Ice Yachting on the Frozen Hudson River, 2014!

Posted on March 15, 2014 by HV-Rob


Ice yachts lined up at Astor Point, Barrytown, NY. March 2, 2014.

What a historic couple of weeks on the Hudson River! This winter’s constant freezing temperatures made it possible for the Hudson River to form a solid cover for nearly 20 miles north of Kingston and Rhinecliff. This weather was eagerly met by enthusiasts of ice yachting, a sport once practiced by the owners of the riverfront estates of Dutchess County.

Today, ice yachting is mainly reserved to lakes and ponds in New Jersey, New York, and New England. It has occurred on the Hudson River in recent years, perhaps sporadically in the last decade, but the general consensus that I heard was that the year 2004 last presented conditions that were right for this many boats to be on the Hudson for an extended period.

Ice yachts, or ice boats, don’t really resemble their warm weather cousins except for the sails that provide the bulk of their shape. The vessels are really just two crosspieces of wood and a mast. The longer beam contains a seat or pod at the end, usually with room enough for two adult passengers. (One of the larger boats had two pods.) The shorter beam has two skates on which the boat glides. A third skate is under the pod and is used to steer the boat. They may not appear to have much weight, but I was told that these yachts can weigh up to a ton or more. Reports vary, but generally I also heard that speeds of 40 miles-per-hour are easily attainable; higher wind speeds may of course drive the boats even faster.

This winter really created a time machine that enabled us to experience, in-person on the Hudson River, an activity mostly relegated to history books and museum collections. I can’t say that I knew too much about ice yachting before, especially the part about it still being in practice in the present day, but as soon as I heard this was “on”, I was there.


Skaters on Peek’s Kill Bay.
The Hudson, From the Wilderness to the Sea. Lossing, Benson, J. Troy, NY: H.B. Nims & Co. 1866.

Members of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club began to pay close attention to ice conditions in late January after daily high temperatures were consistently in the 20s. Some yachts even sailed then. Mid-February brought several snow storms, interrupted by a few days of warm weather. The second storm brought snow followed by icy rain, followed by another period of freezing weather. This cycle allowed the various layers of ice/snow/ice to harden into a solid sheet about one-foot thick at Kingston-Rhinecliff. Combined with wind, these conditions presented a rare opportunity for an extended season of ice yachting on open ice.

If not for a channel cut by the US Coast Guard to allow tanker ships to travel the Hudson River, it would have been possible to cross the Hudson between Dutchess and Ulster Counties. At Kingston-Rhinecliff however, the channel is cut so near to the Ulster shoreline, that there was a vast uninterrupted sheet of solid ice. This was the playground for the ice yachts.

For the public, the official parking area was at Barrytown Dock where access to the river was provided. From the dock there was a short walk on the Hudson River to Astor Point, past the historic Edgewater mansion, one of the truly great houses on the Hudson (and still privately owned).

The Hudson River Ice Yacht Club has its home base at Astor Point, at the foot of the Rokeby estate – another great mansion that has been continuously owned, occupied, and preserved by the Aldrich family, who played gracious hosts to the ice yachting event.

Sunday March 2 was the first day I was able to attend, having been given the recent heads-up by Ray Armater, a coworker who lives in Dutchess County. There was not much wind that day, but the yachts took advantage of whatever gusts blew through. All the sailors told me how great the previous day was, with wind aplenty. Saturday March 1 also marked the re-emergence of the Rocket, one of the largest ice yachts and recently restored by the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club from New Jersey.

This weekend marked perhaps the greatest convergence of so many ice yachts on the Hudson River in a long time, and the public came in large numbers to see the goings-on. After the word spread in news outlets and social media, several hundred people gathered on Sunday March 2 to see, by my estimate, maybe three dozen or so ice yachts and ice-gliders (is there a proper name for wind surfers on ice?). I thought the crowds were smaller in the following weekend, but not by much.

No doubt that most boat owners wanted to sail for themselves and take as much advantage of this rare opportunity as possible, but they generously offered rides to patient members of the public, some of whom waited a half hour or more “in line” for a ride on one boat or another. I compare a ride in an ice yacht to riding a rollercoaster – no vertical movement of course, but plenty of speed and turns – but laying flat and facing forward, and only a small wooden handrail to secure oneself. Upon exiting the ice yachts, the new riders all had great expressions and exuberant exclamations. It really could be called a thrill of a lifetime, since for many of us it was our first such experience, and who knows – it may be our last, or one that won’t happen again for a long time – a prospect all were no doubt aware of.

On Sunday the 2nd, Wint Aldrich (author of the very fine foreword to Hudson Valley Ruins: Forgotten Landmarks of an American Landscape) was kind enough to ask a favor for me of his nephew Ben Lemerle, who gave me a ride on the Rip van Winkle. It was a short ride on account of low wind speeds, but we circled the ice for a few minutes, enough time for me to savor the thrill of my first ever ride on the frozen Hudson.

On March 8 there was no wind whatsoever in the morning while I was present, but in the afternoon of Sunday March 9, the wind picked up again, and the boats were off to the races. I first secured a ride on the Cold Wave, a two-seat boat capable of taking four adults. This ride was much more exciting than my experience the week before, with greater wind speeds of course. I was almost ready to call an end to my time on the Hudson when I noticed the Vixen taking many turns and sailing for long distances, and determined myself to get on that boat. Reid Bielenberg, the Vixen’s owner, was generously taking participants on 10+minute journeys up and across the Hudson River before circling back to Astor Point. After about 40 minutes or so, I finally got my chance, and what a ride it was! A link to a short video clip from this ride is posted at the bottom of this article.

