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🏘️ Croton Local History
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imagine what the river would have been like at that time. It’s been “stifling hot in the city” and we’ve just crossed the Spuyten Duyvel. Our companion in the seat next to us has “aroused himself from his open-eye nap,” and given his “attention to
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the book in hand,” but soon he turns “from that to the scenery.” Our “offer to him of the seat by the window led to some desultory remarks, and those passed into a conversation which, before we passed the opposite Palisades, had grown as warm and
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earnest as the talk of old friends. . . .” “What a delightful ride that is up the Hudson River railroad by a six or six-thirty train, of a summer's afternoon! . . . Before Sing Sing and seven o'clock the hot sun sank down behind the Nyack hills. Then
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we were able to push up the blinds and enjoy the full breeze and view. The Hudson River Railroad, going north from Sing Sing in 1868 from F.W. Beers’ Atlas of New York and vicinity . In a moment we plunge from light, breeze and freedom into the damp
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obscurity of a short tunnel, then rush with clanging reverberations past the high, shadowed, white walls pierced with hundreds of narrow, grated window slits. You put your face close to the car side, and peer up with sad curiosity to the prison
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sides; perhaps catch a flash-like picture in one of those iron-barred frames of a face—merely a bare face seen but for an instant—but perhaps you fancy it a hard, desperate countenance, marked by misery and revenge. But few seconds for your gloom. It
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travels not beyond the massive, dreary walls and the last sentry-box. A harsh, prolonged whistle of the engine, and we are by the pleasant open shore again. Some faint pink lines over the Rockland hills, the river cheerfully rippled, a few sails,
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away ahead a steamboat just passing Croton Point. With increasing speed we flash by Sing Sing, screaming as though our monster locomotive craved some victim to wet its rails. Now Brandreth's pretty little pill box and factory close under our right; 2
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a marshy shore and outstretched nets on the left. We cross the drawbridge 3 of the Croton—the beautiful river flowing out of a but partially revealed valley, and spreading into a bay that looks the picture spot for punts 4 and flocks of ducks. The
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Hudson River Railroad, crossing the mouth of the Croton River and Croton Point in 1868, from F.W. Beers’ Atlas of New York and vicinity . Just there, near the south shore of Croton Point, and about a quarter of a mile from the rails, was a sloop
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swinging on a new tack . . . In the softening light, a little in the shadow of the land, gently touched by a reflection of the western sky, and caught but for a glance as she turned to a new course, and we ran between the gravel banks 5 that open
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with a dry yawn right at the base of the Point, she seemed as a shape seen in the clouds, as a fading mirage—a mysterious unreality and faintness encompassing her as the atmosphere of some phantom craft.” Clarence Gordon (1835-1920), the pseudonymous
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author of this piece, was born in New York City, on April 28, 1835. He graduated from the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard in 1855. He lived in Savannah, Georgia until 1860, in or near Boston from 1862-1868, and then in Newburgh, New York. He
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was special agent of the United States census bureau in 1879-1883, in charge of the investigation of meat-production in the grazing states. He contributed to many journals and magazines, and wrote novels for boys, under the pen name of “Vieux
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Moustache.” These include Christmas at Under-Tor (1864); Our Fresh and Salt Tutors (1866); Two Lives in One (1870); and Boarding-School Days (1873). The newspaper version was taken from the May, 1873 issue of The Galaxy, a Magazine of Entertaining
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Reading . ↩ Still standing today, but threatened with destruction. ↩ In 1873 the railroad bridge over the mouth of the Croton River was a drawbridge to allow ships to pass. ↩ A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in
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small rivers or other shallow water. ↩ When the railroad was built across the mouth of the river and the “neck” of Croton Point, four hundred thousand cubic yards of sand and gravel had to be removed. The remaining banks on each side of the tracks
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were removed over the years and there is no trace of them today. ↩ Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X
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Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Brandreth Pill Factory Hudson River Railroad Sing-Sing Published July 27,
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Photo by Leslie V. Case. Used by permission of the Tarrytown Historical Society. Photo by Leslie V. Case. Used by permission of the Tarrytown Historical Society. The notation in Case’s photo album correctly notes the place and subject, but
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incorrectly attributes the wine cellars to the Teller family. These undated photographs—probably taken in the 1920s or 1930s—show portions of what was then the ruins of the Underhill wine cellars on Croton Point. They were made by Leslie V. Case, who
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was superintendent of the Tarrytown Schools for more than 30 years. The photographs are glued to the pages of one of Case’s scrapbooks, now in the collection of the Tarrytown Historical Society , which has graciously given us permission to share
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them. Portrait photograph of Leslie V. Case from a newspaper clipping in the files of the Tarrytown Historical Society. Used by permission. Mr. Case was not your average school superintendent. Among other things he was an amateur archeologist and
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geologist, who collected ancient Egyptian artifacts, gemstones, and Native American artifacts—some of which he dug up himself in his capacity as the chairman of the Westchester Historical Society’s Committee on Indian Remains. His historic 1848 house
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on Grove Street, in Tarrytown, eventually became the home of the Tarrytown Historical Society. 1 For more information on the Underhill vineyards, see these previous posts: The Grape King of Croton Point , features two color prints of the grapes that
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made Richard T. Underhill famous. You Need Not go to the Rhine to See Vineyards , is an 1859 account of a trip to Croton Point, which gives us tantalizing details about the scope of Underhill’s business. The Underhill Vineyards, 1867 has details from
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a full-page wood engraving of the Underhill vineyards, published in Harper’s Weekly in October 1867. R. T. Underhill—Doctor, Winemaker, and Investor in the First New York City Elevated Railway , which uncovered Richard T. Underhill’s involvement in
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the West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway Company, the company that began the New York City transportation system. Underhill Vineyard Trade Cards , issued after R. T. Underhill’s death in 1871, to market the inventory which had remained in the vaults
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“owing to the extreme temperance views entertained by some of the heirs.” 2 The house was built by Jacob Odell in 1848 as a wedding gift for his bride. Case purchased the house in 1918 and lived there until his death in 1937. His wife became the