Hastings in Yonkers!

"View at Hastings-on-Hudson," painted by Jasper F. Cropsey ca. 1891, on view at the Hudson River Museum, and currently part of their Paintbox Leaves exhibition.

We have so loved working on this blog, dear readers, and sharing the wonderful stories and photographs that the Historical Society has collected over the years. But at the moment we don’t have the staff to keep up weekly posts. When we have an event or some great piece of news, we will still post on an irregular basis. And as soon as we have the people to carry forward a weekly blog, we will start up again. Thank you, everyone, for your support of this blog during the last two years!

But in the meantime, we encourage you to take a trip to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers before January 16th to see Paintbox Leaves: Autumnal Inspiration from Cole to Wyeth. Among the many lovely representations of Fall are four by Jasper F. Cropsey (1823-1900), two of them painted after he moved to Hastings in 1885. One in particular, “View at Hastings-on-Hudson,” gives a wonderful picture of what our village looked like at the end of the 19th century.

Looking at this painting, you can see just what Cropsey saw from his studio on Washington Avenue. There were fewer, and shorter, trees, and the artist had a wonderful view down through the Ravine to the river. In the center of the painting is the original Sugar Pond. A little stream leading off from the pond supplied water to the sugar refineries on the waterfront in the middle of the 19th century. According to the information that came to us with a turn of the century photograph, the buildings beyond the pond, on the east side of the train tracks, include McLave’s blacksmith shop, Schlachter’s saw mill and concrete block operation, and Ferguson’s livery stables. In the distance both sailing ships and steamboats float on the River.

Look for this painting and for “The Narrows at Lake George,” which Cropsey most likely painted in Hastings from earlier sketches. For museum hours and directions, see the Hudson River Museum website.

Hastings’ First Female Doctor

Sarah Elizabeth "Lizzie" Curry, probably taken in the 1880s.

Do you find obituaries depressing? But you never know what fascinating lives lie behind these short paragraphs! Take a look at this obituary from the Yonkers Herald Statesman of 1932.

“Hastings-on-Hudson, May 31 – Dr. Sarah Elizabeth Curry, one of the oldest woman doctors in the country, died at her home here yesterday after a long illness. Dr. Curry, who lived at 219 Thompkins Avenue, was in her late seventies. Born in New York, the daughter of the late Francis M. and Mary Lane Curry, she moved to Hastings at an early age. Because the Curry home was on the Yonkers-Hastings line, she attended School One in Yonkers for a number of years before continuing her education in Chappaqua and Pennington Seminary. She was graduated from the Women’s Medical College in New York and after practicing in that city, returned here to enter general practice. She retired about 15 years ago because of poor health. She is survived by her brother, Town Judge Frank E. Curry of Greenburgh, and a number of nieces and nephews. ... Burial will be in the family plot in Mount Hope Cemetery.”

Bare bones, indeed—but intriguing! A few comments in the oral histories done for the Historical Society by Vira Curry McNiece, Sarah’s niece, fill in some of the details.

“There was a carriage house on the property that was quite a distance from the house. It housed a two-seater carriage and a buggy. It had a flight of stairs that wound upstairs where the walls were plastered. That’s where school was held. Some of the children around attended, as did my mother. My doctor aunt taught there for a while after my grandfather died while she was waiting for her inheritance.

Later she practiced somewhere in New York, and then she came home and commuted on the old Putnam Railroad, going down every morning and coming back in the evenings. Still later she had her office at our house in Hastings. She charged 50 cents for office visits. I don’t think she had too large a practice, but she made lots of house calls—for $1.00 each—in her horse and buggy. She had quite a few patients in northern Yonkers and on Washington Avenue in Hastings. [Both lower income neighborhoods (Ed).] She was a homeopathic doctor. She lived to be 76 when she died of cancer.”

We’d love to know more about Dr. Lizzie. Anything we discover, we’ll share with you!