The afternoon of March 8 was considerably warm. The rising temperature combined with tracks from the yachts and skaters made for bad ice on March 9. It was still good enough for the ice yachts, but bad for ice skating. March 9 was the last day for most of the ice yachts – even warmer temperatures were predicted for the week, and the ice would no longer be safe. The Rocket and Jack Frost were being taken down just past mid-day, likely because many hands were needed to disassemble the two large boats. Other boats docked in the cove overnight, to be removed a day or two later.

Perhaps the best thing about these weekends on the frozen Hudson River was that it was good old-fashioned fun. There was no admission fee and no written rules, and common sense prevailed as far as safety on the ice and respect for the owners of the boats and members of the clubs. There was no official merchandise, and no need to “buy into” anything the way professional sports are followed, and just by being on the ice it felt as if history was being made.

For those of us in the Hudson River community, it was great to see many friends and familiar faces, and to make new friends too. It was an experience I was excited and grateful to have participated in, and I sure hope that many more snowy, cold winters lay ahead, with them more opportunities for ice yachting!


Help Stamp Out Summer!

LINKS:
Hudson River Ice Yacht Club (HRIYC)

2014 Hudson River Ice Conditions Reports, compiled by the HRIYC

US Coast Guard Aerial Survey of Ice Conditions for March 6, 2016 – Page 17 shows a solid sheet of ice at the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge

White Wings and Black Ice – A blog dedicated to 2014’s ice yachting on the Hudson River.

North Shrewsbury Ice Boat & Yacht Club

A number of news outlets reported on this ice yachting spectacle. Curiously, the Poughkeepsie Journal News and the Kingston Freeman are absent from this list. Perhaps due in part to the decline of local news coverage in newspapers and concurrent outsourcing to national outlets (My local newspaper, the Journal News of Westchester County, has sadly become a near carbon-copy of USA Today).
MSN – Photo Gallery
MSN – Video
Forbes – Article and Video
NBC Nightly News – Video Report
The New York Times – Article, 2014
The New York Times – Article and Slide-show, 2013
The New York Times – Article, 2009


Franklin D. Roosevelt on ice yacht, Hawk, in Hyde Park. 1905.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, sourced from Hudson River Valley Heritage.

Historic Ice Yachting on the Hudson River – Newspaper search results for “ice yacht” at the Hudson River Valley Heritage website.

Historic Ice Yachting on the Hudson River – Photographic search results for “ice yacht” at the Hudson River Valley Heritage website.


The driveway to Astor Point. March 2, 2014.
This weekend the road was wide enough for a car and a half, and surrounded by a foot and a half of snow. Following the deluge of visitors, the road was plowed and widened for the next weekend.


Bridge over the railroad tracks to Astor Point.


7am, March 8, 2014.


The Vixen.


Ariel. This oval “pod” is where the “ice sailors” lay. The skate below is used to steer the boat.


A side-skate, The Hound.


Orion.


The Vixen.


Raising sails on the Rip van Winkle.


Rocket (center) and Georgie II (right).


The Hound.


Getting ready to sail.


Setting forth.


The North Wind.


Looking towards the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge.


Ulster Landing is the backdrop of this photograph.


Ice-skating was also popular. The ice was very good south of Astor Point on March 2, and across an even broader area on March 8.
I don’t think I even allowed myself to imagine the possibility of one day being able to skate on the Hudson River, let alone all way the way across it (er, out to the shipping channel, which was pretty close to the Ulster County shore). Ice boats or not, skating on the Hudson River was itself a major thrill for me.


Checking the ice at the edge of the shipping channel.


Random stick in the ice.


Racing a tanker (Tanker RTC-PO?).


The Cold Wave.


Two views from the seat of the Vixen.


Modern boats mixed with the older vessels.


Wind-surfers joined in as well.


Some black-and-white.


The Cyclone.


I really liked the shapes of the vessels and found them to cut very photogenic figures from all angles.


Amtrak trains rolled past the scene, their horns blown long and loud to alert persons walking the tracks from Barrytown. I wonder how many passengers took note of this rare sight outside their windows.


Looking across to Ulster County and the Catskill Mountains.


The boats lined up mid-day Sunday afternoon for lunch break and to await the next gusts of wind so they could race again. This many boats gathered in one place on the ice was a most-historic spectacle.


About 2pm or so on Sunday March 2, the Hudson Valley Brass ensemble arrived and performed for the assembled crowd.


Many new friends were made on the ice.


The chef brought food out on an ATV for club members.


Running down the ice from Barrytown to join the festivities.


I’m not sure that dirtbike was the most effective way to get to Astor Point from Barrytown, but this young fellow thoroughly enjoyed his adventure.


The ice sailors, yacht owners and/or club members, all were generous with their time and expertise with the curious and amazed public, some of whom were lucky enough to snag rides when the opportunities arose.


All lined up with the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge as backdrop.


View towards Astor Cove, March 8, 2014.


View of Astor Cove. March 8, 2014.


Clearly, an advertisement for an automobile manufacturer, or an outdoor lifestyle company. (Photo concept credit: Tom Rinaldi. We often “borrow” each other’s ideas.)


