Cold Spring, a not-so-hidden Hudson Valley gem

“Cold Spring, NY” depicts life in a notable Hudson River town with a rich history and much natural beauty.
Krista A. Briggs
“Cold Spring, NY” depicts life in a notable Hudson River town with a rich history and much natural beauty.
According to Alissa Malnati, co-creator of the new coffee table tome, “Cold Spring, NY”, after twenty-five years in the urban jungle, it was time to go in search of a cure for the angst which, for some, can come with metropolitan living. “My husband and I were soul sick,” explained Malnati of the couple’s move to Cold Spring, a Hudson River town located in leafy Putnam County. “We were seeking restoration and quiet, and to be in nature, away from the hustle and bustle of the city.”
The time was right for a move in 2021. The Malnatis relocated from busy Brooklyn to a tranquil mountaintop abode which allowed them to decompress without the intrusion of cell phones and ceaseless city noise. With the shift to the Hudson Valley, Alissa, a writer and fashion executive, and her husband, Will, a podcaster and television producer, found the peace they were searching for in Cold Spring, a semi-rural town known for its boutiques, antique shops, and world-class hiking trails.
While modern Cold Spring offers an array of unique independent retailers as well as specialty restaurants and coffeehouses, it is also a destination point for nature-lovers and an historical town.
Many of its current and decaying sites have been documented in “Cold Spring, NY”, coauthored and co-photographed by both Alissa and Will. It served as the home of the West Point Foundry – now enshrined as the West Point Foundry Preserve – which produced artillery for the U.S. government starting in 1818, and it also became known for its Parrott rifles during the Civil War. The town was once visited by Abraham Lincoln back in 1862. In 1970, as part of an effort to raise environmental awareness through the Clearwater Organization, Pete Seeger’s boat, the Clearwater, was once docked at Cold Spring during a music festival at which Seeger performed. Cold Spring remains actively committed to preserving its small-town character, its waters and historic sites. The Putnam History Museum is also located in Cold Spring.
“We never intended for it to be a book,” the couple explained of the process that came about very organically. “At first, it was just photographs that we framed, then photographs that became photo albums, and eventually we decided to print it into a coffee table book.”
Their collaboration proved to be a very positive one which brought them closer. “We loved working on this together and hope that we are able to do more as a duo,” Alissa said, noting that future shared projects along the same lines as “Cold Spring, NY” are already being explored by the couple.
“Cold Spring, NY”, which contains over one hundred pages of vivid black-and-white photography, highlights the town’s very active Main Street as well as its Hudson riverfront, local mountainous terrain, nearby woodland wonders, and sites of antiquated interest.
“There is much beauty in the town that no matter where we were, there was a photo to take.”
While the Malnatis captured as many historical and modern sites as possible for the book, there was an omission of a more recent occurrence. “There was one photo we didn’t take that haunts us to this day,” Alissa recounted. “There was a massive rainstorm in the summer of 2023 and the streets of Cold Spring were flooded. The stairs that take you underneath the railroad from Main St. were alsocompletely submerged in about ten feet of water that had accumulated below. It was like a scene from a movie, and, unfortunately, we were in such shock that we didn’t think to grab the photo.”
Among the photographs they were able to capture, Will Malnati’s preference is for the Bannerman Castle snaps on pages 23-24. Said Will, “The Bannerman Castle shots are a favorite – how much history it has and how beautiful it is up close. People don’t travel there very often or at all, so it was special to see it from the base of it. I also love the human portraits – so much character and love in each of them.” Alissa is most enthusiastic about the photo on page 31 titled “Optical Illusion”, saying, “You can flip the photo upside down and it would look the same, unless you are present with the photo and notice a small ripple in the water.“
The Cold Spring experience proved so refreshing for the Malnatis that while they eventually had to return to Brooklyn, they felt very strongly about leaving a parting gift for their adopted community in the form of the book. They’re also hoping they can eventually return to the community again someday on a more permanent basis. And while some Cold Spring residents prefer for the town to remain a hidden gem of the Hudson Valley, the Malnatis have a different take. Said Alissa, “Cold Spring is a special town and like anything special, it’s difficult for it to remain a secret for too long.”
SHARON — Sharon Dennis Rosen, 83, died on Aug. 8, 2025, in New York City.
Born and raised in Sharon, Connecticut, she grew up on her parents’ farm and attended Sharon Center School and Housatonic Valley Regional High School. She went on to study at Skidmore College before moving to New York City, where she married Dr. Harvey Rosen and together they raised two children.
Sharon’s lifelong love of learning and the arts shaped both her work and her passions. For decades, she served as a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and the Asia Society, sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm with countless visitors. She also delighted in traveling widely, immersing herself in other cultures, and especially treasured time spent visiting her daughter and grandsons in Europe and Africa.
She was also deeply connected to her hometown, where in retirement she spent half her time and had many friends. She served as President of the Sharon East Side Cemetery until the time of her death, where generations of her family are buried and where she will also be laid to rest.
She is survived by her husband, Harvey; her children, Jennifer and Marc; and four beloved grandchildren.
Claire and Garland Jeffreys in the film “The King of In Between.”
There is a scene in “The King of In Between,” a documentary about musician Garland Jeffreys, that shows his name as the answer to a question on the TV show “Jeopardy!”
“This moment was the film in a nutshell,” said Claire Jeffreys, the film’s producer and director, and Garland’s wife of 40 years. “Nobody knows the answer,” she continued. “So, you’re cool enough to be a Jeopardy question, but you’re still obscure enough that not one of the contestants even had a glimmer of the answer.”