June 1894 graduating class of the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women, a homeopathic institution incorporated under the University of the State of New York in 1863. Sarah is the tallest woman standing in the back row, framed by the central arch. This was the first place in New York City where a woman could study medicine and, until 1918, the only hospital that accepted female interns. When Sarah attended it, the school was located near Carnegie Hall.

Broadway: A Millionaires’ Playground

The New York City Coaching Club's road coach "Pioneer" stopping to change horses in Hastings on the way to the Ardlsey Country Club, ca. 1900. (This photograph is a detail of the photograph further down the page. Click either one to examine it more closely in Flickr.)

The Historical Society has a fabulous collection of personal reminiscences from Hastings residents. Buried in the notes of those who were children at the turn of the century are several references to a coach and a barn “owned by Vanderbilt”.

Albert Shaw Jr. wrote that, as a child, he used to go down in his pony cart to Broadway near Washington Avenue “where the coach-horses were changed when Vanderbilt drove up every day from New York City to the Ardsley Country Club.”

In the 1920s, village President Alfred F. Kneen remembered that there was a barn a little to the north of Washington Avenue, across from or at the foot of Olinda Avenue, that was owned by “Vanderbilt” and where the “Tallyho” changed horses.

Memories of those days were so dim that, by the time they were written down, some people thought the coach that came through Hastings had belonged to the Astors rather than to the Vanderbilts. Everyone agreed, though, that going to see the horses changed was a tremendously thrilling event. A little research tells us why, and lets us in on a very odd corner of American history: the late 19th century sport of coaching.

Ardsley Country Club's own four-in-hand coach, the "Tally-Ho", on Broadway on its way through Hastings to the Brunswick Hotel in the city. Road coaches could seat 12 on the outside of the coach -- only the occasional lady's maid sat inside.

It was the English nobility who first turned coach driving into a sport. In the middle of the 19th century stagecoaches as public transportation were rendered obsolete by the railroads. But riding along an open country road in a brightly painted rig filled with well-dressed ladies and gentlemen still had an appeal. There were also some gentlemen who loved the challenges of coach driving—picking and training the properly balanced four-horse teams, and controlling the teams during the drive.

In 1875, two wealthy anglophiles, Colonel William Jay and Colonel DeLancey Astor Kane, helped to found New York City’s Coaching Club. Col. Kane’s own yellow road coach, imported from England and called the “Tally-ho”, made such an impression on the public that, from that moment on, all road coaches were referred to as “tallyhos.” Frank Leslie’s Magazine referred to coaching as “the sport of millionaires,” and the costs associated with it were very high—members of the Coaching Club owned both the coach itself and several changes of horses (Alfred G. Vanderbilt had 71 trotters), as well as employing grooms and trainers, and renting stables along the coaching routes where the horses would be changed—like the barn in Hastings.

The Coaching Club indulged in pleasant outings to one another’s country homes and in annual parades around Central Park—and also in what was called “public coaching.” In his 1967 article for American Heritage Magazine, Frank Kintrea defined the term: “Briefly, public coaching meant simply this: a gentleman or group of gentlemen, of sufficient wealth and ample leisure, would undertake to drive a coach on a regular schedule over a specified route, carrying passengers who had paid a fare. Anyone, theoretically, could reserve a seat on such a coach, and by paying fifty cents or a dollar extra, he could ride on the box beside the coachman, who might be DeLancey Astor Kane or Reginald Rives or even, if he were lucky, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. It may be too much to expect to fathom why Messrs. Kane, Rives, and Vanderbilt should have derived pleasure from such employment, but it is indisputable that they did.”

In theory, as Kintrea says, anyone could buy a ticket, and it only cost a few dollars. But one had to buy it at the swank New York hotel from which the coach departed. Most often, the passengers were friends and relatives of the driver or wealthy out-of-town visitors.