Hauling in.


A late-afternoon ride comes to an end.


A few hardy sailors stayed out til sunset.


Rinaldi & Yasinsac on the ice. Photo by Stephanie LaRose Lewison.


Yours truly, rocking some well-commented-upon snow pants.

VIDEO LINKS
I have posted to my Vimeo account several videos from the two weekends. These are raw videos, not edited in anyway. They are simply documents of what it was like to watch the yachts glide across the ice. Their shapes and their swift movements made me think of so many insects hovering around a pond in summer.
If your computer speakers are on, you may want to turn down the volume, as mostly you will just hear the blasting wind.

View towards Edgewater estate and Barrytown Dock (#5336)
View Towards Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge (#5335)
Looking North (#5332)
View toward Ulster County (#5331)
A Boat Glides By (#6093)
A Ride on the Vixen (#6299)

Posted in Dutchess County, Hudson River Valley Recreation | 11 Comments

Richmond Hill, Irvington, NY

Posted on February 23, 2014 by HV-Rob

Or, “How a near-obsolete piece of technology helped identify a box of mystery photographs.”

In 2004 or 2005 I received email from Oliver Parsons in England. He recently came across a set of photographs of a magnificent mansion but the photos and the box that contained them provided only a few clues, none of which could immediately identify the house nor its location… which turned out to be all the way across the ocean in Irvington, New York, the United States! How was this determined? Well, I’ll simply let Oliver’s telling provide the answer. I seem to have lost his original email to me, but this is a later message that he sent to the Irvington Historical Society.

Here is the story very much in brief from the beginning.

The brother of a friend died, and in his possessions THE BOX was found in his garage.

The box was once deep red, with gold letters inscribed RICHMOND HILL. Inside there are some seventy professional high-quality photographs of the interior of a fine house.

The photos were all carefully staged – no people – no exteriors – very few clues. So I tried Richmond, Surrey, Richmond, Yorkshire – no leads there. To my horror the gazetteer shows some 25 places in the world called Richmond or Richmond Hill! Then the penny dropped that RICHMOND HILL was the name of a house, rather than a town. So where does one start? Clues in the photos – there is a calendar and a Christmas Tree that dated in at December 1930. There are a few portrait photographs, but whose were they?


Ballroom with Christmas Tree.


View of Billiard Room into Sitting Room.


Library.

The internet produced several likely places including Richmond Hill Inn, Asheville, NC, and surely there it is. But it was not. I tried the Richmond Hill, NY, historical society, but they did not recognise it. I found a record of an architect called Hill who had built houses around Washington, but it was not his. And so the quest went on.


Broncho Bill.

There are a number of fine bronzes, including Broncho Bill with an inscription to George Hill from “his broncho busters.” But who could George Hill have been?


Broncho Bill inscription.

And in one photograph there is a telephone. And on the phone there is a disc that can just be discerned as IRVINGTON. Would you believe that there is a website that collects old telephone exchange names that led me to Irvington, NY! There I have had great help from first Betsy Sadewhite of Westchester libraries, Lord & Burnham who built the conservatory, and then from Rob, and many others along the line.


Bust and telephone.


Telephone (detail).

Here is one of a number of pictures of the house that I now have. This one dated 1896 is described Dr Lucien Warner’s house (of corsetry and Warner Gymnasium).


Dr. Warner’s House, 1896.

Then I learned about Daniel Gray Reid, and George Washington Hill of American Tobacco (in)famy. I have recently made contact with a descendant of George Washington Hill’s brother, and the quest goes on.


Residence of DG Reid, Irvington.

And here is George Washington Hill’s portrait taken in 1945, the year before he died at 61.


George Washington Hill.

Two things puzzle me still. I cannot trace any record of the photographer, whose signature appears to be Paul W Martin, and how the box came to my friend’s brother, who lived at Harrow, Middlesex, UK. If I can learn more about the photographer, this could throw light.

Sadly I was a quarter century late to see the actual house!

Regards

Oliver Parsons


Stair from hall.


Hall towards stair and conservatory.


Paneled room with big bay.


Ceiling detail.


Ballroom with stage.


Bedroom.


Main bedroom.


Palm house with parrot.

Well, all hail the land-line rotary phone! Had that element not been included in the one photograph, and surely its presence was not necessarily intentional, these photographs might still remain unidentified. Many thanks to Oliver Parsons for allowing me to post his images to my site, and for sharing his story.

An entry for Richmond Hill already exists on the Hudson Valley Ruins website where previously I have incorporated one or two images and some of the historical information that Oliver shared with me. I thought it would be a fun blog entry to share his story too.

Richmond Hill was last occupied as a yeshiva until 1979, after which it was demolished and replaced by condominiums.


Another postcard view of the mansion.


Richmond Hill, 1979. This is one of the last photographs taken of the house. I don’t recall where I obtained the image from.

UPDATE:
Here is a link to an historic aerial photograph of the estate, submitted by Robert Stava:
http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/ryr/id/359

And a Bing.com link to an aerial view of the property today:
http://binged.it/1fPrtJr

Posted in Historic Photographs and Documents, Westchester County | 10 Comments

Hudson Valley Ruins Before the Internet?

