🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
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Sources
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include maps, schematic drawings, and additional photos. Click the links below to read them. You can also click the photos to enlarge them. Interior view of the machine shop, 1914. “The Electrical Maintenance Plants of the New York Central & Hudson
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River Railroad Company,” Street Railway Journal , vol. XXIX, June 8, 1907. “Harmon Shops of the New York Central Railroad,” Electric Railway Journal , vol. XLIII, June 6, 1914. Harmon Shops looking north, with the inspection shed in the foreground,
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1907. Harmon car shop, 1907. 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 Share on Pinterest (Opens in new
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window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Clifford Harmon Published September 26, 2014 September 27, 2014
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Surveyors working along the tracks at the Harmon Shops, circa 1906. Courtesy of Carl Oechsner. Click the image to enlarge it. Sometimes what’s most interesting about an old photograph is a tiny detail, not necessarily the main image itself. This
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photo is a perfect example. In the foreground we see two surveyors, working along the tracks at the Harmon Shops, circa 1906. Behind them—hard to make out because of the damage to the print—are some workmen leaning nonchalantly on a wooden railing.
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But in the background, on the hill, if you look closely you can see what master salesman Clifford B. Harmon wanted everyone riding the Hudson River line to see—his sign for “Harmon, the New City” which he modestly called “the most important and
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extensive suburban development in the history of New York.” Below are links to some previous posts about Harmon’s innovative marketing campaign, but before we get to that there’s another significant detail in the photo. Sand dune at the Harmon Shops
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construction site, circa 1906. Behind the bridge on the left you can clearly see an exposed sand dune in the area where the upper parking lot is today. Although it looks like an isolated feature it’s not. The flat land for the entire Harmon Shops
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facility was created over a period of almost a century by removing a massive amount of sand and gravel which once formed the “neck” of Croton Point. For another view of what was still left of the “neck” take a look at the first photo in this post .
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See the sand dune behind the Harmon Shops? Most of that land is gone today. Here are the links to previous posts about marketing Harmon. Many thanks to Carl Oechsner for sharing this rare photograph. Selling Harmon Cannon Ball Time to Harmon Newly
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Married Folks Buy . . . at Harmon What Does Everyone Want? Land 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 Clifford Harmon Harmon-on-Hudson Hudson River Railroad Published September
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27, 2014 September 28, 2014
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John Quincy Adams On October 11, 1842 former President John Quincy Adams realized he had neglected to respond— several times —to an invitation to be an honored guest at the Croton Water Celebration. In his diary he wrote, “. . . on turning over my
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letters recently received, to endorse and file them, I found one which I had totally forgotten, from . . . New York . . . inviting me to a festival to be held on the 14th of this month, in celebration of the introduction of the Croton water into the
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city. There was on the note a twice-repeated request for an answer, which I had overlooked till now. I answered the letter, declining the invitation, and sent [my reply] . . . so that it may reach New York on Thursday, the day before the feast.” 1
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Many important dignitaries were invited to the great Croton Water Celebration, but contrary to some books and a number of online sources (including—perhaps not surprisingly—Wikipedia 2 ), former Presidents John Quincy Adams and Martin van Buren,
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then-President John Tyler, and Governor of New York William H. Seward did not attend. [UPDATE: We have corrected the error on Wikipedia. Depending on whether our changes are accepted the error may or may not still be present.] It’s difficult to
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determine how this error crept into the historical record. The contemporary newspaper accounts of the event exhaustively list every participating fire department, trade organization, temperance society, and civic official but say nothing of the
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President of the United States, two former Presidents and the Governor of New York. It seems unlikely—though not impossible—that newspapers published within days of the celebration would have missed these historic figures. A year later Charles King
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even published the letters of regret from all four men in his book, A memoir of the construction, cost, and capacity of the Croton Aqueduct . . . together with an account of the civic celebration of the fourteenth October, 1842 . . . 3 The President
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of the United States sends his regrets. King has a long section of replies to invitations to the Croton Water Celebration. One of the most interesting appears long after the letters from officials like the Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller and
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Attorney General of the State of New York; after letters from diplomats like the Counsels of Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Greece—even after the letters from the mayors of cities like Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Troy.
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Writing from Peekskill on October 8, 1842, Pierre Van Cortlandt, Jr. replied, ”I have this day received your polite invitation from the Common Council of the city of New York, to join with them on the 14th instant, to celebrate the introduction of
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the Croton water into the City of New York. With pleasure I accept your invitation, and will be in New York at the time appointed.” 4 If anyone at that time had a plausible claim to the water from the Croton River it was Pierre Van Cortlandt, Jr.
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Indeed, the Van Cortlandt family had engaged in extended litigation against the Croton Water Commissioners over the diversion of water. 5 Even if he had come to accept New York City’s diversion there was the matter of the Great Freshet of 1841, when
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part of the Croton Dam gave way. The torrent of water and debris destroyed bridges and businesses, silted out the mouth of the Croton River and is said to have come within 8 feet of destroying Van Cortlandt Manor. 6 The Old Croton Dam after
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reconstruction. Did Van Cortlandt actually attend? What did he really think of the great event? Unfortunately his published correspondence contains just three letters from 1842 and none of them mention the Croton Water Celebration. Memoirs of John
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Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 , compiled by Charles Francis Adams. Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott & Co., 1876. Volume 11. ↩ The current Wikipedia article for the Croton Aqueduct states “Among those present were
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