The > Real Estate > Weekender: Catskill, N.Y.

OR Richard and Vera Schneider, a summer trip to their weekend home in Catskill is a breeze. They can hop into their 18-foot Stingray motorboat docked near Kingston and cruise up the Hudson River, pulling into a slip 45 minutes later at Catskill Marina on the Hudson's west bank, just a short walk from the two-bedroom, one-bathroom 1820's cottage they bought last year for ,000.

"We have the best of both worlds," said Mr. Schneider, who lives during the week in a three-bedroom house on eight secluded acres atop a mountain in Esopus, N.Y., about 35 miles to the south. On most weekends, Mr. Schneider said, he and his wife spend a lot of time peering through the picture windows in the Catskill house, "watching the boats go up and down" Catskill Creek, which bisects this placid village.

For the Schneiders, weekend moves to Catskill are from one country place to another, but urbanites from New York, priced out of more traditional weekending locales east of the Hudson, are making Catskill their port of call, too. While prices are now rising fast in Catskill, a Victorian that could be bought five years ago for ,000 would still cost only 0,000 to 0,000, said Lucinda Mellen of the Property Store in Freehold, N.Y. - still "a song," she noted, compared with prices in Columbia and Ulster Counties.

Last August, Nathan Lump, the features editor at Travel & Leisure magazine, and his partner, Christopher Petkanas, whose primary home is in Manhattan, bought an 1863 four-bedroom, two-and-a-half- bathroom side-hall colonial in Catskill after a futile search in Columbia County, just across the river.

"What we love about being in Catskill is how quiet it is - there is very, very little street traffic in front of our house, and the neighbors don't make a sound," Mr. Lump said. He had seen so many properties on busy roads during his six-month hunt for a second home, he said, that the village house he ultimately found in Catskill is "more country than any country house we looked at in Columbia County."

The Scene

Mike Tyson once trained at a local gym, and the boxing connection conjures up an image of the town itself as an aging heavyweight trying to make a comeback after a string of defeats. Some businesses on Main Street, like the tattoo parlor and the nail salon that advertises nude tanning, would fit right in on the tawdry part of Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, and several storefronts have long been vacant. But a number of shops are undergoing restoration.

Mr. Schneider, who grew up in Ulster County, used to consider Catskill "dilapidated," he said, but now feels confident that buying there was a wise investment. "The place is really turning around," he said, with old Victorian homes being refurbished. He would like to buy another place in Catskill, but said he had not been able to find one.

Despite its rough edges, Catskill - part of a township of the same name and the seat of Greene County, south of the Albany area - retains a grandeur from its days as a busy port. Stately civic buildings include a neoclassical red-brick public library underwritten by Andrew Carnegie and the Greek Revival Greene County Courthouse with Ionic columns.

According to a report prepared for the Historic Catskill Point Visitors' Center, Dutch settlers established a port at Catskill Creek, a sheltered waterway, around 1650. By the 1800's, goods from tanned hides to honey passed over its docks. A product of particular importance, in those days before mechanical refrigeration, was ice. Local companies harvested millions of tons each winter from the frozen Hudson River and its tributaries, and blocks were swaddled in sawdust and stored in wooden ice houses. Enough of the harvest stayed frozen as the weather warmed to keep Catskill shipping ice to New York City to cool food in spring and summer.

Steamboats also stopped at Catskill, where tourists could stay at the lavish Prospect Park Hotel or catch stagecoaches (or later, trains) to mountain retreats.

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