Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast

The Shandaken Theatrical Society turns 50 this year, and its home stage — the Phoenicia Playhouse — has a history that stretches back even further. Built in 1887 as a lodge for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the building later served as an auction house and a movie theater before falling into disrepair by the 1980s. Community intervention saved it from demolition, and ...

In 1845, a feudal land system that had survived the American Revolution finally met its match in the hills above Andes, New York — and the clash left a county undersheriff dead and hundreds of farmers under arrest. The Anti-Rent War was a massive, organized uprising that had been building since the late 1830s and swept across upstate New York — yet it remains largely unknown ...