Posted on February 13, 2014 by HV-Rob

When I recently photographed my grandmother’s artworks including her Tappan Zee Bridge construction paintings, my aunt also showed me some of her mom’s scrapbooks. One is entitled “Hudson River 1” and the other one is labeled “Tarrytown 2.” Both books consist of newspaper articles chronicling the historic sites and museums of the area and notable old buildings in general. Most of the articles were about then-current day news items while others were of the “look back in time” variety. The clippings were carefully cut to size and thus do not contain the newspaper headers or datelines, but it seems that they date to the mid-late 1960s.

I fully expected the scrapbooks to contain items relating to the properties of Sleepy Hollow Restorations (now Historic Hudson Valley). My grandmother worked, as I do now, at Philipsburg Manor, Van Cortlandt Manor, and Sunnyside. She worked for “the Restorations” (as long-time locals still call the museums!) at an exciting time when national interest in visiting historic house museums was perhaps at an all-time high, leading up to American Bicentennial. The burgeoning preservation movement and increasing public interest in historic sites resulted in extensive projects such as the 1960s decade-long effort to excavate, restore, and rebuild Philipsburg Manor to its mid-eighteenth century appearance.

I also expected to see articles about the various old buildings of Tarrytown. The Downing family were Tarrytown residents except for a very brief time that they lived in Ossining. Also, local newspapers then seemed to devote more space then to items of purely historical interest. Writers such as Wally Buxton collected their columns and presented them in book form later – Buxton’s collaboration with Jeff Canning resulted in the 1975 publication of History of the Tarrytowns, Westchester County, New York: From Ancient Times to the Present, which I have read and re-read many times over.

What interested me the most were articles about the impending demise of old hotels, commercial buildings, and estate barns, and articles about historical buildings that were in use then but were abandoned or demolished later. Also of interest were articles that celebrated industrial architecture along the Hudson River. Reviewing these scrapbooks was like looking at an ancient version of the Hudson Valley Ruins website. I wished I had seen some of those articles when Tom Rinaldi and I were working on our book, which I am sure my grandmother would have enjoyed reading with her active interest in the subject.

UPDATE:
So, I see on my ipod that some of the photos appear upside-down or sideways. On my desktop computer (yeah, I guess I’m one of the dinosaurs that still uses a desktop), the photographs appear right-side up in my web-browser and in various photo-editing software. I took the photographs with my ipod, which cannot seem to decide which side is right-side up. Sorry for you idevice-only users, I don’t know how to fix that problem.
#appleproductssuck

The Albums

Front cover of Hudson River 1


Inside cover of Hudson River 1


Front Cover of Tarrytown 2

The “Demolition Alert”

The Florence Hotel was located in Tarrytown on Broadway at Franklin Street. It first opened in 1821 and continued operations through 1955, no doubt expanded at some point in between (the hotel operated under various names at different times as well. It was demolished in 1964. The Florence also had a great neon sign. If the building could have gotten through the 1970s, perhaps it might have found new use. Although Tarrytown was something of a place to go “antiquing” in the 1980s and 1990s, and is now more recently a place for city-dwellers to boldly explore outside the boundaries of the five boroughs, the village’s proximity to Manhattan perhaps explains why there are no B&B’s here as there are in Cold Spring, further up the Hudson. There is certainly high demand for hotel rooms in the immediate area however, and the Florence Inn looks like it could have been a great candidate for filling that need again for those who prefer uniquely local accommodations.


Isaac Stern’s Cedar Lawn stood on the site now occupied by Irvington High School. The house was built about 1875 with plans designed in consultation with Alexander Jackson Davis for Augustus C. Richards who called it Ridgeview. In the early 1900s, Stern replaced the original mansard roof with crenelations. Too bad this awesome house was not preserved and made part of the new school complex. It would have been fantastic.


North Tarrytown’s Grade and High School stood on Beekman Avenue in what is now the parking lot and playground of the Winfield L. Morse School.


The Requa farmhouse on South Broadway was the site of an important archaeological excavation in the late 1970s/early 1980s, owing to its survival as a rare, intact, undisturbed tenant farm of colonial Philipsburg Manor. General Foods, whose research center stood nearby, demolished the farmhouse and a 19th century mansion for a proposed expansion of their facility. The property ultimately was not used for anything more than an exercise trail, and remnants of the old estate survive still. Montefiore, the current owner of the land, is now considering use of the site. My friend Paul Barrett has written about the history of the estate and the threat of redevelopment.


Today the Lyndhurst historic site occupies 67 acres between South Broadway and the Hudson River in Tarrytown. Under ownership of Jay Gould and later his daughters, the estate actually consisted of several hundred acres on both sides of Broadway including a farm on White Plains Road. The barns were demolished and two office buildings and a TGI Fridays were built in the late 1970s/early 1980s on the farm site. Today a stone foundation of one barn remains along with other evidence of past use.


The Washington Building (above and below) at the northwest corner of Broadway and Main Street in Tarrytown suffered major fire damage but the building was not destroyed. Damaged portions were rebuilt, though the roof lost its fancy conical turret, and the building remains a landmark.


It seems that the Washington Building is referenced by many different names. Old-timers might call it the Russell and Lawrie Building because of the drug store that once operated there. In the colonial period the site was occupied by the Couenhoven Inn.


Urban Renewal, Tarrytown.


