Saturday, November 27, 2021

The Velocipede Bicycle Museum (actually has cards on display in museum!)


the first of many times I would see something and say "I can't imagine riding that"
a bicycle with a sidecar
An overview of the museum's right side

an exercise bike from 1886

 Yesterday my brother and I went to downtown Newburgh, NY to visit the Velocipede museum, which is a museum of bicycles. It's an offshoot of the MotorcyclePedia museum but is much smaller...and only one of the three floors is currently open as they work to install a sprinkler system in the vintage building dating to 1922. 

It's a great museum, but it's very small. The MotorcyclePedia museum took 3 visits to see everything where this museum took less than an hour, but I'm still glad I got to go to it...which is not easy since it's only open on Fridays from 10-3. Not a lot of time, but since my brother had off of work, we ventured out, even though it was black Friday, although the roads were not particularly crowded. 

(Sorry the pictures came first blogger is not acting right)





These are so cool looking but I would hurt myself so severely trying to get on one, let alone ride it! 
Hey, is that....? It is! 

trading cards in the museum! There's more to come...


This is the left side of the museum

We couldn't even figure out how you would go about getting onto this bike.




from 1902




This bike has metal tires, a metal seat and nothing resembling a suspension. No wonder they call it a bone shaker! 

This bicycle cost $135 new...in 1869! 


I want to see some of these in person! 
More cards! This set is tobacco style but is from 1986. I took some detail pictures and even though I've been focusing more on the "history" part of Cardboard History lately I will show them as well.





1940s style
The Donald Duck bike dates to 1951







this child's bike dates to the 1880s









Now, here are some pictures from Newburgh. Newburgh used to be a very beautiful city, you can tell, but it's not well maintained and in fact several of the buildings we drove past I recognized from the news covering shootings within the past week. Yikes. 

The Hudson river. 
The road is actually brick...it's nice looking but rather unpleasant to drive on. Some of it has been haphazardly paved over but the pavement is coming up (read as: Missing in large chunks) so it's a very bouncy ride. 

That turret house is one I recognize from the shooting coverage. 
A mural of George Washington playing the guitar. I'm sure that's historically accurate ;) 
Washington's Headquarters is literally across the street from the Velocipede. You may recall my brother and I went to Washington's Headquarters right before the pandemic hit last year, here's my post about it: Washington's Headquarters.

Neat old fire box. Newburgh has quite a few of these around, I saw at least four that I noticed. 
Wonder how old the vegetable market sign is?


A large theatre
We walked down to the manuscript museum but it was closed. They have not updated their website since 2017 and their email doesn't work so we just took the chance to walk down to it. 
The aptly named Broadway in Newburgh is the main road in town.
A partially collapsed building that looks very old.

A placque honoring Frederick Douglass who apparently spoke at this church in 1870! 
The tower at Washington's Headquarters
The river again
We stopped to watch the train


Then we drove over to the ferry lot, which was filled with seagulls, geese and ducks! I love seagulls, they are so funny. 


This is a really nice picture. The trees, the dock which is partially lined with Seagulls, and the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge in the background
That's Mount Saint Mary college.
Crossing the tracks to head back home.
The Riverfront has undergone a renaissance in recent years with many new businesses opening up and although this doesn't show them it's still a nice view of the bridge.
Good view of the Hudson
Orange County War memorial, which is unfortunately on a small island between three roads and I don't know how to get a better photo. There were no cars behind us so my brother stopped for me to get this photo out the window. 
I even saw a vintage van! 
down there is where we were
And heading back home. 

This is in New Hamburg, and it's the first time I've seen this house since they fixed it. This house dates to 1797 and has been abandoned and falling into disrepair since the 1990s when a car hit it. (the right front corner had been covered in nothing but plywood for the past 20 years). Earlier this year they started fixing it and they made a huge amount of progress, as it hadn't even started to get siding last time I saw it, which was only two weeks ago when we went to the Purple Heart Hall of Honor. I am really, really glad they fixed it instead of tearing it down. I don't talk about it much but old buildings mean a great deal to me and I was always afraid they would tear it down. Seeing it restored makes me very happy even though I don't know anyone who has ever lived there and have never been inside of it.

This is a small unnamed stream in my hometown of Wappingers Falls. I rarely get a good look at it but the traffic lights worked in my favor today (or yesterday by time you see this) Sorry for the odd placement but again, blogger is acting weird today. 

Here's the rest of the Velocipede album and here's an album with more scenes from Newburgh. All the pictures dated 2021 are from this trip. 

Thanks for reading.


4 comments:

  1. Those tobacco cards are cool. When I saw the title of this post, I figured we'd see cards in the spokes.

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  2. With so many vastly different styles, these bikes kind of remind of all of the different flying machines that were designed and built way back when. Oh, and I'd really love to have that Donald Duck bike :)

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    1. The variety is indeed huge. I want to see somebody ride one of the big wheel ones but not me. I'd hurt myself, badly.

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