Historic sites

VAN CORTLANDT House Museum, located off Broadway at West 246th Street, will host “Christmastide in the Colonies,” a special historic holiday event, on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 19 and 20, from 4 to 7 p.m. on each day. For this two-day program, the mansion will be decorated in an 18th-century style and bathed in the glow of candlelight, while tour guides — dressed in appropriate colonial attire — will lead guests through the halls and discuss the origins of winter holiday traditions and legends. The entrance fee is $10 for adults and $5 for children. Advance reservations are strongly recommended. For more information or to make reservations, call 718-543-3344.

HISTORIC HUDSON Valley will hold special holiday events at two of its properties during the month of December:

• Sunnyside, the former home of Washington Irving, located at 89 West Sunnyside Lane in Tarrytown, N.Y., will hold Candlelight Tours on Saturdays, Dec. 19 and 26, from 4 to 8 p.m. each evening. Visitors can experience Christmas circa 1850, as they are escorted down a lantern-lit path and through the house, which will be decorated with holly, evergreens and candles. There will be readings of excerpts from Irving’s Christmas tales and family letters, as well as participatory caroling. Finally, guests can enjoy complimentary hot cider beside a roaring fire while listening to choir performances of traditional holiday songs.
• Van Cortlandt Manor, 525 South Riverside Ave., in Croton-on- Hudson, NY, will hold its own Candlelight Tours on Saturdays, Dec. 19 and 26, from 4 to 8 p.m. each night. Guides carrying candlelit lanterns will lead visitors on tours of the decorated Manor House and present a first-person account of a colonial-style “Twelfth Night” celebration. During the tour, guests will see Van Cortlandt family china and 18th-century desserts in the dining room, hear live harp music performed in the parlor and then stroll through the orchard to meet the “Lord of Misrule” in the tenant house. Each tour will end with a celebration at the Ferry House, where guests can dance to fiddle music, sit by a bonfire and toast the season with cider and cookies.

TICKET PRICES for both events are $14 for adults, $6 for children ages 5 to 17 and free for ages 4 and younger. Timed reservations are required and must be made in advance at www.hudsonvalley.org or by calling 914-631-8200.

BERNIE’S NEW York presents “Retail Palaces of a Bygone Era,” a special Christmas Day walking tour of Manhattan’s Flatiron District and Ladies’ Mile, on Friday, Dec. 25, at 2 p.m. During this event, participants will explore the area where people went to shop for Christmas and Hanukkah presents during the late 1800s. Highlights of the tour include stops at the former department store buildings of Lord & Taylor, Stern Brothers, B. Altman and Siegel Cooper, as well as the Flatiron Building, a 19thcentury Jewish Sephardic cemetery and more. There is a fee of $15 per person, but reservations are not required. Participants should meet on the southwest corner of Sixth Avenue and West 18th Street. For more information, call 718-655-1883.

This is part of the December 17, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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