When you visit the Hastings Historical Society, you will step into a building that played a key role in the history of American science.
It all started in 1847, when Dr. John William Draper, a 36-year-old medical doctor and New York University chemistry professor, bought 20 acres in the village of Hastings-on-Hudson. At this time, John William was already many years into his experiments with photography, light, heat, and chemistry. He is considered to be the first person to have taken a photograph of a female face, which he produced in 1839. He then took a daguerreotype of the moon in 1840.
John’s son, Henry, the third of six Draper children, graduated from the New York University School of Medicine in 1857 (where he would eventually become a professor and dean of medicine), and set into motion plans to construct an observatory on the Draper property in Hastings. Built by a village carpenter whose name went unrecorded, Henry’s observatory was an artfully constructed building with a revolving roof and a curving staircase leading to a viewing platform that encircled the room. By walking a treadmill – human-powered, although they also tried using dogs – Henry and his brother Daniel ground lenses and mirrors for a 15.5-inch, Newtonian telescope, which was placed into the dome. With the Draper Observatory finally finished in 1860, Henry went on to shoot the clearest photos of the moon up to that point, and was able to accomplish other feats of astrophotography and measurement.
During this period, virtually every eminent astronomer and physicist in the country visited the Draper observatory.
Inventors such as Thomas Edison and Samuel F. B. Morse, and renowned neighbors such as Irvington resident and businessman and financier Cyrus Field, along with distinguished visitors from afar, such as King Kalikana of the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) and Emperor Don Pedro II of Brazil, came to view the facility. In time, the Draper Observatory would be eclipsed by structures with more powerful telescopes, but from the mid-1860s until 1882, it played a major role in astronomy in the United States.
Another, much larger telescope, built into a second hemispheric dome in the Draper Observatory, was Henry’s project in 1869 with his new wife, Mary Anna Palmer Draper. In 1882, at the age of 45 Henry retired from his position at NYU to devote himself full-time to his research. Six months later, he died of pneumonia.
When patriarch John William died on January 4,1882 at the age of 70 (only 11 months before Henry’s untimely demise), he left his entire estate to his sister, Dorothy Catherine. Upon her death in 1901, the land now known as Draper Park and including the observatory, three houses on Washington Avenue, and a cottage from Revolutionary times on Broadway came into the possession of Henry’s youngest sister, Antonia Draper Dixon.
Sadly, the larger observatory dome burned in 1905. Mrs. Dixon repaired the room the following year without a dome. In 1912, she remodeled the dwelling into a residence for herself. The building’s engine room, workroom and darkroom were converted into a kitchen, dining room and front hall, respectively. A second story with three bedrooms and a bathroom was added. The structure was renamed the Observatory Cottage and Mrs. Dixon lived there until her death in September of 1923.
In the early 1920s, Mrs. Dixon had made plans to bequeath the buildings and almost 10 acres of land to the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, which she hoped would preserve the Observatory Cottage as a “historical or high art museum, reading room or library.” Although many (including Henry’s niece Antonia Maury) had high hopes of making the Cottage and Draper Park into an astronomical and natural museum, growing financial deficits on the part of the Preservation Society put a halt to those plans.
With photographer and Hastings resident A. C. Langmuir’s help, the property became Draper Park in the late 1930s, and continues to be a favorite of Hastings residents.
Ms. Maury lived in the Cottage from 1935-52. After her death, the house was rented out to a succession of Hastings families, who acted as caretakers of the property.
In 1990, the estate was transferred to the village, which is still bound by the stipulations in Mrs. Dixon’s will that the observatory be used as a museum or library, and the park remain a place of “quiet enjoyment.” To help meet the financial needs of the requirements cited in Mrs. Dixon’s will, the village auctioned off the Broadway and Washington Avenue cottages, granting 99-year land leases to tenants living in those houses. The village also restored and repainted the exterior of the Observatory Cottage, making use of a grant from New York State.
In November of 1994, village trustees offered the Hastings Historical Society a long-term rental agreement on the building. With state, village and private contributions, the Cottage was extensively renovated, and a climate-controlled and fireproof archive was created.
A dome-shaped ceiling was incorporated into the design of the new addition in homage to the building’s past as the Draper Observatory. In 1975 the building was designated a National Historic Landmark. Although the building is widely reported to have been the home of John William Draper (or his observatory, as stated on the National Historic Landmark plaque on the boulder on our grounds), this is erroneous. The home of John William Draper still stands two doors south of us. The observatory was built by Henry Draper on his father’s property solely for the purpose of astrophotography.
As noted above it did not become a home until long after its use as an observatory ended with Henry Draper’s death in 1882.We invite you to visit us at the Observatory Cottage to view the newer incarnation of the Drapers’ historic structure and see how we’ve fulfilled Ms. Dixon’s wishes by keeping the Drapers’ and Hastings’ history alive.
