View of Sugar Loaf Mountain, Warwick

While every community brags about being the very best community in which to live, Warwick has evidence to back up the claim. In 2010, Warwick was named Best Community in the international competition Communities in Bloom. In doing so, Warwick became only the second American village ever to win the award. “We were competing with villages and towns all over the world, and we got first place.” Beams John Christison, proprietor of Yesterdays—an English/Irish restaurant and pub on Main Street, “A lot of that came from volunteers sprucing up the entire town and villages.”

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Max’s first time sledding from Little Big Pictures on Vimeo.

photograph by Roger Gavan

If everything looks perfect from far away, the Warwick Valley is no exception. From the overlook at Bellvale Creamery, an ice cream parlor perched on Route 17A near Mt. Peter, the area couldn’t appear more inviting, nestled cozily between the mountains. But if you continue to follow the road west and turn down Oakland Avenue, you’ll find a place just as idyllic close up as it was when viewed from above—a historic, picturesque village cushioned by orchards and working farmland.

Head down Main Street and pop into one of the many boutique shops that call Warwick home, like Frazzleberries, a country store selling furniture made of reclaimed barn wood and a variety of crafts, or Newhard’s, an eclectic home store owned by the village mayor and his sisters. Just around the corner the antique wares of the Eclectic Eye spill tantalizingly out over Railroad Avenue’s sidewalk, and local hipsters sip fair trade coffee from the Tuscan Café while they stroll on South Street. The store facades, often brick or adorned with 19th century architectural details, give a warm, fuzzy, old-fashioned feeling to the streets, says Michael Bertonlini, who moved to Warwick from Chicago more than 30 years ago. Today, he’s curator of the Historical Society of the Town of Warwick, which cares for thousands of artifacts and 10 museum properties in the village, including the Azariah Ketchum House, a Federal-style home built in 1810 where Bertonlini currently lives.

“These outsiders come in and they see a village, and it isn’t Disney—it’s a working village that’s very much aware of its roots,” Bertonlini says. “And they all leave with this wonderful feeling, a quality of America that’s fast going with the malls and the destruction of so many communities. Here, we have people that have been bright enough to be able to understand the value of where they live and their heritage.”

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