Hastings Historical Society
The Historical Society of
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY
407 Broadway, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706
914/478-2249
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Hastings Historical Society The Historical Society of 407 Broadway, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706 |
The Place of the Bark Kettle
Europeans Arrive
Revolutionary Days
Beginnings of Local Government
Churches and Schools
Industrial Growth and Decline
Village Growth
This area rising from the east bank of the Hudson and overlooking the Palisades to the west was once the home of the Weckquaesgeek Indians, one of the Algonquin tribes. In summer, the Weckquaesgeeks camped at the mouth of the ravine running under the present Warburton Avenue Bridge. There they fished, swam and collected oyster and clamshells used to make wampum. On the level plain nearby (Maple Avenue), they planted corn and possibly tobacco. In winter, the Weckquaesgeeks moved to a rock-sheltered area called "Punkie Barrie" (Uniontown). Living in huts of hemlock bark, sticks and animal skins, the Indians sewed together birch bark to make fine kettles. Pride in their kettles prompted the Indians to call this region "The Place of the Bark Kettle."
In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English explorer employed by the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river he named for himself. Soon after, the Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam and fur-trading settlements along the river. Around 1650 a Dutch carpenter named Frederick Philipse arrived in New Amsterdam. After marrying two rich widows in succession, Philipse began acquiring land along the east bank of the river. In 1682 he traded with the Indians for the area that is now Dobbs Ferry and Hastings. His price 4 guns, 4 fathoms (6 ft. Lengths) of wampum, 14 blankets, 6 fathoms of duffils {coarse woolen cloth), 6 pairs of stockings, 10 bars of lead, 3 kettles, l 2 pounds of powder, 1 drawing knife, 4 shirts, 2 fathoms of cloth, and 1 adze (ax).
In 1693 the English crown granted Frederick Philipse title to the Manor of Philipsburg. For the next 80 years, the Philipses owned the land along the east bank of the Hudson from Spuyten Duyvil to the Croton River. After dividing the area that is now Hastings into four nearly equal-sized farms, the Philipses leased them to Dutch, English and French Huguenot settlers.
During the Revolution, the area that is now Hastings lay between the lines of the warring forces and was declared neutral territory. The local tavern served both Colonials and British; the blacksmith at the neutral forge (383 South Broadway) shod horses from both sides. Yet, while technically neutral, this territory was actually a no-man's land and was raided constantly by both sides. One such raid by a band of Hessian marauders turned into the Battle of Edgar's Lane. On September 30, 1778, a local tavern owner named Peter Post led the Hessians into an ambush where they were killed or captured by Continentals and local militia. In return for h treachery, Post was severely beaten by Hessian retaliators. But he lived to see the British defeated and to become known, locally at leas as a Revolutionary hero.
The village harbor also served the Revolutionary cause. By day patriots stored boats there, out of sight of British patrol boats. At night the patriots manned the boats and smuggled food and supplies across the river to Washington's army, which was camped on the other side The Philipses were loyal to George III so, after the Revolution succeeded, the state confiscated and sold their vast lands. In 1785 the four farms comprising what is now Hastings were bought by James DeClark, Jacobus Dyckman, George Fisher, and tavern keeper Peter Post.
Another family named Lefurgy had wanted to buy land but could not afford it. For 35 years they had farmed the southern half of what is now Hastings, but the wartime raids had so devastated their land and livestock that they were too poor to buy their farms. Over the following decades, however, a new generation of Lefurgys, led by Isaac and Jane, acquired much of the old Lefurgy family tenant farms. Several buildings in Hastings today have parts dating from the eighteenth century: the Dyckman House (Andrus House), the Draper House (271 South Broadway) and the two stone structures (now private homes) on Zinsser Way.
By act of the English General Assembly in 1683, Westchester County was established as one of the 10 original counties in New York. After the Revolution Westchester was divided into towns, and the area that is now Hastings became part of the Town of Greenburgh. In 1790 the Town of Greenburgh had 1,377 residents.
Hastings most likely received its name from a resident named Saunders who reportedly had been born in the English town of Hastings, where William the Conqueror won the famous battle in 1066. Saunders operated one of the first factories in Hastings; he lived at 49 Washington Avenue, in what is now known as the Cropsey House.
The village was incorporated in 1879 and its name changed from Hastings-Upon-Hudson to Hastings-on-Hudson. The first village ordinance in 1880 prohibited the running at large or pasturing on any public street of horses, swine, geese, goats or other animals. A policeman was hired at $40 a month to enforce the ordinance. His duties also included lighting and extinguishing the street lamps and enforcing the six-miles-per-hour speed limit.
