Partner at the Globe Slicing

Cold Spring’s pretty.  I wasn’t sure if I was in Cold Spring.  When I left the place we were visiting I drove through the hamlets of “Nelsonville” and “Philipstown” to get to the Cold Spring I’d always known down by the river.  There we dropped my stepson and his girlfriend off at the Metro North station.  That was the Cold Spring I’d remembered.

We’d spent the day at my sister’s new place.  She has a home now in the Valhalla Highlands Historic District.  This is not in Valhalla New York.  That’s sixty minutes down river.  Valhalla Highlands is in Cold Spring, somehow.  We know this to be true because whatever the signposts say, Cold Spring is where my sister pays her taxes.  The community was created by Ludwig Novoting (which Google rendered as “no voting”) and his partner at the Globe Slicing Company, Peter Sivertsen in the year 1925.  They had set out to create a nostalgic Nordic community of rustic cabins that people could live in for the warmer months. 

My sister has what appears to be the first spot in on the right past the modest gate demarcating the place.  Great porch around the place, a lovely new kitchen, they’re gonna have a lot of fun here, it’s clear.  The centerpiece of the community is the lake that’s up over the bluff, beneath the towering Scofield Ridge.  We went walking first up to a more modest promontory that looks down over Route 9.  At the summit is a plaque that describes the history of the community. 

Lake Valhalla itself is an “L” shape body of water just under a mile long, nestled beneath the big ridge.  We saw the Valkyrie house and the “Elfin” house and waved at more than a few neighbors as we made our way through.  The water wasn’t cold enough to walk out on the ice, but it was clear that it would be quite a bit of fun in the summer.  And while there were some houses on the water on the eastern shore it was clear someone had mercifully prohibited the build out on the vast tracts of land on the other shore, leaving it wooded and evocative and unspoiled in a way that would have helped Lake George or Lake Tahoe. 

It’s been a long time since I’ve fished for anything and longer still since I caught anything.  But certainly I could see coming back here in the summer to take my nephew out in search of bass on this lake or to give a try at the rope swing with my daughters.  I suppose my sister had better consider an addition to accommodate us all.  I hope she’s allowed to pursue this.  Three years ago in 2014, the community was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as the district was “essentially unchanged from its time of origin.”  We’ll have to see how much room she is afforded within the adverb “essentially.”