🏘️ Croton Local History

crotonhistory.org

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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crotonhistory.org

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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(Opens in new window) Facebook Share on X (Opens in new window) X 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 Mt. Airy

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Published October 7, 2017 October 6, 2017

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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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crotonhistory.org

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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crotonhistory.org

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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crotonhistory.org

(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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(Opens in new window) Pinterest Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Like Loading... Related Published October 9, 2017 October 9, 2017

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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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crotonhistory.org

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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crotonhistory.org

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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crotonhistory.org

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

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Cortlandt Bridge, 1911 Motoring Across the Croton, 1912 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

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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 Van Cortlandt Bridge Published October 14, 2017 October 15, 2017

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LIQUOR LADEN PLANE FROM CANADA FALLS AS IT NEARS CITY Drops 250 Quarts of Scotch Near Croton, Where Water for Highballs Comes From FLIER ESCAPES IN AN AUTO Car Apparently in Waiting Whisks Limping Aviator From Scene “Dusk was deepening into darkness”

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on the night of May 15, 1922, as a Curtis biplane circled slowly over a farm “about a mile and a quarter above Croton . . . a quarter of a mile from Tumble Inn, one of the much patronized roadhouses of the county.” 1 The farm’s owner, former

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crotonhistory.org

Westchester County deputy sheriff George McCall, watched as the pilot “suddenly pointed the craft’s nose earthward and slipped toward the farmhouse.” Postcard for the Tumble Inn, once located near the hill where the rum plane crashed. As the New York

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Times reported the next day, “something about the landscape did not please [the pilot]. No one could figure out afterward whether it was the lay of the land itself, or whether his clandestine errand made the proximity of the house a paramount

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objection. At any rate, the pilot suddenly quickened his engine and climbed heavenward again. He flattened his course at about 1,000 feet and circled over the farm. Along the road a number of persons . . . were craning and watching his maneuvers.”

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Suddenly the pilot “evidently made a sharp decision to come down. It was thought afterward that he might have spied an automobile that was drawn at one side of the road not far from the farm.” “By then it was black night, and the task that faced the

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pilot . . . was severe. He made no attempts to get back to the level fields near the house. Instead, he came thumping down on a side hill that he may not have even discerned in the darkness. The nose of the plane dug into the earth, the wings

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crumpled and the ruptured tank sent a geyser of gasoline spraying over the whole craft,” which miraculously did not catch fire. This photo of the rum plane ran in newspapers across the country. Gasoline wasn’t the only thing that sprayed out of the

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