The City of Beaumont aka Buccaneer was brought to Hastings-on-Hudson where it was moored and used as a restaurant. Later it served ingloriously as a bulkhead for an oil company; eventually its ruins were burned. In the early years of Hudson Valley Ruins, Tom Rinaldi and I visited Hastings’s waterfront to photograph another maritime ruin now lost, the steamer Lancaster.

The following sites were not ruins or demo-alerts then, but they are ruins or demolished now.


McMansions have replaced Rosemont on Route 9 in Scarborough. I also seem to recall from my youth having seen sheep on a farm along Route 9 south of Sleepy Hollow Country Club, and that is a sight you won’t see anymore.


The Lent House, “Peekskill’s Oldest House,” has been abandoned since the 1980s.


Ossining’s Robert Havell House was one of two great old mansions lost on Havell Street.


The buildings of the New York Trap Rock quarry in Verplanck are now ruins.

Chronicling Change

Recently the MTA reconstructed station platforms and overpasses at numerous Hudson Line stations. They did so just a few decades prior too. Maybe they got it right this time.


I would love to have seen Tarrytown’s former Transfiguration Church. The new one is, I guess, becoming more historically interesting by-the-year as it ages too.

Still Here

Above and below: Yonkers, Proud of its Riverfront. The sugar factory still makes the sweet stuff.


There are some amazing old brick industrial buildings in there.


The Saugerties Lighthouse actually became a ruin and was later restored as a bed-and-breakfast. It is popular. Rooms reserve well in advance.


Said to be the first Catholic church building constructed on the Hudson River north of New York City, the Chapel of Our Lady in Cold Spring was a ruin for decades until it was restored in the 1970s. It is one of the best, most perfectly located, sights along the river.


Gracemere Hall, one of the many great mid-19th century mansions of Tarrytown’s South End, is one of the very few still around.


This great old tree still stands in the South End woods.

Posted in Demolition Alert, Historic Photographs and Documents, Westchester County | 9 Comments

Tappan Zee Bridge Construction Art by Edith Downing

Posted on February 8, 2014 by HV-Rob

In this post I present the artwork of my grandmother Edith (Stein) Downing, particularly her images of the construction of the Tappan Zee Bridge.


Edith S. Downing, Tarrytown, NY.

As you may well know by now, a new Tappan Zee Bridge is under construction between Tarrytown and Nyack. I took the occasion of a recent holiday gathering at my aunt’s house to inquire about the paintings that my grandmother composed of the Tappan Zee Bridge as it was being built. Not only did I think there would be renewed interest in images of the Tappan Zee, but the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers just displayed some amazing artwork of similar themes in an exhibit entitled Industrial Sublime. The Tappan Zee Bridge may have presented new subject matter to my grandmother, but for her the Hudson River was a very familiar place.

Edith Downing painted a variety of subject matter including flowers, the human figure (we have her art school model sketches from 1922!), and portraits (low-res photo of a photo on that last link, sorry). For family members she painted reproductions of famous paintings – my favorite was a Remington scene. But it should be no surprise that I appreciate mostly her Hudson River scenes, which include images of Tarrytown, fishermen on the river, and historic buildings. Unlike the pastoral landscape artists of earlier generations whose works included distant farms, churches, and the occasional mill, and unlike Modernist painters who emphasized architectural form and structure as a triumph over nature, my grandmother’s watercolors embrace equally the Hudson River’s natural beauty and the architectural creations that have risen alongside of, and on, the river.


Tarrytown, showing the First Baptist Church, Christ Church, Tarrytown Lighthouse, Chevrolet factory, barges on the Hudson River, and Hook Mountain in Rockland County. Look too for sailboats further up the Hudson, the factory’s water tower, and a girl in a red jacket walking her dog.


Detail from above painting.


A fisherman checking his run off Croton Point, with Hook Mountain in the background. Five gulls are included as the only elements in the otherwise “blank”, cloudy, top-half of the scene. Downing included gulls in almost all her river paintings.


From a sketchbook, this image may be related to the Tappan Zee Bridge series.


A carriage house or barn with barrels. I wish I knew which, but I cannot identify the building. It likely does not survive anymore.


Edgemont, or Detmer’s Castle, was located in Tarrytown between Martling Avenue and Prospect Avenue. It was demolished in the early 1970s and replaced by condominiums.


The Mill at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow.


The Tappan Zee Bridge
John Charles, a clothing store on Main Street in Tarrytown, commissioned my grandmother to paint the proposed bridge on a mirror in the store for its annual holiday display. Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corporation, underwater engineers for the bridge supports, shared with her blueprints of the bridge to assist with her drawings. A construction official identified as Mr. Sanders brought her out on the Hudson River for closer views of the boats and the construction activity.

A 1980 article in the Tarrytown Daily News written by Phyllis Riffel discussed the origin of this artistic endeavor and further stated:
“During the ensuing years, Mrs. Downing continued to sketch in and around the waterfront and the collection of her work will be of particular interest to those who take the bridge for granted as part of the Tarrytown scene but were not present during its construction.”

“Included in the display are studies of the workboats in the river, heavy equipment on the shore of the river, the construction of the piers and views of activity from several vantage points. Unlike architectural drawings, Mrs. Downing has captured the mood of the river with its swift currents, busy traffic and the gulls and clouds overhead.”

