Kent, New York

New York

The largest indoor Buddha statue in the Western Hemisphere sits in a town of about thirteen thousand people in New York's Hudson Valley.

historicalculturepeople

The largest indoor statue of the Buddha in the Western Hemisphere stands in Kent, New York, a town of about thirteen thousand people. It is inside the Chuang Yen Monastery, in the north-central part of Putnam County. Kent holds another kind of record too. On Nimham Mountain, in the Taconic Hills, there is a fire tower about eighty-two and a half feet tall. New York State and the Civilian Conservation Corps built it in 1940. It is the tallest fire tower still standing anywhere in the state, and it appears on the National Historic Lookout Register. The mountain takes its name from Daniel Nimham, the last chief of the Wappingers, who died in 1778. The article calls him the most prominent Native American of his time in the Hudson Valley. The Wappingers still lived on this land when it was folded into a colonial land grant in 1697.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
The Chuang Yen Monastery which is home to the largest indoor statue of Buddha in the Western Hemisphere, is also located in Kent.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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