I tried to capture something of the joy and energy of this young girl playing on an old tractor.
Girl on a tractor
Farm Building
I like old buildings. They evoke in me a feeling of nostalgia for earlier times. So this one definitely caught my attention. As I looked more closely a sense of amusement started to take over. At first I didn’t see it, but after a while I noticed the rather incongruous ‘Humpty Dumpty‘ sitting in the upper area between the two lamps. What on earth is that doing there? True – this was shortly before Hallowe’en, but I’ve never thought that old humpty was particularly associated with that event. Should we be singing “Humpty Dumpty sat on a barn. Humpty Dumpty had a great….”
Lovely Depression era Kodachromes
Female workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their break room, Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, Clinton, Iowa, April 1943. Source: FSA documentary color photos featured in New Deal Photography: USA 1935-1943 from Taschen.
When I think of the Great Depression I tend to think of photographs like “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange and the movie “The Grapes of Wrath“. Lange’s photographs, and most of those by her colleagues photographing for the Farm Security Administration were shot in black and white so I tend to think of the Great Depression in black and white as was The Grapes of Wrath. It came as quite a revelation to me to come across these spectacular Depression era photographs in color. I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised through. The Great Depression didn’t end until the late 1930s and Kodachrome came out in 1935 so it was likely that someone would have been shooting in color during that period.
They also reminded me that Kodachrome really was quite a remarkable film. It’s too bad that it’s now no longer available and even if it were couldn’t be processed.
Red barns
Taken at Muscoot Farm in October, 2013. According to Wikipedia the farm has a long history:
The land on which Muscoot Farm is situated was part of the 86,000 acres (350 km2) Van Cortlandt Manor chartered in 1697. After the death of Stephanus Van Cortlandt in 1700 and his wife Gertrude in 1734, the manor was surveyed and divided into twenty large lots and twenty small lots. The Muscoot lands are located in “Great South Lot #6” which was inherited by Stephen Van Cortlandt. At that time, this region was very remote, inaccessible by roads, and probably uninhabited.
In 1802, the Great South Lot No. 6 was resurveyed by Ebenezer Purdy, Jr. and was subdivided into smaller lots proposed as tenant farms. Most of today’s Muscoot Farm lies within the Purdy’s lot number 3 and 5. The boundary separating lot 5 to the north and lot 3 on the south is still evident as the long straight stone wall that runs east and west across the park just north of the gazebo.
The part of Muscoot Farm that lies north of the stone wall (lot 5) was sold by Stephen Van Cortlandt in 1803 to Absalom Nelson, and it remained in the Nelson family for over 100 years.
The part of Muscoot Farm south of the stone wall (lot 3) was being leased by Joseph Montross at the time of the 1802 survey. A road ran through the property roughly coinciding with today’s Rt. 100, and Montross had a house on the west side of the road apparently near the site of the present Muscoot farmhouse. By the mid-19th century, after several land transactions, the Montross farm ended up in the hands of Ezra VanTassel at 157 acres (0.64 km2) in size. Peter Carpenter owned a 100-acre (0.40 km2) farm to the north; William Vail owned a 140-acre (0.57 km2) farm across the road to the east; and Lewis Ferris owned a small farm, about 30 acres (120,000 m2), to the south.
During the 1870s, at a time when farmland in Westchester was being sold off fairly cheaply, the three main farms (VanTassel, Carpenter and Vail) were purchased by Benjamin Brandeth, a pharmaceutical magnate from Ossining who had been dabbling in real estate ventures. During 1880’s this land was bought up by Ferdinand T. Hopkins another pharmaceutical executive from New York City.
Hopkins took these subsistence farms and developed them into a “Gentleman’s Farm”, a term applied to hobby farms owned by wealthy businessman who wished to maintain a connection with nature or with the farm life of their youth. Since profit was not the motive, Muscoot Farm, like most gentleman farms of that era, operated at a loss. It remained in the Hopkins family for almost 90 years and was finally sold to Westchester County in 1968.
It’s been a favorite spot for us to take visiting grandchildren over the years. When they’re young they like all the farm animals.
I like the bright reds of the barns and the sense of depth that comes from the larger building in the foreground and the smaller ones receding into the background.
Upcoming visit to Untermyer Park
We just had some visitors so as we usually do we prepared a fairly extensive meal and afterwards took them to a nearby attraction: Chuang Yen Monastery. They’ve decided to reciprocate by inviting us later this month to a meal at their home in Hastings-on-Hudson followed by a visit to Untermyr Gardens in Yonkers, NY.
I’ve been to the park before (see Untermyr Park, Yonkers, NY). The picture above is from that visit in January, 2012. The sphinx is one of two sitting on top of very impressive tall double columns. The date tells all: it was the middle of Winter and the park was quite bare and of course none of the flowers were blooming. I’m looking forward to returning when things are in bloom. After the visit I also realized that there was an entire section of the park (closer to the Hudson and the Old Croton Aqueduct) that I missed during that visit (It was cold and I didn’t hang around long enough to explore thoroughly). I’m hoping to find and check out that area too. Should be fun!