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Historic Preservation

An Historic Preservation Tsunami: Are We Becoming Indians?

May 26, 2022
by Peter Feinman
There was no historic preservation then (and the clothing is inappropriate) (by Kaamran Hafeez)

On May 15 of this year, I was hit with an historic preservation tsunami. It was totally unexpected. It occurred so quickly and powerfully I scarcely realized what had happened. The source of the tsunami was the Sunday New York Times. It was not one article. Instead it was a series of independent articles that when combined hit me with the force comparable to when individual snowflakes band together and become a snowball.

I should explain these comments by stating that I read the newspaper while holding it with two hands the way it is supposed to be read. I do not read every article, especially on Sunday, but by turning each page I see more than I would online and read more. The unexpected juxtaposition of articles powerfully drove home a message about land use and displacement that called to mind what had happened centuries earlier although without the violence this time.

A CATSKILLS ESCAPE, REFRESHED WITH A CAN-DO SPIRIT

This article was about Melissa Gilbert and Tim Busfield finding a home for themselves in Highland Lake, New York, in Sullivan County, the Catskills. The article told the story of this Hollywood couple finding a home for themselves in a place where they had never sought to look before. What they found was a somewhat rundown structure with potential. They call it a “the cabbage,” a combination of “cabin” and “cottage.”  The article recounts the efforts of this one couple to fulfill the potential of this one structure and its grounds. Naturally this adventure is chronicled in a new memoir by Gilbert entitled Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, a Life Rediscovered.

So far this is the story of a single couple on a single piece of land that respects the land and the surrounding community. However the story does not stop here.

RURAL PRESERVATIONISTS LOSING GROUND:
A squabble over a luxury development upstate reveals a shifting of priorities among local leaders

The stakes are more serious here. The article begins with the town supervisor in Durham, NY, firing the chair of the Durham Historic Preservation Commission. How often do you see that happen? And from a voluntary position!

The catalyst for this termination is a real estate project in Greene County, NY, where the actual city of Catskill is located, north of the area traditionally known as the Catskills today. Specifically, this rural enclave of 2700 people were faced with a 95 acre project. Woods, wetlands, and stone outcroppings were to be transformed into 12 luxury homes. Isn’t that progress? Undeveloped land is going to be developed. Isn’t that was has been going on since the Europeans first arrived here?

The historic preservation committee thought otherwise. It wanted a more in-depth environmental study. What it got was public meetings lasting past midnight with tempers raised followed by a lawsuit and the firing. After the dismissal of the commission chair, three sitting members resigned in protest.

As everyone reading this blog undoubtedly knows, the Gilbert/Busfield example above is one mere drop in a flood of people from the city seeking refuse from Covid and urban life in second homes or new first homes. Naturally also, developers are responding to meet the housing needs of this new population. Such development also increases the property tax base. Naturally, these developments have “put intensifying pressure on the historic preservation commissions of these towns and cities.”

The scale of this development exceeds that of the Gilbert/Busfield renovation of an existing property. In this instance, an undeveloped area in the historic hamlet of Cornwallville would become a large-lot subdivision with cul-de-sacs houses starting at $1.6 million. There would be a small farm house aka community center (for the 12 homes).

A neighbor of the prospective development says: “It’s a gated community, without the gate. This is about stewardship of nature, stewardship of historic architecture, and about preserving open space.”

A group of concerned neighbors and residents formed the Cornwallville Residents for Rural Preservation. They fear the dozen homes “will wreak havoc on the area’s fragile ecosystem and that the developer lacks experience to undertake a project of this size.” As another neighbor says, “We are a simple people here; we don’t need these fancy houses and a homeowners’ association. It will bring lights and noise. They are building on wetlands; it just isn’t right.”

The long article begins on the front page of the Metropolitan section and continues with a full page in the section. The article then cites the dismissal of the vice chair of the Kingston, NY, historic preservation commission, in Ulster County just to the south of Greene County. In that case it was over a plan to bring 140 apartments and 420 parking spaces into a historic district dated to 1658. The remainder of article covers a related situation in Poughkeepsie, NY in Dutchess County on the east side of the Hudson River from Ulster County. The Poughkeepsie Historic District & Landmark Preservation Commission of seven people is in a precarious position as well – the terms of three of the seven positions have expired with two more to go this summer. Here the mayor does not need to fire anybody, only to wait.

