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🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
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LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Tagged Underhill family W.E. Tallcot William A. Underhill Published October 4, 2017
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View of the Hudson from Horton’s Road Near Croton by Robert Havell Jr. Oil on canvas. If you have an extra $8,000 to $12,000 to spend* you should bid on a magnificent painting of the Croton area by Robert Havell, Jr. being auctioned at Sotheby’s
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tomorrow. The painting has been owned by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts since 1935 and is being sold to fund future acquisitions. When we first saw View of the Hudson from Horton’s Road Near Croton we immediately recognized the Croton River,
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emptying into the Hudson in the lower section of the painting. In the distance at the end of the road on the right you can see Croton Point, and the flat marshland that existed before it became a county dump. Between the trees along the left side of
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the road you can even see Van Cortlandt Manor. Detail showing the mouth of the Croton River on the left, part of Croton Point in the upper right, and Van Cortlandt Manor in the lower middle between the trees. After a little research we’re pretty sure
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we know where Havell was standing when he created the painting and approximately when the undated work was executed. One of the earliest maps of the area identifying landowners is the 1851 Map of West Chester County, New York , by the surveyors
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Sydney & Neff. In the area of New Castle, where it comes to a point on the Croton River near Deer Island, there is a J. C. Horton, living along today’s Quaker Ridge Road—which we assume was the “Horton’s Road” in the title. The arrow in the map below
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indicates Havell’s approximate point-of-view when he created the painting. An 1851 map showing the home of J. C. Horton. The arrow indicates Havell’s approximate point-of-view when he created the painting. The map also provides a way of dating the
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work, because the painting is missing a major feature shown on the map—the Hudson River Railroad Bridge across the mouth of the Croton River. Although it’s possible that Havell omitted the bridge for aesthetic reasons we think that’s unlikely. If
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we’re correct then the painting was executed prior to 1849, when the first section of the railroad was completed between New York City and Peekskill. If you buy the painting let us know! Many thanks to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts library for
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providing information about this painting. For other posts about Havell click here . * UPDATE: The painting sold for $15,000, including the buyer’s premium. Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
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Related Tagged Robert Havell Published October 5, 2017 October 8, 2017
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Here’s a nice postcard showing the intersection of Grand Street and Mt. Airy, circa 1900, when Croton’s streets were unpaved and the firehouse building you can see through the trees was a school. The circular object in the street on the right was the
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Mt. Airy cistern. There was another cistern at the intersection of Grand Street and Old Post Road where the dummy light is today. Share this: Print (Opens in new window) Print Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook
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Photograph from Scientific American, February 5, 1898. This photograph from Scientific American shows the end result of the first phase of constructing the New Croton Dam—diverting the natural flow of the Croton River in order to dig the gigantic
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hole that would become the foundation of the dam. Construction started on September 20, 1892 with excavation to divert the Croton River. A channel 125 feet wide and about a quarter of a mile long was blasted out of solid rock on the north side of the
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valley. A masonry wall 25 feet high was built along this channel, with earth dams at each end. The temporary dam in this photo was about 1,600 feet long. Approximately 1,821,400 cubic yards of earth and 400,250 cubic yards of rock were excavated for
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the foundation. Diverting the river and excavating the hole for the foundation took four years, so this photograph was taken about a year and a half later. In the foreground is one of the suspension bridges that stretched across the diversion
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channel. They were used mostly by engineers, allowing them access from the main office building on the north bank (the left side in this photo) down and across the river to the work site. In the background is the small gauge railroad bridge
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(technically, a tramway) that ran from the construction site to the quarries. The main quarry was along Crompond Road in Cortlandt, the other was along Croton Avenue, north of Route 129. Below is a detail of the photo. You can see railcars lined up
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behind the diversion wall below the bridge. 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
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“This is Lovers Bridge of Croton so they say,” is written on the front of this early postcard (circa 1901-1907) of what was then officially called the Van Cortlandt Bridge. The photo shows the small section of what was originally called the Long
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Bridge, when it was first built in the 1860s to carry the Old Albany Post Road across the mouth of the Croton River, right by Van Cortlandt Manor. The manor house is hidden in the trees on the right in the photo and the road curving off in the
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distance is South Riverside Avenue today, going by Shoprite. Here’s a survey from 1871 showing the “Long Bridge.” The small section we see in the postcard is on the left, labeled “Bridge.” This detail from an 1871 survey of the mouth of the Croton
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River shows that at one point there was a drawbridge on the southern end of the Van Cortlandt bridge. The area in the river on the right marked with dotted lines was a channel for ships. Here are other posts about this bridge. Accident on the Van