Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
If you walk from the Garrison railroad station up the trail towards Glenclyffe and Arden Point you pass this small cluster of ruins. I couldn’t find much information about them other than a short mention on a couple of web sites saying that they were formerly a lock factory.
According to the Untermyer Gardens website:
The Gatehouse was built where the Greystone carriage trail crossed the Old Croton Aqueduct. The Croton Aqueduct, constructed to carry fresh water to New York City, ran 41 miles from Croton on Harmon into New York City and was in use in Untermyer’s time. Now the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail runs 26.2 miles from Croton-on-Harmon to the Bronx. (Note: I think there’s an error in this description. There is no such place as “Croton on Harmon”. The town is called “Croton on Hudson” and it’s Metro North railway station is called “Croton-Harmon”. According to Wikipedia: “During the days of the New York Central Railroad, the station and shops were known as Harmon. Trains continuing north of Harmon, including the flagship 20th Century Limited would exchange their electric locomotive for a steam or diesel locomotive to continue the journey to points north and west.
This is taken from the Vista Overlook. I’d heard that there were a couple of interesting reliefs on the gate posts and I wanted to go down to see them. However, I didn’t feel that I should leave the tour and I couldn’t go afterwards as we had to go to eat. So I went back yesterday. As the description above states the gatehouse is by the Old Croton Aqueduct trail so I thought I’d take the dog for a walk and also get to see the gatehouse up close. Unfortunately I started my walk down the trail too far away (virtually in Hastings-on-Hudson) and I never did get to the gatehouse (I had to get back to meet my wife). We had a nice walk though – on a piece of the Aqueduct trail that I’ve never been to before. So it wasn’t a complete waste. I intend to go back though.
I’ve been to Sylvan Glen a few times, most recently in 2014. It’s an interesting place to visit. Rusted metal cables, abandoned pieces of equipment, huge discarded slabs of granite, and an explosive shed are a few of the remains along the trails in Sylvan Glen Park Preserve, the site of a former quarry. Although I’ve never seen them there’s also supposed to be a lime kiln and a cave used by the famous Leatherman who is buried in Sparta Cemetery, Ossining.
According to the web site of the Yorktown Historical Society:
The park is the site of the largest single industry known to the Town of Yorktown. After generous deposits of granite with unusual rich mellow tones of coloration were discovered in the area, quarries were established, probably as early as the 1850’s. It was not until after the turn of the century, however, that the site was exploited to its fullest. The period of greatest activity was from 1900 to 1940. The quarries were operated by various owners – all of whom called their product Mohegan Golden Granite. The last owner, operating the quarries throughout the period of greatest production, was Grenci and Ellis, Inc. Granite from the Mohegan Granite Quarries was used in the construction of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the main entrance to the City Bank-Farmer’s Trust Co. building at William Street and Exchange Place (NYC), the New York State Office Building – including the carved Great Seals of the State and City of New York (NYC), the Arlington Memorial Bridge (Washington, D.C.), the Westchester County National Bank (White Plains), the Memorial to (poet) Eugene Field (NYC) and many other buildings, mausoleums and memorials. Barracks and commissaries were built to accommodate the hundreds of laborers attracted to the area. In full production during the ‘20’s, it was not unusual to have two $1,000,000 jobs running at the same time with two hundred men employed for a total weekly payroll of $15,000!
Seen at an old, abandoned ruin of a building (the Beltzhoover Teahouse) by a pond in Irvington, NY. More pictures of the teahouse can be found here.
I’ve taken pictures of Bannerman’s Island from afar – from both the west shore and the east shore of the Hudson. I finally decided to see it up close and took the tour – the island is about a 25 minute boat ride from Beacon, NY and the tour leaves from right next to the Beacon Metro-North station. Although there’s not a lot to see on the island, what there is is interesting and you won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the lower hudson valley. So to me the tour was worth it. The guides give lengthy descriptions of the history of the island, of Francis Bannerman and over the castle like buildings (actually they are arsenals). I’m sure I would have been more interested in the descriptions had I not recently attended a presentation on Bannerman’s Island at the Briarcliff Manor Historical Society
Crumbling arsenal buildings. Note the metal buttresses. About 40-50 percent of the arsenal buildings have collapsed in recent years.
According to “Scots and Scots Descendant in America. D. MacDougall. New York, April 10, 1917. Part V – Biographies“:
FRANCIS BANNERMAN, the noted merchant and authority on war weapons, is the sixth Frank from the first Frank Bannerman, standard-bearer of the Glencoe MacDonalds, who escaped the massacre of 1692 by sailing to the Irish coast. His descendants remained in Antrim for 150 years, intermarrying with Scottish settlers. In 1845, Mr. Bannerman’s father removed to Dundee, Scotland, where Francis VI was born, March 24, 1851. He came with his parents to the United States in 1854 and has resided in Brooklyn since 1856. The eldest son in each generation is always named Frank. The surname originated at Bannockburn, where an ancestor rescued the clan pennant, whereupon Bruce cut off the streamer from the Royal ensign and conferred upon him the honour of “bannerman.”
Young Francis left school at ten, when in 1861 his father went to the war. He secured employment in a lawyer’s office at two dollars a week, each morning, before going to the law-office, supplying with newspapers the officers of the warships anchored off the Brooklyn Navy Yard, near his home. Summer evenings, after work hours, he dragged the river with a grapple for bits of chain and rope, which he sold to junkmen. When his father returned disabled, he became a dealer in the material the boy collected, with a storehouse at 18 Little Street, also attending the Navy auctions, and later established a ship-chandlery business at 14 Atlantic Avenue. Frank went back to school for a time and won the scholarship for Cornell University, but could not accept owing to his father’s war disability requiring his assistance in carrying on the business.