By the 1830s, there were Presbyterian and Roman Catholic congregations in Hastings, and local Episcopalians worshipped at Zion Church in Dobbs Ferry. By the 1850s, a Baptist congregation had also been formed. The First Reformed Church, the oldest church building in Hastings, was designed and built in 1850 by the architect A. J. Davis; Grace Church was built in 1867 on the site of the present Boulanger Plaza; the Lutheran Church (now a private home at 64 Main Street) was built in 1887. The present St. Matthew's Catholic Church building dates from 1914; St. Stanislaus was organized in 1912 in a building formerly used as a Baptist Church. Temple Beth Shalom was founded in 1965, and its services were held in the First Reformed Church Chapel until the Temple building was completed in 1971.
The first school for which there are records, the "little red schoolhouse," stood on the present Farragut Avenue opposite Ravensdale Road. The Fraser Free School (now Hook and Ladder) was built on Main Street in 1863 to serve grades one through eight. A new elementary school, the original Farragut School building, was completed in 1904. The Washington Building opened in 1911 to serve upper elementary and high school students. Later additions to the Farragut School complex were completed in 1926,1933 and 1964. The Hillside School opened in 1964, and its new wing was completed in 1971. The original St. Matthew's Catholic School was founded in 1889; the present building dates from 1952.
In 1902 the Orphan Asylum of the City of New York (now Graham Windham School) moved from Manhattan to Hastings. As the first home for dependent children designed on a "cottage plan," the school has been designated a Westchester County landmark.
Stone quarrying was the earliest industry in Hastings. From 1865 to 1871, hundreds of Scottish and Irish laborers blasted enormous quantities of dolomite marble from the white marble quarry on Aqueduct Lane. An inclined railroad carried the marble down the steep slopes to the quarry wharf where it was dressed by skilled stonecutters. It was then loaded on to ships bound for rapidly growing cities like New York, where it was believed to have been used to build Marble Collegiate Church, and Charleston, South Carolina, where it is believe to have been used to construct the Customs House. Some marble remained in Hastings where it was used to build Oakledge (2 Broadway), the Jehiel Read Villa (142 High Street), and Lovat House (10 Amherst Drive).
The next oldest local industries, the Saunders Patent Axle & Brass Iron Turning Factory and the Scheckler Button Factory and Bone Mill, were operating in the ravine behind Main Street by the early 1830s. The bone mill - where Scheckler, among other things, boiled the bones of dead horses - was in business only a short time. Local residents found its fumes so offensive that they paid Scheckler $500 close down the mill and promise not to reopen for 30 years.
Around 1850 two German immigrants named Kattenhorn and Hopke built a sugar refinery on the waterfront. The refinery expanded and flourished until December 26, 1875, when it was destroyed by raging fire. Despite valiant efforts of the local bucket brigade and New York City fireboats, the sugar refineries were completely ruined. Bricks salvaged from the refinery were used in 1879 to build the village's first firehouse, Protection No. 1 on Warburton Avenue.
New industries soon replaced sugar refining on the waterfront. By the 1880s Hastings Pavement was producing hexagonal paving blocks used extensively in Central Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Between 1895-1900, Hastings Pavement produced 10 million such blocks and shipped them to cities in Canada, Brazil and England, as well as through out the United States. Most areas in Hastings where the stones were used have been repaved. They can, however, be seen today on Warburton Avenue near Washington Avenue and on a section of the walkway leading to the Municipal Building.
By 1891 National Conduit and Cable Company was on the waterfront producing cables for early utility companies here and abroad. Six years later, Frederick G. Zinsser opened a chemical plant that produced a refined wood alcohol called Hastings Spirits. By gradually filling in the river, Zinsser increased his land from an original half-acre to 15 acres. At its peak during World War I, the Zinsser plant had 30 buildings. Some local residents believe that the Zinsser plant produced mustard gas during World War I, but no written documentation has been found. It is known, however, that 200 National Guardsmen were stationed in Hastings during the war to protect the Zinsser and National Conduit plants from enemy sabotage.
The Anaconda Company took over National Conduit in 1929, and a few years later acquired the Hastings Pavement property. By the end of World War II, Anaconda owned most of the industrial waterfront.
The Zinsser plant was soda to Harshaw Chemical Company in 1955. In 1962 Moore-Tappan Tanker Terminal bought out Harshaw, erected four fuel tanks (13 million gallon capacity), and dredged the river to a depth of 35 feet, thus creating a deepwater port. Anaconda closed its Hastings plant in 1975, bringing to an end the century-long era of heavy industry on the Hastings waterfront.