This is the photograph that the first detail was taken from -- here you can see the stable on the left with the sign that reads "Pioneer Coach Stable", the flock of boys running out to get a good look at the coach and its occupants (according to an 1899 article, this was one of the most amusing features of the ride for the passengers), and the cop keeping order from the sidelines. We are on Broadway, looking south, and Washington Avenue is on the right, just beyond the picket fence. In the foreground is the wheel of an automobile.

The coach that ran through Hastings was the “Pioneer” on its route from the Holland House hotel on Madison Square to the Ardsley Country Club. The run was 26 miles, and since it was thought to be best to change horses every four or five miles, Hastings was only one of five or six stops. The steep stretch from Yonkers to Hastings was thought to be the hardest on the horses, which may explain why they were changed in Hastings. At each of these stops there would be a new set of horses and possibly an extra groom to help with the change. The drive was timed for two and a half hours each way with a three hour stopover for lunch at the country club before returning to New York City. At its fastest, the coach reached speeds of almost 12 miles an hour.

The “Pioneer” did not belong to an individual, but was sponsored by the Coaching Club as a whole. Two of the most common drivers were Alfred G. Vanderbilt and Reginald W. Rives. Alfred Vanderbilt was the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Rives became a millionaire after inheriting the estate of his father, who claimed descent from English kings. During the years 1898 to 1907, Vanderbilt, Rives, or one of the other members of the Coaching Club drove the route every day but Saturday for eight weeks beginning the Monday after Easter. But already in 1903 coaching enthusiasts could see the writing on the wall. “The witchery inseparable from handling four good horses is but little appreciated by the youth of the day, who seem to prefer the ‘honk’ of the hooting automobile to the ringing music of a ‘yard of tin’ [coach horn],” said one fan.

In 1907, having lost $6,000 on public coaching the previous year, the Coaching Club withdrew from this activity. That fall, Alfred Vanderbilt, one of public coaching’s greatest enthusiasts, drove his own coach, the “Venture,” along the old route to Ardsley, but that was to be public coaching’s last season in the United States.

Diagram of the "Pioneer" from a 1904 article in the magazine Outing, written by Reginald Rives. On the bottom he shows how the names of the places through which the coach will pass is written on the sides of the coach -- Hastings appears on the right, under Dobbs Ferry.

Open House This Saturday, Dec. 5th

Now that Thanksgiving is over and the last slice of pumpkin pie has been eaten, we can turn our attention to the next set of holidays! We don’t often open the cottage on a Saturday, but in honor of the season we are going to have an open house this coming weekend.

Come by and visit us at 407 Broadway between 10AM and 2PM on Saturday, December 5th. It will be your last chance to catch our 2009 exhibitions, including the displays on the Hudson-Fulton Celebration of 1909 and on John William and Henry Draper’s contribution to celestial photography. You can also help to support the good work of the Historical Society by stocking up on our t-shirts, postcards, prints, throws, and maps, buying yourself a copy of the Arcadia Press book on Hastings, or renewing your membership. They all make wonderful gifts. If you can’t make it to the cottage, take a look at our “Emporium” on the web site. It includes pictures of all our offerings and a mail-in order form. Give us a call if you have any questions.

We also have some lovely note cards with Hastings scenes that make perfect Season's Greetings cards. Our best seller since 1982 is this lovely little watercolor painting by Jasper F. Cropsey showing a sleigh flying down Ravensdale Road.


In Cropsey’s day, Hastings was much less built up than it is today, and his many paintings of our town show an area where the presence of human beings had not yet disfigured the natural landscape. And it was the natural landscape that inspired Cropsey, as you can tell from this letter that Cropsey wrote to John Wickliffe Kitchell in November of 1897.

