywhere in the US is closer than you might think. This summer I finally squeezed in a week with friends to "do" the great estates of the Hudson River. My wife, Polly, and kids were off for a month visiting friends in France and the children have never been big fans of house museums anyway, so I figured this was my chance.

An anonymous c. 1870 Hudson River School oil on our living room wall has served for thirty years as my point of reference for the Hudson but I had never known the artist's vantage point until, by accident, stumbled on it at West Point. As we marveled at the spectacular view north up river from the Military Academy I realized that this was the very picture I had been looking at all these years!

While the Lorelei still sing from Rhinebeck north, the southern tier of the valley is quite another matter, (with notable exceptions like the National Trust's Lyndhurst at Tarrytown). North of Dutchess County, however, the Hudson is still a powerful unspoiled riverscape that meets high expectations:

Saratoga Springs, that grand spa and horse-racing capital offers a rich tapestry of Victorian architecture. We visited during the annual Yearling Sale and watched over $15 million worth of pricey horseflesh change hands in a single evening.

On the East Bank, Garrison-on-Hudson's Boscobel (1808), was rescued from a Westchester County wrecker's ball by Reader's Digest founder Lila Acheson Wallace in 1950. She had Boscobel reconstructed on a spectacular site with sweeping views southwest.

Springwood, the familiar Hyde Park home of FDR, is also the site of the Roosevelt Library. (Eleanor kept her own place Val Kil nearby.) The Regency facade we know from photos is, in fact, merely a face lift of the family's mid-19th-century Italianate cottage. What I didn't expect to find is that the rear of the house remains the original old clapboard Victorian house with bracketed eaves, tuscan-columned veranda, and latticework. Ah, the things we never see in tourist books.

Poughkeepsie's Locust Grove (1850), was the summer home of Samuel F.B. Morse, artist and Morse-code inventor. Although in serious need of repairs, the estate offers an authentic look at life in mid-century with original period finishes and furnishings. Further north at Hudson is fellow artist Frederick Church's Persian fantasy Olana (1876) presiding over an appropriately stupendous Hudson River view.

Of all the great Hudson estates we visited, my personal favorite was the exquisite Greek Revival Montgomery Place (1830) at Annandale-on-Hudson. Alexander Jackson Davis later reworked the house, adding an open veranda and other flourishes. With over 430 acres of elbow room, Montgomery Place captures the refined lifestyle of a vanished landed gentry, who with equal measure of sagacity and wealth tamed and enhanced the unique landscape of the Hudson River Valley. What a legacy.

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