An article published in the October 22nd, 1893 issue of the New York Times notes that “nearly all” of the names used for towns, creeks and regions along the Hudson River were “corruptions of the Indian or old Dutch titles.”
The Dutch discarded the Native American names of Sha-te-muc and Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk, and divided what they instead called the Mauritius or North River (the Delaware being the South River) into “fourteen rocks or reaches.” The Times article states that
“The last of the reaches of which any knowledge is extant is the Hil Klauver Reach, or the Clover Reach. This is the one at Hudson. The bluffs, or termination of the hills there, on the east side of the river, were called by the Dutch the Klauvers, the Clovers, from their resemblance to the clover, but whether to the leaf or the flower opinions differ.”
Hudson’s shore today is artificially regular, a slightly curved line created by Vanderbilt’s railroad and other industrial infill. But at the time of its founding in 1785 what became known as Promenade Park was a spit of land jutting well out into the river, with spurs on either side leading down to large, open inlets—the North and South Bays. One can imagine that when drawn on a map, someone might liken this resulting shape to a cloverleaf.
(Warren Street itself began as a series of ledges and gulleys, the latter of which were filled in to make a mile-long continuous slope down toward the river. There was apparently a particularly large drop-off around 3rd Street.)
The name Claverack is thus a bastardization of the Dutch for Clover Reach, and Hudson prior to its acquisition by the Proprietors was known as Claverack Landing.
The City of Hudson sold off the lands which now comprise much of Stockport in 1833, with another vast chunk of acreage carved away to form Greenport in 1837; the mayor responisble promptly became the head of that new town. Those who stayed behind in Hudson figured that they wouldn’t suffer any consquences from these sales, since these new neighboring towns would still be dependent on Hudson’s port for imports and exports, and thus deemed what now looks like a shortsighted sale as a windfall for the City without any downside.
Neither the invention of railroads nor the advent of Fairview Avenue shopping centers were developments they anticipated—demonstrating how one cannot plan far enough ahead and for enough eventualities when creating a vision for a community.