In 1980, on he 25th anniversary of the opening of the Tappan Zee Bridge, the Warner Library in Tarrytown exhibited Edith Downing’s paintings and sketches. In the exhibit, the images were numbered and entitled as shown below. Some of the images remain definitively identifiable in 2014, while others are identified on this website as guesses. I am not showing all images at present, but I hope that all of the original artworks may be exhibited again.

1. Study of the Workboats
2. The Workboats
3. “Curlew”
4. “Cricket”
5. “Cheyenne” – Dredging
6. Caissons Begin to Appear
7. Sunset
8. Coming Through the Channel
9. Pile-driving the H-Beams
10. Study of the Piers
11. Cementing the Piers
12. Cement Mixer
13. View Through the Piers
14. Icy Morning
15. The Lighthouse View


02. The Workboats


03. “Curlew” (detail)


04. “Cricket”


09. Pile Driving the H-Beams


11. Cementing the Piers.


12. The Cement Mixer


15. The Lighthouse View


This small sketch was not part of the series of images displayed at the Warner Library in 1980. It seems to show the finishing touches being applied to the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Two pages of photographs of Edith Downing, construction officials, and workboats for the Bridge project appear in a family photo album. Some of those images are shown below.


Left to right: “Mr. Sanders, Fr. Corcoran, Edith, Mr. Smith.”

The Tappan Zee Bridge opened December 15, 1955.

Edith Downing (1903-1992) was born in New York City to Augusta Cantor Stein and Henry Charles Stein. She attended schools in the city until age 14 when the family moved to Tarrytown, where she graduated from Washington Irving High School. In the early 1920s she studied at Cooper Union in New York City under Victor Perard (an internationally known Parisian emigre and a prolific illustrator of fiction and nonfiction) and Joseph Cummings Chase (a portrait artist whose portfolio included images of Teddy Roosevelt, Will Rogers, and Albert Einstein). Ms. Downing continued her studies at Grand Central School of Art, also in New York, with Eric Pape (an illustrator for historical and fiction books) and Edmund Greacen (an Impressionist painter).

Downing later taught art at the Irving School for Boys (demolished, now the site of Sleepy Hollow High School), Marymount College (now the home of EF International), Hackley School, Transfiguration School, Our Lady of Victory Academy (demolished; located on County House Road in Tarrytown before it moved to Dobbs Ferry), and other parochial schools in Westchester and New York City. Because schools only offered art one day per week, she worked in five different locations each week, sometimes in Westchester, sometimes in Manhattan. She retired from teaching in 1960. Afterwards, until 1978, she was a guide for Sleepy Hollow Restorations and led tours at Van Cortlandt Manor (Croton-on-Hudson), Philipsburg Manor (Sleepy Hollow), and at Sunnyside (Tarrytown).


Edith Downing, self portrait. This is from a book of drawings she made of my mom when my mom was a child. My grandmother made drawings of her children and gave them each their own book.


Edith at Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Probably in the 1920s on her honeymoon with her husband Daniel. Point Pleasant continued to be a family vacation spot.


In the Glenwolde neighborhood, Tarrytown. Left to right, Kathleen (my mother) and her siblings John, Daniel, and Margeurite.


A drawing by my cousin Lisa Botto Lee.


Warner Library Exhibit, December 1980.


Warner Library Exhibit, December 1980.


Gannett Westchester Newspapers, December 5, 1980.


Edith Downing at Van Cortlandt Manor.

As is custom with all other content on hudsonvalleyruins.org, please do not reprint or republish elsewhere these images, in print or digitally. To share the images, please use this link: http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/rob/?p=1766.
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One other item about the Tappan Zee Bridge that I would like to remark upon is the repeated mistaken assertion by politicians, public officials, and reporters that the bridge was built to last only fifty years, and that it was built with substandard materials. Such a possibility defies logic. The statement was repeated again in the New York Times on January 19, 2014. (That article also includes a small selection of excellent historic images.)

The myth of the fifty-year lifespan seems to have modern origins in the timeline of discussions for replacing the bridge and cannot be found in any construction-era documentation. The Journal News researched this story and the New York State Thruway Authority itself debunked this myth in 2006 (See “Thruway Authority debunks Tappan Zee myth“).

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UPDATE 2/10/14:
Some more Tappan Zee Bridge goodness:

Here’s a promo film for the opening of the bridge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaReVTZkNNg

And Liz Taylor drives over the TZB in this film, just before getting in the “best and possibly most fabulous car crash ever.” Skip ahead to 1:55 or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH1yqy35xbk

Thanks to Paul Barrett for finding those links.

Posted in Non-ruins, Rockland County, Westchester County | 12 Comments

HVR 2013

Posted on December 25, 2013 by HV-Rob

My annual compendium of previously unpublished photographs chronicling a year of Hudson Valley Ruins. Included are some nearby-ish locations representative of months I did not visit any Hudson Valley sites.


January
A winter visit to some ruins in northern Westchester.


February
A child’s treasure in a burned-out house in Dutchess County.


March
I went bowling in March.


April
Found a “new” ruin in Putnam in April.


May
The future of Hudson Valley Ruins. Dutchess County sprawl.


June
Brandreth Pill Factory, again.


July
The Pocantico River has a new dam but the pump house of the New Rochelle Water Company is still a ruin.


August
The Iron Triangle is not long for this world.


September
I wonder if this house will ever see a revival; it surely deserves to.


October
Fall colors, factory style.


November
Hudson River State Hospital has been sold. A place we won’t see the likes of again once it is gone.


