New!
Experience
Red Hook’s
Historic Tavern
Explore the Elmendorph Inn through an immersive soundscape, hands-on activities, reproduction objects, and stories of the people who gathered here.
Free Admission | Drop In During Open Hours
📍7562 N. Broadway, Red Hook, NY 12571 (map)
Open Hours
The new exhibit launches on Saturday, September 19, with an open house from 10 AM to 4 PM during the Village of Red Hook’s autumn Hardscrabble Day Festival.
September
Saturday, Sept. 19 · 10 AM–4 PM
Thursday, Sept. 24 · 10 AM–2 PM
Saturday, Sept. 26 · 10 AM–4 PM
October
Thursday, Oct. 8 · 2–6 PM
Sunday, Oct. 11 · 11 AM–3 PM
Friday, Oct. 16 · 11 AM–3 PM
What You’ll Experience
Hear the Inn Come Alive
Listen in on a day at a busy post road tavern—from food service, music, horses, and carriages to conversations about daily life and news.
Gather Around the Table
Table Topics prompt conversations about traveling the Post Road, exchanging news, sharing food and drink, and exploring the tavern’s unwritten rules.
Make, Play, and Explore
Try your hand at historic tavern games, then blend a sachet of mixed teas and spices to take home for brewing iced tea or punch.
Getting Here
The Elmendorph Inn is located at 7562 North Broadway in the Village of Red Hook (map).
Free and accessible parking is available behind the Inn, on Cherry Street.
When you arrive, follow the signs from the parking area to the visitor entrance. For accessibility questions or assistance planning your visit, contact info@historicredhook.org or 845-758-1920.
About the Inn
The Elmendorph Inn has been a fixture of the community since the late eighteenth century, serving over time as a farmhouse, stagecoach stop, tavern, residence, kindergarten, and gathering place. Today, it remains a hub for public history programs and community events—lovingly preserved and interpreted by Historic Red Hook. Visitors are invited to explore its historic interiors and discover the many lives this landmark has lived.
Inn History
Sometime about 1760, an early, unknown settler to Red Hook built a simple farmhouse. In 1783, it was on the market:
FOR SALE "...an ELEGANT HOUSE either for a store-keeper or tavern on the public road to Albany..."- New York Packet 1783
By 1785, it was an inn that served as a popular stopover on the four-day stagecoach run between New York City and Albany. Mail was delivered, horses changed and passengers refreshed as townspeople, farmers and travelers relaxed in convivial fellowship. In 1796, the owner, George Sharp, son of a Palatine leader from the original settlement at East Camp (modern Germantown), sold the inn to Cornelius Elmendorph, the current building's namesake.
Upon Red Hook’s official incorporation in 1812, The Elmendorph began to host town meetings and local courts of law. In 1817, the first Dutchess and Columbia Country Agricultural Fair - now the enormously popular Dutchess County Fair - occupied the grounds.
With traffic along the Post Road dwindling in the face of faster travel by steamboat and railroad along the Hudson River, the Inn became a two-family home in 1854. Successively over the next century, it housed the area’s first kindergarten (1887-94), then a country store, antique shop, and gas station, before being abandoned in the 1960s and threatened with demolition in the 1970s. The Friends of Elmendorph, Inc. purchased the Inn in 1977. A year later, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Careful restoration and maintenance continue with generous support from the Red Hook community.
Matterport 3D Tour provided by Coldwell Banker Village Green Realty, Dutchess County Real Estate in Red Hook