Upstate Sown Western Catskills
Hobart
A charming Book Village where indie bookstores and mountain views create a storybook upstate escape.
Hobart is a small village on the West Branch of the Delaware that reinvented itself around books. A stretch of Main Street holds several independent bookshops, which draws people who would otherwise have driven straight through.
What it’s like
It’s genuinely small — you can walk the length of the village in a few minutes — with modest nineteenth-century buildings close to the street and open country immediately beyond. The book trade gives it a steady trickle of visitors without the traffic of a resort town.
Housing runs to village houses on small lots, with farmland and woodlots on the surrounding hills.
Practical things to know
Village lots are tight, so if you want acreage you’ll be looking just outside. That’s a short distance here — the transition from village to farmland is abrupt.
Some village properties have municipal water; confirm rather than assume, and expect wells and septic anywhere beyond the center.
The West Branch runs right past, so check flood maps on anything low. On older village buildings, ask about the state of the foundation and any history of water in the basement — the two questions are usually related.