December
I took my annual December road trip through Central New York to see all the small towns between Binghamton, Oswego, and Schenectady. Lots of great stuff up that way. This was the Amsterdam Bedding Company.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year,

Rob

Posted in HVR Annual Calendar | 1 Comment

Jackson House, Fishkill

Posted on December 13, 2013 by HV-Rob

Fishkill’s Jackson House was demolished on December 3, 2013, following an executive meeting of the Village Board of Trustees the night before at which the Building Inspector and Mayor James Miccio declared the house to be “unsafe.” Although the house is privately owned, by Jackson Crossing, LLC, village taxpayer funds were used to demolish the house. What a nice public gift to the property owner who will no doubt develop the site for their own profit.

The Jackson House was thought to date to 1741, with later additions. For more information, see the Poughkeepsie Journal and the Hudson Valley Reporter.

Matt Kierstead took the following photographs and kindly offered to share them here.

Thank you Matt for the photographs.

Posted in Demolition Alert, Dutchess County | 2 Comments

Bannerman’s Island Arsenal – Tower Stabilization

Posted on November 30, 2013 by HV-Rob

Some good news here for a turn. I have just received some photos from Wes Gottlock of the Bannerman Castle Trust that show the beginning of work being done to stabilize the tower of Bannerman’s Island Arsenal.

The arsenal, or castle as it is popularly known, consists of several contiguous structures built over a decade or so. The “tower,” the tallest building, was built in 1909 and its exterior walls stood until the winter of 2009/2010, when about 2/3 of it collapsed in two separate storms. The other buildings that comprise the castle include the Number 2 and Number 3 Arsenals, which stand more-or-less intact, and the Number 1 Arsenal and the Superintendents’ House, which have consisted of fragmentary ruins for the past few decades.

Scaffolding has gone up outside of and inside of the tower walls, and bracing will be installed to support the walls and hopefully prevent any further collapse. This is the second round of work to stabilize the ruins of Bannerman’s Island – in 2011 the Lodge (Bannerman residence) was stabilized.

Thanks to Wes Gottlock who took the photographs and for allowing them to be posted here.

To learn more about the Bannerman Castle Trust, visit www.bannermancastle.org.

Posted in Dutchess County, Historic Preservation | 1 Comment

Chevrolet Neon Lost

Posted on November 9, 2013 by HV-Rob

Earlier this year I reported on the loss of one of Westchester County’s great collections of neon signs. As the year winds down I report on another loss – a set of neon signs that illuminated the Curry Chevrolet dealership on Central Park Avenue in Scarsdale, NY.


– Yonkers Herald Statesman, October 31, 1957.

Bernard F. Curry, Jr., son of a car dealer, opened his own dealership, this location, in 1957. It became the flagship location in his chain of eight stores, most of which were located in lower New York but also included an Atlanta dealership.

The metal-and-glass showroom, with adjoining repair shop and a long-canopied sales lot, at Central Avenue was built by Frank Filardi Construction of White Plains, with the showroom interior furnished by William Klahr, Inc. of White Plains. And a set of neon signs – SERVICE (yellow), CURRY (red), CHEVROLET (blue), and USED CARS (red) – were fabricated by the Albee Sign Company of Mount Vernon. As a counter to the numerous ruins featured on my website, I previously presented images of the neon signs and the dealership showroom on my website as a great example of intact, unaltered mid-20th century architecture.

Well, we should know well by now that even great examples of architecture and signage cannot be taken for granted, no matter how rare or in good condition they may be. In July, I received a bit of a shock when I noticed the front of the dealership showroom and the entire canopy undergoing reconstruction. All of those neon signs had been removed. Perhaps the signs were being refurbished for reinstallation? Very unlikely, but one can hope.

I recently returned to Central Avenue to see the results of the remodeling. Indeed the neon signs were not there. The new signs for CERTIFIED SERVICE and CERTIFIED PRE-OWNED (“pre-owned”, heh – that always reminds me of this 1980s Bloom County comic strip that parodies Donald Trump) appear only in blue and are probably LED signs. The CURRY sign was not even illuminated, and there is no replacement for the CHEVROLET sign, leaving the main showroom darkened and unadorned at top.

What had been a rare, unique, and easily-identifiable landmark on one of Westchester’s “Miracle Miles” now looks like every other store and strip mall on Central Ave. I suppose the Chevrolet showroom shared much in common with other neon-fronted stores in the late 1950s, but its survival into the 21st century combined with the loss of other contemporary stores made the Curry neon signs singularly appealing and photogenic.

IRONY:
This colorful display of neon was certainly one of Westchester County’s most spectacular displays of illuminated signage. It served well its purpose, to advertise and uniquely identify the business contained within. Cars speeding down Central Avemue would be hard pressed to not notice the red, yellow and blue signs as they zoomed by. The photograph above was deemed so representative of the dealership and its visual appeal that it was used, without my consent, on the dealer’s website and facebook pages. When I called and spoke with a representative of Curry in the spring of 2013, I was buttered up by how great the photo is, how great it makes the store look, how proud I should be that they liked it… but when I asked for payment, since the image was being used for commercial purposes, I was met with disbelief and a plea of poverty (people often think that, because the picture has already been taken, that the photographer who has spent thousands of dollars on equipment and travel expenses and has worked on his or her own time, does not need to be compensated). Yet, weekly, a friend of mine called me up in the spring to tell me that he saw my photograph in advertisements on the YES Network during New York Yankees games. I guess they weren’t so poor after all. To the dealer’s credit, they removed my photograph from their website, but to their discredit, they took down the actual signs too. So much for appreciating the history of the location and revering its historic appearance and visual appeal.

