Welcome to Beacon

Beacon takes its name from signal fires lit by Washington's troops atop the mountain during the American Revolution. Its history reaches back 400 years to when Henry Hudson's Half Moon anchored in the bay. Geography shaped the city through the river, creek, and mountain. The city of Beacon was created in 1913 when the villages of Matteawan and Fishkill Landing merged. The settled community dates to 1709, when Catheryna and Roger Brett chose this place within the Rombout Patent as their home. Matteawan, site of the first factory, grew around the Brett homestead and the water power of Fishkill Creek, while Fishkill Landing became an important river port and the earliest ferry landing along the Hudson. In the 1920s, Beacon was known as the hat-manufacturing capital of New York, and Main Street's historic East End still looks much as it did in the 1870s. After the decline of the city's industrial base, cultural organizations and tourism-oriented businesses revived Beacon's fortunes. The opening of the internationally acclaimed Dia:Beacon museum in the former Nabisco box printing factory, together with the leadership of the Howland Cultural Center and other galleries and music venues, established Beacon as a major cultural hub.

Beacon, New York · United States