Gary Bassett moved to Rhinebeck, N.Y., in 1993, after being transferred by his employer, IBM, from Wisconsin to a plant in nearby Kingston. The village of about 2,600 residents in the Hudson Valley reminded him and his wife, Brenda Bassett, of their small hometown in central Pennsylvania, and they felt an immediate kinship with the place.

They’ve now lived there for nearly 30 years, which would make you an old-timer in most places. But Rhinebeck has a 300-plus-year history, and a long memory.

wedding of Chelsea Clinton, in 2010, at an estate once owned by John Jacob Astor IV, as a turning point. Rhinebeck went from what Catherine A. Mondello, a local realtor, called “a laid-back country town, a Mayberry,” to a popular destination for day-trippers up from New York City, as well as a community where retirees and younger urbanites choose to relocate.

“Since then, we’ve just seen the trend moving up,” Ms. Mondello, the owner and principal broker of Mondello Upstate Properties, said. “The village is bustling.”

Hudson River School movement. “Everyone was saying ‘hi’ to each other. This is an actual community.”

wrote Hudson Valley magazine in 2012, “with Rhinebeck its buckle. The town was known as the Violet Capital of the World; its major growers — known as the Violet Kings — and smaller producers supplied about 25 percent of the nation’s violets.”

Last summer, town officials unveiled a history marker commemorating Rhinebeck’s flower-growing past. It sits on Route 9G, the main road connecting Rhinebeck to neighboring violet-belt communities like Hyde Park and Red Hook. The roadway was once known as Violet Avenue.

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.