HISTORY & MYSTERIES
Here’s a real treat—a double-fold promotional postcard for the Nikko Tea House, probably printed circa 1907 to 1910.1 An artist with the initials “W.K.” created the beautiful images and hand-lettered the map and poem on the centerfold. The map has a wonderful depiction of the Nikko and helpfully provides the location of “police traps” on … Continue reading If You Follow the Road to Harmon, You Surely Can’t go Wrong
In 1913 the Overman Tire Company in New York City ran a test to demonstrate “the ability of Overman cushion tires to withstand the abuse to which tires ordinarily are subjected by the average driver.” A National touring car was outfitted with a set of Overman cushion tires and driven over different routes and road … Continue reading Drive to the New Croton Dam, 1913
In January, 1890, Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly published an article by C. Hills Warren that looked back nostalgically at the history of the Albany Post Road.1 By that time the importance of the road—once the only major route for stage coaches running from New York City to Albany—had long since been eclipsed by steam boats … Continue reading Croton’s Old Post Road Inn, 1890
In a previous post we displayed two ads from 1917 for Goodyear Cord Tires, featuring detailed pen-and-ink drawings of Nikko Inn. These clever bits of Jazz Age cross-promotion appeared in magazines ranging from the Atlantic Monthly and The New Country Life to Travel and Forest & Stream. Now we’ve discovered a much more elegant ad … Continue reading A Sharp and Palpable Difference
Here is a detailed map of what Croton looked like in 1872. Known then as Croton Landing, the village consisted mainly of houses and businesses along what we know today as Grand Street, Brook Street, and Riverside Avenue. If you look at the top left side you can see that Riverside Avenue got its name … Continue reading Croton Landing, 1872
Who was the marketing genius behind this bit of Jazz Age cross-promotion? The 1917 ads for Goodyear Cord Tires appeared in magazines ranging from the Atlantic Monthly and The New Country Life to Travel and Forest & Stream . Both feature detailed pen-and-ink drawings of Nikko Inn in the background, suggesting the perfect place you … Continue reading You Can Expect Immediate Benefits
It’s a beautiful day and you’ve decided to take a jaunt in your newfangled automobile, going north along the scenic Hudson River. You can’t count on good, well-marked roads, so you’ve brought along the GPS system of the day—a copy of Photo-auto maps . . . New York to Albany which features “photographs of every … Continue reading Motoring Across the Croton, 1912
These images are taken from a topographic map of the "Haverstraw Quadrangle," which was surveyed in 1938 by the U.S. Department of the Interior Geological Survey and published in 19431. This map provides so many layers of information—buildings, roads, elevations, vegetation, bodies of water, place names, and more—that we can get a good sense of … Continue reading U.S. Geographical Survey Map, 1943
Here is an early post card of the "Belle Terre, Log Cabin Restaurant at Camp Broadway, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y." According to the book by the Croton Historical Society in Arcadia's Images of America series, the Log Cabin Restaurant was located near the "present entrance to Arrow Crest." In a previous post we featured a later post … Continue reading Log Cabin Restaurant Revisited
Here are ads for three Croton "road houses" from the June 12, 1921 issue of the New-York Tribune. They were part of a full page ad for Westchester hotels and restaurants that appeared under a banner reading "Westchester County, the Motorist's Playground, 900 Miles of Good Roads." It's hard to imagine what driving was like … Continue reading The Motorist’s Playground
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