“Some years ago, one winters day, I felt like having a little recreation—and a tramp in the snow—which lay freshly fallen, and very tempting in the sun-light. It did not seem cold—the air was so soft, and glorious; although a biting frost prevailed and with buttoned up overcoat I wended my way nearly knee-deep, out, and along the Farragut Avenue, here, near my place at Hastings-on-Hudson till I came to a turning called Ravensdale Road. This struck my fancy as being delightful, picturesque, and artistic. I immediately turned in, on this lovely road. By this time the sun had warmed the sky, and an afternoon glow had begun to prevail. A little further tramping and I entered a bit of wood, in which the snow lay pure and soft, and untrodden; tinted with gleaming sun light that flitted in, and out through the stately tree-trunks warming the branches with roseatic light, while it deepened every little hollow in the more obscure parts of the woods, with a cool shadow. Thus, I tramped along, admiring the beauty of the soft blue in the sky overhead—the warmth and glow in the fresh snow besplattered tree trunks: when turning to take a moments breath, I had before me, ... just as the sleigh came dashing along, the subject of your picture, cool and tender, as no language can describe.

It is needless to say, I went no further but then and there made notes which I embodied in the picture which was produced on my return home of which I think you are to be congratulated as the happy possessor.”

Cropsey is referring to the fact that Kitchell had recently purchased one of his paintings entitled “The Ravensdale Road in Winter.” Kitchell’s painting and the painting on our note card are two of Cropsey’s variations on the same theme. Not all are dated, but they must have been produced after 1885, when Cropsey first moved to Hastings.

Another of our Cropsey note cards, "Winter on the Hudson," painted in 1887. The original painting is in collection of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation

John Wickliffe Kitchell was a mid-westerner who had made his little fortune in developing coal mines and farming land in Illinois. In the 1890s he retired and began to enlarge his art collection. His favorite artist was Jasper F. Cropsey. Between 1897 and 1900, Kitchell purchased twenty of Cropsey’s paintings through the St. Louis dealer Alfred Newhouse for a sum in excess of $5,000. This must have seemed like a fortune to an artist who spent the last years of his life in poverty.

Kitchell liked to have a “pedigree” for his paintings, and Newhouse encouraged Cropsey to send Kitchell notes about the paintings he bought, giving him some description of the subject—whether it was Greenwood Lake, Niagra Falls, or Storm King. It was perhaps from these letters about Kitchell’s purchases that a friendly correspondence developed between Kitchell and Cropsey. Kitchell urged the artist more than once to visit him at his home in Pana, Illinois. But Cropsey, worried perhaps about the cost of the trip, always excused himself, explaining that he simply had too much work.

Kitchell’s painting, along with his correspondence with Cropsey, is now in the collection of the MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois. The painting on our note card is in the collection of long-time Historical Society friend and supporter Barbara Newington. And there are several other versions of the Ravensdale Road theme in other collections, in watercolor and oil. One of these, a watercolor entitled “Winter—Ravensdale Road,” sold at auction at Christie’s in 1995 for $45,600.

And yet another! "The Ravine at Hastings," a watercolor painted by Cropsey in 1895 and showing a view down the Ravine only a few years before the Warburton Avenue Bridge was built, with the pond in the center, a few of the houses near the railroad tracks, and, in the distance, steamships and sailing boats on the Hudson. The original painting is in the collection of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation.

Cutting Edge Technology in Hastings: The Phonograph

If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you probably have some sense of how many unidentified photographs we have in our collection. In order to identify a photograph, we have to find the right person with the right knowledge, but sometimes that knowledge is not of names and faces.

The photograph you see above belonged to the late Margaret Woodrow of Hillside Avenue. It has no name, no date, no marks of any kind on it. Our resident costume expert, Kenneth Loyal Smith, was attracted by the young lady’s gorgeous sleeves. That kind of sleeve, he says, became popular in 1897, and the tight collar narrows the date of the dress down to right around 1899 or 1900. Kenneth also recognized the machine at her elbow as an early phonograph, the kind that played wax cylinders.

Some online research turned up the following advertisement for a machine with a similar silhouette. It was produced by the National Phonograph Company, a company founded by Thomas Edison.


