The Mountains Look Down: A History of Chichester, A Company Town in the Catskills

Welcome to Chichester, for the better part of a century a flourishing company woodworking town in the Catskills and the setting of Reginald Bennett’s wonderfully entertaining anecdotal history.  From its origin in 1863 as a tiny mountain hamlet with a water-powered chair factory, to its heyday in the early 1900s as a manufacturer of some of the finest office furniture in America, Chichester and its residents were uniquely shaped by the Catskills, which Reginald Bennett knew inside out.  A beautifully-written story abounding with portraits of three generations of Chichester woodworkers, hunters, fly fishermen, ginseng gatherers, storytellers, beekeepers, evangelists, moonshiners and barn burners, The Mountains Look Down is at once a superb regional history and an unforgettable evocation of a way of life whose like will not be seen again, in the Catskill Mountains or elsewhere.

Introduction by Howard Frank Mosher