Inviting 700 people to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Hastings High School gym and preparing food for several hundred more homeless people in Yonkers sounds like it’d be chaotic, but decades of experience keeps the chaos in check.
You may have heard of Johann Wilhelm Stolting, also known as “The Hermit of Irvington,” and his eccentricities, such as sleeping in his own coffin and burying his treasure behind the former Hastings Press Building. He was an oddball and a genius, to say the least. Aside from speaking French, Dutch, German, English and a reported three other languages, Stolting lived in our area and worked a variety of jobs. At some point or another, he was a teacher, a scientist, a mailman, and a button maker.
by Keith Doherty The Dunn House at 5 Pine Street in Hastings-on-Hudson is one of the best-preserved early homes in the village and in the Uniontown neighborhood to which it belongs. It is a prime example of home-grown architecture of a sort very common in the United States in the […]
By Mark Sameth In the dead of night, well past one in the morning, President Abraham Lincoln passed through Hastings on a secret trip from Washington, DC to West Point. It was June 24, 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, and the President was on his way to […]
by Natalie Barry In the early part of the 20th century, Hastings experienced an influx of immigrants, who came here to work in the industries located on the waterfront. Many came from Eastern Europe and settled in the lower Washington/Warburton Avenue area of our village. The following is some history […]
by Natalie Barry In the past couple of months, the Hastings Historical Society has gotten several inquiries about farms that operated in our village over a 100 years ago. One inquiry came through our Facebook page, asking if we knew anything about the Curry farm located on the south side […]
Mars Plater For our annual meeting in 2018, Mars Plater — then a doctoral student in History at Rutgers University — used photos and historical accounts to give a program titled, “Up at Dudley’s Grove: 19th Century Steamboat Excursions to Hastings-on-Hudson.” Dudley’s Grove was a recreation area on the riverfront that […]
By Barney Smith Last year, then-freshman Barney Smith asked the Historical Society for information on the derivation of the “Yellow Jackets” as the High School team name. We had fun digging around in old yearbooks and sent him a TON of raw info. This is Barney’s resulting article, which was […]
by Henry Levin According to Rich Steeves, a local resident and frequent contributor to the Historical Society, the Hastings marble quarry located along the Old Croton Aqueduct had more uses than previously assumed. Hastings may seem unconnected to soda, being a somewhat health-occupied village, but in the 1800s carbonated beverages […]
by Natalie Barry Students of Hastings High School from the mid-1960s may remember a group of young men (three village residents, plus a city boy) who were members of a band called The Housemen. This group of friends were good musicians and played at several of the high school dances. […]