The ad belongs to Neil Lerner, a collector of early Edison phonographs who lives in North Carolina. Neil was kind enough to look at our picture, and in his opinion the phonograph in is one of Edison’s “Home” units. You can identify the model, he says, by the clips on the side of the case. These clips were used to attach the lid of this “portable” (25 lbs.) machine. Behind the woman’s elbow is a hole in the case into which a crank would have been inserted to wind up the phonograph. Only a dozen seconds of cranking, and then you could sit back and listen to an entire 2-minute cylinder -- a song, a speech, or a story.

In the 1850s, several inventors had toyed with ideas for a sound recording machine, but it was Thomas Edison who developed the first machine that could reliably record and play back sound. He demonstrated his new invention in 1877 and patented it in 1878. At the time, the phonograph was seen as an almost magical device, and was the first of Edison’s inventions to bring him international fame. Edison went on to work on other projects and came back to take up the commercial manufacture of phonographs in the late 1880s. His earliest machines were leased for business use, but in 1896 he started the National Phonograph Company specifically to manufacture phonographs to be sold to home owners.

Edison’s first domestic machine was the phonograph in Neil’s ad, the “Home” model A. It was originally priced at $40, but competition with The Columbia Phonograph Company’s “Gramophones” reduced the price of Edison’s unit to $30. As the advertisement claims, the phonograph could both play and record. Undoubtedly a bargain. In 1901 this model was restyled and the clips removed, and this allows us to date the machine that appears in our photograph to between 1896 and 1901. If the picture was taken, as the dress suggests, around 1900, the phonograph would certainly have been a new and exciting addition to the household.

The woman in the photograph remains a mystery, but we can make a guess. Margaret Woodrow was born in 1904, and this young lady looks about the right age to have been Margaret’s mother. It does seem unlikely that Margaret would have had in her possession a picture of a woman of the previous generation, taken before she herself was born, unless that woman was a relative. Margaret’s mother was Frances McConnell, daughter of Benjamin McConnell who built a house for his family at 65 Washington Avenue in about 1860. We may be looking at the interior of that very house, and the woman may be Frances or Frances’ sister, whose name was also Margaret.


This is a photograph of Margaret Woodrow taken in 1923, the year after she graduated from Hastings High School. Is there a resemblance?

Of course, we can’t say for sure. The photograph at the top of the blog may show an older friend or mentor of Margaret’s who didn’t even live in Hastings. But, even if that is the case, photographs of domestic machines and household appliances are rare, and it is exciting to discover in our collection an image of one of the earliest phonographs.

Cutting Edge Technology in Hastings: The Automobile

The Society's earliest photograph of a car, probably taken before 1907 (click on any photograph for more information)

On Memorial Day of 1896, Hastings residents were thrilled by an event that had, until then, only been witnessed by residents of Paris, London, and Chicago – a horseless carriage race! The race began at about 2PM at King’s Bridge and passed along Broadway through Yonkers, Hastings, and Dobbs Ferry, with the finishing line in front of the veranda of the Ardsley Country Club. The judges waiting on the veranda included John Jacob Astor, Chauncey Depew (President of the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad) and Frank Thomson (Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad). Here is how this momentous occasion was described in a 1929 article from the Hastings News:

“John Brisbane Walker, then editor of the Cosmopolitan, living at Irvington on an estate near what is now the Chevrolet factory and in a house built by Stanford White, offered ... $1,000 to anyone who could ride from New York City to Irvington in one of the new-fangled “horseless carriages.” No time limit was stipulated. All the contestants had to do was to get to Irvington. People from miles around … gathered in anticipation of the momentous ride.

All Hastings jammed its way along the road. From New York seven [according to the New York Times, there were only six] determined riders started out. Riding before them on horse back were couriers who were to clear the way and to see that no on was hurt by the speeding monsters. Hours passed. People on the Handy porch [at Broadway and Warburton] craned their necks. There was a tremendous noise, as if a dozen threshing machines were in action. Around the bend two puffing, steaming horseless carriages were coming at a terrific rate of 8 miles an hour. Cheers broke out.

