In April 1850, the 1750 Hasbrouck House in Newburgh was transformed into New York State’s first state historic site: Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site.
Since then, New York State has collected objects, archival materials, and other items related to New York’s history. 2025 marks the 175th anniversary of New York’s state historic sites – which now number over 35 locations, over a million historic objects, and over three million archaeological objects.
What did New York’s first state historic site first collect?
Initial items were related to the American Revolution because of General George Washington’s use of the Hasbrouck House as his headquarters from April 1782 to August 1783.
Initially contained within the historic Hasbrouck House, the growing number of historic objects began to overwhelm the space. The “cabinets of curiosities” display style was common in museums at that time, but the volume of items soon required a separate building.
On May 25, 1910, the Museum Building opened and the site’s collections expanded to include items related to local history, the Civil War, and other objects that the public thought were interesting and worth displaying. Early records indicate some of the oddities included a skeletal fish head and a petrified chicken.
Now there are over 7,000 objects in Washington’s Headquarters collection. Some of these items are on display in the museum’s public galleries. Others furnish the Hasbrouck House as it might have been during George Washington’s time there.
Given the breadth of this impressive collection, many items originally donated to Washington’s Headquarters are displayed today in exhibits or used to furnish houses at New York’s other state historic sites.
Like most museums, most of the historic collections of Washington’s Headquarters are in storage. Many will soon be publicly accessible through a online database. Information about this new resource is expected to be released later in 2025.
You can see some of the old, new, curious, and quirky treasures collected at Washington’s Headquarters in a version of this essay by Senior Curator Amanda Massie in the New York State Parks and Historic Sites Blog.
Read more stories about New York’s material culture (artifacts, ephemera and more).
Illustrations, from above, courtesy State Parks: A display of historic collections on view in the Hasbrouck House at Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site in 1891; and the second floor gallery in the Museum Building, installed in 2012.
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