Washington's Headquarters: Newburgh's public historic treasure

Up on Liberty Street, looking out over the Hudson, sits a low fieldstone farmhouse called the Hasbrouck House. It was built around 1750, and during the last year and a half of the Revolutionary War it was George Washington’s home and command center, the longest he stayed at any of his wartime headquarters. He was here, not on a battlefield, when some of the war’s quietest but biggest decisions got made.

In this house Washington turned down the idea of becoming a king, calmed a brewing revolt among his own officers known as the Newburgh Conspiracy, and created the Badge of Military Merit, the award we now know as the Purple Heart. From the front step he could watch the river he had spent years defending.

What makes the place special goes beyond the history inside it. In 1850 New York bought the house to save it and opened Washington’s Headquarters as a public historic site owned by the state. A brick museum went up next door in 1910, with galleries on Washington and the defense of the Hudson and more than 1,300 objects. It’s a quiet kind of pride: the idea that a place could be worth keeping for everyone took root right here in Newburgh.