Eventually one of the two got to Irvington. The Columbus got Mr. Walker’s $1,000.”

The winner of the race was Frank Duryea. He was driving one of his company’s Duryea Motor Wagons, which were among the first “motor-vehicles” powered by gasoline. Frank covered the 13 miles from King’s Bridge to Ardsley in one hour, five minutes, and forty-two and two-fifths seconds. A year earlier, Frank had won the Chicago Times Herald race with an even better speed -- 7.5 miles an hour.

In 1895 the horseless carriage was called “a pack of French nonsense,” which could never replace a horse. In 1910 a series of photographs were taken of the lively Hastings - Dobbs Ferry Auto Club, documenting the first stirrings of Hastings’ addiction to the newfangled machine.

The Hastings - Dobbs Ferry Auto Club on Broadway near the Hastings - Dobbs Ferry boundary in 1910. Many Hastings residents were members, including Irving Smith, Frederick Charles Sr., Thomas F. Reynolds, Walter Keys, Henry Collins Brown, and the actor Walker Whiteside. These were some of the wealthier members of our community, and it’s not surprising to find them all in the auto club, since they were the ones who could afford to purchase automobiles.

Beneath Our Feet

by Judy Chamberlain

The Hastings waterfront in 1929.

In a recent post, I wrote about walking on the bluestone slabs and asphalt hexagon tiles that lined the sidewalks of Warburton Avenue. Initially, I wasn’t aware that two local industries, which began in the 19th century and were located side by side along the Hudson, provided Hastings with its variety of sidewalks -- and a number of jobs.

In 1882 Hurst and Treanor, dealers in bluestone, established a yard and mill on the waterfront, on the site that would later become Anaconda Wire & Cable Company. While Hurst ran the New York City end of the business, James Treanor moved to Hastings to oversee that operation. By 1885, brother Frank had joined the business of Treanor Stone Works, which had become one of the largest employers in the village.

Detail of an 1889 insurance map showing the Hastings Pavement Company and Treanor's Stoneworks.

Originally, the bluestone was brought from Oxford, NY, via the Hudson River. Oxford was strategically located on the Chenango Canal, an important waterway that went from Binghamton to Utica, and the water access helped in transporting these tremendous stones down east to be cut. In the 1870s, the railroad lines were improving, but the weight and size of the stones presented problems. However, the situation was remedied by James Treanor. He designed a special railroad car that held a stone up on its edge and away from the sides of the railroad car. His ingenious invention helped perfect the stone shipping business and, no doubt, contributed to the success of Treanor Stone Works.

Milled bluestone was very popular in its day and was used for sidewalks, curbs, and architectural elements. The village benefited from this local resource and used the milled stones for many of its sidewalks. You can still find them in certain parts of town.

Employees at the Hastings Pavement Company, ca. 1890.

Another waterfront business that provided Hastings with jobs as well as sidewalks was the Hastings Pavement Company. In 1880 a factory was built to begin manufacturing asphalt blocks, a process that combined crushed stone with asphalt and molded it into uniformed sizes and shapes for sidewalks. In 1897, the Hastings Pavement Company employed 30 men, and in the following year it gave work to 50 men; by 1907, 214 men worked for the company.

With asphalt brought in from Trinidad, limestone from Verplanck Point up the Hudson, and later trap rock from the Hudson Palisades, Hastings Pavement manufactured the 8-inch hexagonal and rectangular paving blocks that remain on some sidewalks in the village today. Unfortunately, a fire in 1928 destroyed the building. The company remained in Hastings until 1936, when it moved to Long Island. It is still in operation, and even though its headquarters are in Islip, it has retained its original name – the Hastings Pavement Company.

Machinery in operation at the Hastings Pavement Company, ca. 1910.