UPDATE AUGUST 21, 2014:
Just wanted to highlight an update from don Felder of Curry Chevrolet, as posted below:
“The original “Chevrolet neon script sign was sent out for restoration and now is lit up and proudly displayed on the back wall of the showroom along with some others, The “OK used cars” sign will soon be back on display as well as some other vintage neon.”

Posted in Demolition Alert, Night Photography, Westchester County | 3 Comments

Camp Chi-Wan-Da and some sites around Milton and Kingston

Posted on October 22, 2013 by HV-Rob

Camp Chi-Wan-Da, Ulster Park
I don’t assume I’ve been to every notable ruined site along the Hudson, but it’s still a pleasant surprise to find out about an expansive property containing a number of ruins in various states of decay. Stephanie LaRose recently tipped me off to the existence of this summer camp above the Hudson River, south of Kingston. I’m sure it was just one of dozens of such camps that once existed along the Hudson, but few made it this far without being completely demolished and/or redeveloped.

Comparing the existing aerial views on bing.com to the present-day site it seems that I missed out on seeing the main camp building intact, as it now lies in a heap like most all the other ruins here. Still, I found Camp Chi-Wan-Da to be quite photogenic and a worthy place to spend a few hours on an early fall afternoon.

View more photographs here.

Samuel Halleck house and various Milton ruins
The rest of the day was spent around Milton and Kingston, revisiting some old friends and in search of some new locations. I also had the good company of Julia Wertz whose photographs of abandoned buildings can be found at her website entitled Adventure Bible School.


I’m always happy to pull into Milton and see amid the fruit trees of an active orchard that the Samuel Halleck House is still standing. Before it appeared in Hudson Valley Ruins the book, the Halleck House was featured in A Hudson Landscape, one of the truly superb collections of recent Hudson Valley photography, by William Clift.


Another fantastic old wooden ruin that Tom Rinaldi and I have have repeatedly visited over the last decade has finally lost its battle with gravity. The building probably served as a boarding house or hotel for travelers who just stepped off a boat on the Hudson River, just yards away.


This brick ruin next door is still a favorite autumnal subject of mine to photograph.


Found this abandoned house uphill from the village of Milton.

Bathroom, Cluett-Schantz Memorial Park

The main reason for the venture into Milton on this day was to seek out this ridiculously awesome bathroom that I found on panoramio. It is the only building in Cluett-Schantz Memorial Park that looks like this, so I am curious why the townspeople commissioned this singularly interesting architectural subject, and for a bathroom of all purposes. I do not know who designed the Cluett-Schantz Memorial Park Bathroom but it is worth mentioning that it seems inspired by the work of Felix Candela.


The niche here once provided a functioning shower.

Hutton Company Brick Works, Kingston

We ended the day with a tour of the Hutton Company Brick Works in Kingston. Another place I don’t take for granted, as its demise is planned despite it being the only place of its kind, an intact brick yard with steel kiln sheds, abandoned or not, still standing along the Hudson River.

Posted in Non-ruins, Ulster County | 4 Comments

Paul Clark House and Tavern, Albany

Posted on September 12, 2013 by HV-Rob


Undated image of the Paul Clark House, when it was Liggett’s Drug Store.

From John Wolcott I received the news that the Tandoor Palace restaurant on Lark Street in Albany was demolished on Friday August 2, 2013. The restaurant was located within the first floor brick walls of the Paul Clark’s house and tavern, built ca. 1798. Doctor Yusef Dincer owns the site of the Paul Clark house and is responsible for its demolition. With architect Scott Townsend, Dincer plans a new building of three stories with apartments, offices and a restaurant on the site of the Paul Clark house and tavern.

The following photographs are courtesy of Andy Arthur.


Detail of brick bond, a transition between Dutch Cross Bond and American Bond, and wrought-iron wall anchor.

John Wolcott produced the following informational pamphlets. Click on the links to open them at full resolution.

Page 1
Page 2

Thanks to John and Andy for the photos and information.

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Also in the Capital District, the 81-year-old Saratoga Avenue Bridge between Cohoes and Waterford will be torn down and replaced.

And across the Hudson, in Troy, a series of 1850-ish rowhouses that survived a great fire in 1862 underwent “emergency demolition” in August. (Thankfully Bombers Burrito Bar was saved, and remained open during demolition, as Tom Rinaldi astutely noted). The city is targeting other old structures for demolition.

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I also recently learned that the Victoria Home in Ossining (Westchester County) has filed plans to demolish a historic house that was once the home of Major General Edwin Augustus McAlpin and Anne Brandreth McAlpin, daughter of Benjamin Brandreth of the Brandreth Pill Factory.

Here is a link to my source on the Ossining Historical Society’s facebook page.

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I made a trip to Dutchess County last week to check up on a couple of favorite ruins. It was a day of fantastic light.


Not evident in this photograph but exterior/roof repairs are ongoing at the Hoyt House.


A little further up the river, Wyndclyffe continues to decay.

Posted in Albany County, Demolition Alert, Dutchess County, Rensselaer County, Westchester County | 1 Comment