For the last several years, I’ve been asked to come into Hillside School and talk to the 2nd graders about Hastings history. I always look forward to it, as the kids are always great fun and so appreciative of learning about our village’s past. This […]
Abraham Lincoln was here. More precisely, he passed through here. Four times. This winter marks the 160th anniversary of Lincoln’s first passage through – as it was known then – “Hastings-Upon-Hudson,” as President-elect aboard The Inaugural Express a little after 2:30 PM on the afternoon […]
Largely invisible today as a result of construction and development over the years, Scheckler’s Brook runs through the heart of Hastings and was a central feature of the village’s landscape and daily life for centuries.
Several months ago, our new mayor Niki Armacost was asked to speak to the 3rd/4th and 5th graders at Hillside and Farragut Middle School, respectively. During the Q&A segment, one child asked whether our village has an official animal. That got Mayor Armacost thinking about […]
This past January, Hillside teacher Dianna Clarke invited me to speak to the 2nd grade about Hastings history. I had a great time talking about early industry in the ravine, our waterfront factories, plus sharing “then and now” photos of important buildings from Hastings’ past.
In “On This Day in History,” featured in The New York Times, it mentioned that on January 7, 1951, the minimum price of a coin-box telephone call rose to 10 cents from 5 cents in the state of New York.
This made me think about those coin-box telephone booths that were located […]
One of Hastings’ early shopkeepers, Frederick Breyer, was included in a book recently published by the city archive of Schwäbisch Hall in Germany. The translated title of the book is “Immigration to and Emigration from Schwäbisch Hall: 1600-1914.” For those of you who speak German, we now have a […]
Saving the Community Gardens by Mary Wallis Gutmann (was Whiting in 1968) I’m not very Web-savvy, but every now and then someone who is calls to say, “Mary, listen to what I read on Facebook. . .” This time it was my son, Paul, reporting that Wendy Waczek was writing about […]