Garland Jeffreys never quite became a household name, but he carved out a singular place in American music by refusing to fit neatly into any category. A biracial New Yorker blending rock, reggae, soul and R&B, he used genre fusion as a kind of rebellion — against industry pigeonholes, racial boundaries and the musical status quo. Albums like “Ghost Writer” (1977) captured the tension of a post–civil rights America, while songs like “Wild in the Streets” made him an underground prophet of urban unrest. He moved alongside artists like Lou Reed and Bruce Springsteen but always in his own lane — part poet, part agitator, part bridge between cultures.
“I think what I tried to do with the film, wittingly or unwittingly, was just to show that we all have these lives and they don’t often meet our dreams of what we think we’re entitled to, we’re talented enough to get or whatever,” said Claire. “We all have these goals, but we’re sort of stymied. Often, it’s partly circumstance and luck, but it’s also very often something that we’re doing or not doing that’s impeding us.”
This is not the typical rock-and-roll redemption story. There are no smashed guitars, no heroic overdoses, no dramatic comeback tour. What we get instead is something quieter and more intimate: hours of archival footage that Claire spent years sorting through. The sheer effort behind the film is palpable — so much so that, as she admitted with a laugh, it cured her of any future ambitions in filmmaking.
“What I learned with this project was A, I’m never doing it again. It was just so hard. And B, you know, you can do anything if you collaborate with people that know what they’re doing.”
Claire worked with the editing team of Evan M. Johnson and Ben Sozanski and a slew of talented producers, and ended up with a truthful portrayal — a beautiful living document for Garland’s legions of fans and, perhaps most importantly, for the couple’s daughter, Savannah.
“She’s been in the audience with me maybe three or four times,” said Claire. “The last time, I could tell that she was beginning to feel very proud of the effort that went into it and also of being a part of it.”
Savannah pursued a career in music for a while herself but has changed tracks and become a video producer.
“I think she couldn’t quite see music happening for herself,” said Claire. “She was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to struggle the way I saw my dad struggling and I’m going to get a job with a salary.’”
The film doesn’t just track the arc of an underappreciated musician, however. The music, always playing, is the soundtrack of a life — of a man navigating racial, musical and personal boundaries while balancing marriage, parenthood, aging, addiction andrecovery. Garland and Claire speak plainly about getting sober in the film, a life choice that gave them both clarity and shows Claire as a co-conspirator in his survival.
“I did some work early on with a director,” said Claire. “He wanted the final cut, and I didn’t feel like I could do that — not because I wanted so much to control the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Alzheimer’s.”
Diagnosed in 2017, Garland, now 81, is in the late stages of the disease. Claire serves as his primary caregiver. The film quietly acknowledges his diagnosis, but it doesn’t dwell — a restraint that feels intentional. Garland spent a career refusing to be reduced: not to one sound, one race or one scene. And so the documentary grants him that same dignity in aging. His memory may be slipping, but the film resists easy sentimentality. Instead, it shows what remains — his humor, his voice, his marriage, the echo of a life lived on the edges of fame and at the center of his own convictions.
The Moviehouse in Millerton will be screening “The King of In Between” on Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. Peter Aaron, arts editor of Chronogram Magazine will conduct a talkback and Q&A with Claire Jeffreys after the film. Purchase tickets at themoviehouse.net.
The Haystack Book Festival, a program of the Norfolk Hub, brings renowned writers and thinkers to Norfolk for conversation. Celebrating its fifth season this fall, the festival will gather 18 writers for discussions at the Norfolk Library on Sept. 20 and Oct. 3 through 5.
Jerome A. Cohen, author of the memoir “Eastward, Westward: A Lifein Law.”Haystack Book Festival
For example, “Never Take the Rule of Law for Granted: China and the Dissident,” will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, at 4 p.m. at the Norfolk Library. It brings together Jerome A. Cohen, author of “Eastward, Westward: A Life in Law,” and Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong King’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic” in dialogue with journalist Richard Hornik to discuss the rule of law and China.
The Council on Foreign Relations stated, “Few Americans have done more than Jerome A. Cohen to advance the rule of law in East Asia. He established the study of Chinese law in the United States. An advocate for human rights, Cohen has been a scholar, teacher, lawyer, and activist for sixty years.”
Cohen, a professor at New York University School of Law and director of its U.S.-Asia Law Institute, revealed his long view on China: “We are now witnessing another extreme in the pendulum’s swing toward repression. Xi Jinping is likely to outlive me but ‘no life lives forever.’ There will eventually be another profound reaction to the current totalitarian era.”
Mark Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic.”Haystack Book Festival
In “The Troublemaker,” Clifford chronicles Lai’s life from child refugee to pro-democracy billionaire to his current imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party. Clifford is president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and holds a PhD in history from the University of Hong Kong. He was the former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post and The Standard (Hong Kong and Seoul).
Journalist Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.Haystack Book Festival
Richard Hornik, adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, will moderate the discussion. Hornik is the former executive editor of AsiaWeek, news service director of Time magazine, and former Time bureau chief in Warsaw, Boston, Beijing and Hong Kong.
Betsy Lerner, author of “Shred Sisters,” is giving the 2025 Brendan Gill lecture at the Haystack Book Festival.Haystack Book Festival
The Brendan Gill Lecture is a highlight of the festival honoring longtime Norfolk resident Brendan Gill, who died in1997. Gill wrote for The New Yorker magazine for fifty years. Betsy Lerner, New York Times-recognized author of “Shred Sisters,” will deliver this year’s lecture on Friday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. at the Norfolk Library.
Visit haystackbookfestival.org to register. Admission is free.