HISTORY & MYSTERIES
On July 16, 1928, when the New York Times published the obituary of William E. Harmon, the newspaper quoted from an interview he had given years earlier in which he described how he started his real estate empire. "The surest way is to hit upon something that everybody wants, make it possible for everyone to buy it … Continue reading What Does Everyone Want? Land
On July 16, 1928 the New York Times published the obituary of William E. Harmon. Three days later, the Times revealed his secret. "William E. Harmon . . . a retired real estate operator noted for his philanthropies . . . was Jedediah Tingle, the mysterious philanthropist who made generous financial gifts to great writers, … Continue reading William E. Harmon’s Death Reveals His Secret
Clifford B. Harmon is well-known to Crotonites as the famous aviator and real estate developer who created what he modestly advertised as “HARMON, the New City on the Hudson—the most important and extensive suburban development in the history of New York.” But how many of us have heard about his brother and partner, William E. … Continue reading The Other Harmon
In October 1867, Harper's Weekly published a full-page wood engraving of the Underhill vineyards. Entitled "Gathering Grapes—An October Scene on the Hudson," the image takes us back to the time when Richard T. Underhill was the "grape king" of Croton Point. How significant were the Underhill vineyards? In his multi-volume History of Wine in America, … Continue reading The Underhill Vineyards, 1867
Of all the people who recorded the unbridled joy New Yorkers felt when the Croton Aqueduct opened in October 1842, few captured it as eloquently as Maria Lydia Child, whose poem Thanksgiving Day, was set to music and is known today as Over the River and Through the Woods. In her book Letters from New-York she … Continue reading Clean, Sweet, Abundant Water!
This map and graph were published in the May 23, 1908 issue of Scientific American. They show the locations of the different reservoirs within the Croton watershed after the New Croton Dam was completed and their relative elevations. Click the image to enlarge it.
This map is interesting because of what it does and does not show. If your car were to break down in 1950 you wouldn't know from looking at this map that there was a railroad (the arch-enemy of gas companies) running along the shore of the Hudson River. But if you looked carefully at the … Continue reading Esso “Happy Motoring” map, 1950
This account of the devastating New York City fire of 1835 that led to the construction of the Croton Dam and Aqueduct is from a wonderful blog, Ephemeral New York, which chronicles “a constantly reinvented city through photos, newspaper archives, and other scraps and artifacts that have been edged into New York’s collective remainder bin” remembering the “forgotten people, places, and relics of the way New Yorkers used to live.”
It started on the frigid night of December 16. Flames broke out inside a warehouse on Pearl Street, the center of New York’s dry-goods district.
“The city’s undermanned volunteer fire brigades rushed to the scene, but what little water could be pumped from the nearby hydrants turned to ice in the frigid night air, and the crews—exhausted from fighting a blaze the night before—were soon completely overwhelmed,” wrote Ric Burns and James Sanders in New York: An Illustrated History.
[Above: the fire as seen from Williamsburg, by Nicolino Calyo]
With help from strong winds, flames leaped from shops to warehouses to the majestic Merchants Exchange (below, in a 1909 illustration).
Within hours, 20 blocks and 600 buildings bounded by South, Broad, and Wall Streets and Coenties Slip, were ablaze.
New York had experienced devastating fires before, particularly in 1776. This fire was something else though—so intense, it could reportedly…
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In 1950 Theodore J. Cornu drew this map of the lower Hudson River as the Lenape saw it, circa 1600. It appeared as a small part of page 3, in issue #1, of his extraordinary hand-drawn, hand-lettered, self-published journal, Hudson Valley Echoes.
These are the Croton and Hudson Highlands sections of Walling's Route Guides. Hudson River . . . Maps and Descriptions by H.F. Walling, published by Taintor Brothers in New York in 1867. The red line snaking up the east side of the river is the route of the Hudson River Railroad—what we know today as Metro-North. The … Continue reading Hudson River Railroad Maps, 1867
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