In May 1835, the Common Council of New York ordered the Water Commission to construct a dam and aqueduct to bring water from Croton River to the city. Local farmers fought bitterly against project that cut across their lands, but the needs of the growing prevailed. The construction of the Croton Aqueduct in the 1830s-40s was the first of several events that sparked dramatic growth in Hastings.
The Aqueduct project brought scores of Irish and Scottish laborers to the village. They lived in homes on Washington Avenue and in Uniontown, many of which still stand, although most have been remodeled over the years. After the Aqueduct was completed, many laborers remained in Hastings to work in the quarries and stone cutting yards while the women in their families found work in the large estate houses then being built.
Between 1850 and World War I, the rapidly growing waterfront industries attracted additional immigrants to Hastings. In the 1850s, '60s and '70s, Germans came to work in the sugar refineries. They were followed by Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, Czechs, Russians and others who came here to work in Hastings Conduit and Cable, Hastings Pavement, and Zinsser Chemical. Housing for these newcomers was built on Warburton Avenue, Washington Avenue and nearby streets. The buildings still stand today, and many descendents of their original occupants have remained in Hastings.
The opening of the New York and Hudson River Railroad in 1849 greatly accelerated the growth of the village. Passengers could travel between New York and Hastings in less than half the time it took to make the trip by steamboat. A second railroad line, located near the Saw Mill River, began service in 1869. In the 1890s it was taken over by the New York Central and called the Putnam Division. Service continued until the 1950s.
The decades after 1850 brought wealthy New York merchants and professionals to Hastings where they built elaborate summer estates for their large families and the equally large number of servants who looked after them. During the 1890s other wealthy New Yorkers traveled through Hastings by coach and four en route to the fashionable Ardsley Casino, stopping briefly to change horses near where La Barranca stands today.
Hastings offered diversions for the less affluent as well. In the 1860s and '70s, thousands of New Yorkers traveled by barge to picnic and swim at Dudley's Grove, near the Yonkers border. Thousands more came in the 1890s to an amusement park called "Little Coney Island," which flourished where Clunie Place, Columbia, and Nepperhan Avenue are today. The park was declared "off limits" to many Hastings children whose parents considered it an unwholesome atmosphere. More welcomed by the community was the Tower Ridge Yacht Club founded in 1891. The club built 16 cottages (each with its own boathouse) and offered swimming, tennis, boating and crabbing. Some members took cottages by the season while others came by boat to bathe at the club's beaches. The Yacht Club became a center for the social activities of year-round residents as well. Electric lights were introduced to Hastings around 1897. In 1890 the Hastings News was founded, and in 1917 the Hastings Press was first published.
An important change occurred shortly after the turn of the century when the residential development of former estates and farms began in earnest. Uniontown, Tower Ridge (1886), and Nepera Park (1890) had already been developed. Then in 1907 a group of teachers and professionals from New York bought 17.5 acres of the former Minturn estate and built year-round homes for themselves. Extending from Flower Avenue to the southern end of Edgars Lane, the community called itself Locust Hill. For many years its streets were private - so private, in fact, that the residents put a gate across Flower Avenue (near Magnolia) to separate Locust Hill from Riverview Manor. The next few years saw a housing boom in Hastings. National Conduit formed the Hastings Homes Company to develop Riverview Manor (1908). Hudson Heights (1907), Olinda Park (1908), and Pinecrest (1909) were all developed at this time. The people who moved into these developments were the first of many commuters to make Hastings their home. Their numbers were further increased when Shadowlawn was developed in 1926.
In celebration of its fiftieth anniversary in 1929, the village hired Shreve and Lamb, architects of the Empire State Building, to design the Municipal Building. Shreve lived on Euclid Avenue and was active in village affairs.
Hastings' first apartment house, La Barranca, (465 South Broadway) was begun in the late 1920s. It was originally planned to be three times larger, but the project was cut back because of the Depression.
During the Depression, the village used W.P.A. labor to launch an extensive cleanup and redevelopment program. Workers demolished shacks and old buildings around the railroad station and planted numerous trees throughout the village. The project was sparked by public-spirited Dr. Arthur C. Langmuir, who created a park on the site of the marble quarry (later turned into a village dump) and also took hundreds of photographs of the village that are now preserved in archives of the Hastings Historical Society.
Information courtesy of the Village of Hastings-on-Hudson