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🏘️ Croton Local History
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Here is an account of a trip from Sing Sing to the old Croton Dam that took place 172 years ago today. This is from a wonderful blog that publishes the diary of Julia Lawrence Hasbrouck, who “lived and wrote the majority of her diaries in New York
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City . . . [and] then moved to a rural community in upstate New York, a transition that her diaries describe as a difficult one.” Sing.Sing. Friday. August. 13. teenth. 1841. A beautifull day, the sun obscured, and a cool breeze blowing. Surprised by
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a visit from Garret, he rode up at twelve oclock. It was his intention to take Louis, and I home with him, but there was no boat. At three oclock, we set off to ride seven miles, to see the Dam at the Croton water works. Our ride was very pleasant
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the children behaving remarkably well. The roads are very hilly in this part of the country, I was afraid to ride down the steep hills. A severe freshet * last winter carried away all the bridges, so we were obliged to drive through the Croton river,
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to reach the spot on which the new dam, is about being erected. Four hundred men are daily employed in repairing the dam, and live in huts, on the surrounding hills. Dame nature, seems to have indulged in some wild freaks… View original post 96 more
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Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Julia Lawrence Hasbrouck Sing-Sing Published August 13, 2013 August 13, 2013
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Pasted among the photographs of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s home in Taos, New Mexico, is this one of the barn at Finney Farm in Croton. The album page is part of the Mabel Dodge Luhan papers at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. See this
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previous post for a beautiful depiction of Finney Farm on Luhan’s stationery. Photographs of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s residences mounted on album page. Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
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The Van Cortlandt Bridge over the Croton River in 1912. Courtesy of the Westchester County Historical Society. It’s a beautiful day and you’ve decided to take a jaunt in your newfangled automobile, going north along the scenic Hudson River. You can’t
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count on good, well-marked roads, so you’ve brought along the GPS system of the day—a copy of Photo-auto maps . . . New York to Albany which features “photographs of every turn . . . showing railroad crossings, bridges, school houses and all
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landmarks.” 1 Thus equipped, you drive north on the historic Albany Post Road. You pass through Ossining and soon come to the next landmark, a fork in the road with a brick schoolhouse on the left. You hang a left at the fork, following the road
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downhill, and you see a huge chimney towering over an industrial building on the right. You wonder what it is but you can’t stop to look because a narrow iron bridge looms ahead, crossing the wide Croton River. You pass the building, thinking about
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lunch. Should you stop at the Nikko Inn, in Harmon, or push on to Peekskill? As you zoom across the old bridge you don’t notice the person with a camera down below, who snaps a picture as you pass by. . . . We’ll never know if this is an accurate
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description of what was happening when this wonderful photograph was taken, but it’s certainly plausible. Thanks to the Westchester County Historical Society —which has preserved this “decisive moment” 2 and graciously allowed us to share it—we get a
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rare look at what was then known as the Van Cortlandt Bridge, at the dawn of the age of the automobile. Let’s retrace the route this driver would have taken and see what the area was like in 1912, long before Route 9A and the bland “Crossining”
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bridge were built. Here’s a map of the area, published just a few years earlier. Detail from map 12 of E. Belcher Hyde’s 1908 Atlas of the rural country district north of New York City . . . Courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection. A. Crotonville
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School Below are two details from the Photo-auto maps book showing the intersection where the Crotonville School was located. The first shows the intersection going north, the second—with the side of the brick school building clearly visible—is the
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same intersection from the route going south. 3 Detail from the Photo-auto maps book showing the route going north. In the same spot today, the road in the middle goes under Route 9A to Crotonville. Detail from Photo-auto maps showing the route going
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south, with the Crotonville School (today the Parker-Bale American Legion Post No. 1597) on the right. Next is a photo of the front of the school building. If it looks familiar that’s because today the old Crotonville School is the Parker-Bale
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American Legion Post No. 1597 at 11 Old Albany Post Road. The road that once went down to the Croton River was was cut-off when Route 9A was constructed, but if you drive by to look at Parker-Bale (and you should) you will see a small strip of the
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old road surface to the right of the building. Crotonville School. Courtesy of Carl Oechsner. B. Croton Bay Pumping Station The brick building on the Ossining side of the bridge was the Croton Bay Pumping Station. It was built in 1890 and originally
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housed two large hydraulic engines that took water from the Indian Brook Reservoir in Crotonville (shown east of the letter “B” on 1908 the map, above) and pumped it to a storage reservoir in the village of Ossining. Today the building is owned by
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Anthony L. Fiorito Inc., which specializes in water, sewer and drainage services. Long Bridge Pumping Station. C. Van Cortlandt Bridge The Van Cortlandt bridge across the “mouth of the Croton River” was built sometime after April, 1860, as a result
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of state legislation authorizing “the board of supervisors of the county Westchester . . . to construct a bridge at or near the mouth of Croton river . . . at such point as they may select between the Hudson river railroad bridge and the present
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bridge commonly known as the “High Bridge.” 4 This detail from a rare, badly damaged stereoview shows the Van Cortlandt bridge from the Ossining side. The building on the far side of the Croton River stood at the end of the long causeway, in front of
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the Van Cortlandt Manor house. The bridge they constructed—actually two bridges, connected by a long causeway—shows up in maps in the 1860s, going from the Ossining side of the river to a point just west of Van Cortlandt Manor. 5 Like all bridges on