Clermont was the Hudson River seat of the politically and socially prominent Livingston family of New York for more than 230 years. Seven successive generations of the family left their imprint on the architecture, room interiors, and landscape at Clermont. Today the 500 acre historic site appears much as it did in the early twentieth century, when the estate was the home of the last two generations to occupy the property: Mr. and Mrs. John Henry Livingston and their daughters, Honoria and Janet.
  tracts of land in Dutchess and Ulster counties, in the 1740s. Clermont's second owner was known to his contemporaries as Judge of the Admiralty Court and Judge of the Supreme Court of the Province of New York. Judge and Margaret Beekman Livingston's eldest son, Robert R. Livingston, Jr. (1746-1813), was Clermont's most notable resident. A member of the Committee of Five responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence, he also served as the first United States Minister of Foreign Affairs (Secretary of State) and, as Chancellor of the State of New York, he gave the oath of office to George Washington as first President of the United States.
Because of the Livingston family's prominent role in support of independence, Clermont was burned by British troops under the command of General John Vaughan during a foray up the Hudson River in the autumn of 1777. Margaret Beekman Livingston, who managed the estate during most of the war years. rebuilt the family home between 1779 and 1782. After independence was won, Chancellor Livingston began developing Clermont as an agriculture showplace. His experiments with sheep breeding and methods for increasing the yield of crops, while retaining the fertility of the soil, received national attention In 1792 the Chancellor began construction of an elaborate new mansion just south of the original house as the centerpiece of his experimental farm. Built in the shape of a capital "H." this house was also called Clermont It was destroyed by fire in 1909, but its ruins are still visible and indicate its size and grandeur.
Chancellor Livingston concluded his public career as Thomas Jefferson's Minister to France between 1801 and 1804. While in Paris, he negotiated the  Louisiana Purchase and entered into a partnership with Robert Fulton a Pennsylvania- born painter and inventor who shared Livingston's fascination with steam navigation. Their creation which they called the North River is known to history as the Clermont Their steamboat embarked on its maiden voyage between New York City and Albany in 1807, setting off a transportation revolution in the United States.
Chancellor Livingston died at his Clermont estate in 1813. The original Clermont residence which had remained the home of Margaret Beekman Livingston until her death in 1800, was willed to the Chancellor's eldest daughter. The Chancellor's heirs initiated a series of additions and alterations to the house during the nineteenth century. The last significant changes to the old Clermont residence were made in the 1920s. when John Henry Livingston (1848-1927) and his wife. Alice Delafield Clarkson Livingston 1872-1964), remodeled the home in a Colonial Revival style. After Mr. Livingston's death, Alice Livingston continued to reside in the house until the onset ot the Second World War, when she relocated to the nearby gardener's cottage (known as Clermont Cottage). Thereafter, the mansion was only opened for special occasions during the summer months. In 1962 Mrs. Livingston deeded most of her family's historic estate to the State of New York.
Clermont was designated a United States National Historic Landmark in 1973. Clermont is also an anchor in the Hudson River National Landmark District (designated in 1990), a twenty-mile stretch of riverfront land in northern Dutchess and southern Columbia counties Restored to its early twentieth-century appearance, Clermont's furnishings and airy pastoral landscapes and vistas reflect the continuum of a unique and vanishing way of life along the Hudson River.
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