In these conflicts between commissions and the local governments they serve, the commissions have tended to be the loser.

THE HAMPTONS

There are five articles on the Hamptons in this once section of the May 15, 2022, New York Times.

Establishing a Beachhead for Modernism: Timothy Godbold, an interior designer based in Southampton, became a preservationist after learning so many houses constructed in this style have been torn down

He watched his architectural world being destroyed before his very eyes. The problem was widespread as routine demolition was underway “to make way for sprawling new mansions.”  He sought out like-minded preservationists only to learn that no such organization or group existed. As a result he became a Hamptons preservationist. The existing Village Board of Architectural Review & Historic Preservation commissioned him as a journalist to write a report on the historical significance of the property.

When you think of historic preservation, do 20th century buildings come to mind? Sarah Kautz, preservation director at Preservation Long Island observed that municipalities are ill-equipped to deal with such recent buildings, meaning those built when you were alive so how could they be historic?  Paul Goldberger, former architecture critic of The New York Times, bemoaned the destruction of modest great midcentury homes to build McMansions. 20th century architectural history (middle class) is being lost to create 21st century development homes for the wealthy. Progress has come to the Hamptons!

A Cute Place to Live (if you can Find a House for Sale)

This article is about living in Cutchogue on the North Fork of Long Island. The image used is The Cutchogue Diner which I used in my previous blog about diners. According to the article “Affordable housing and land preservation are the issues that make headlines most often in the local paper, The Suffolk Times. Congrats for having a local newspaper! Apparently long-time residents are being priced out of the community.

A Local Broker Who Is Also a Television Personality: JB Andreassi, of ‘Selling the Hamptons,’ says low inventory has toughened the market

The comment that stuck with me separate from SELLING THE HAMPTONS is selling the Hamptons. “The other thing is, we actually show the Hamptons. We show the local places, like the barbershop — the kids who run that barbershop grew up in East Hampton — and Hill Street boxing, founded by a local Southampton kid. I love that we are bringing exposure to places like Golden Pear café, the mom-and-pop shops that make the Hamptons so distinct.”

Millionaires Vs. Billionaires: The East Hampton Airport is set to close Tuesday, but frequent fliers, business owners an others have filed lawsuits to keep it open.

Here is a problem you do not see often. The front page of the Real Estate section shows people disembarking from a helicopter at the airport. The front-page headline is “HIGH-END PROBLEMS: The rich and the very rich battle for air supremacy, pitting Hamptons homeowners against helicopter service.” The article gets a pull page and half a second page on the inside. Forget about the middle class travails.

Battlelines have been drawn. On one side there are the residents living below the air routes who “are besieged by egocentric helicopter and private jet passengers who don’t care about the toll their commute takes. On the other side are the aforementioned highfliers plus “the salt-of-the-earth locals concerned for their businesses.” The clash reflects “the changed identity of the Hamptons over the past decades; it has gone from elite seaside hideaway to glitz-stuffed scene.” As a resident since 1955 said:

We went from wanting to get more and more people out here visiting, and more and more income, and more and more well-to-do money to save the place. Well, that happened. Now the problem is, are we going to lose what they came out here to see — the windmills, the beautiful vistas, the sunsets, the beaches, the quiet?”

As the billionaires fight the millionaires who fought the middle class and year-round residents over the land and lifestyles one witnesses a four-dimensional archaeological tel of multiple strata, peoples, and cultures. One could write a history of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Hamptons based on these conflicts. But what about the people before the Hamptons became the HAMPTONS?

Ma’s House Fulfills a Grandmother’s Dying Wish: A Shinnecock Nation home is host to a residency program, workshops and exhibitions

Below the half-page continuation of the billionaires versus millionaire article, there is this article about the Shinnecock Nation reservation to the west of Southampton Village. This new addition to the landscape is an art studio in progress. The artwork can be in the style of the Plains Indians as well as Shinnecock. The work explores the cultural significance of the Shinnecock Nation’s history in the Hamptons according to Yaya Reyes, the founder of the Art & Soul: Hamptons festival. Does historic preservation include the Shinnecocks who preceded the billionaires, the millionaires, the middle class, and the English?

In this tsunami of preservation articles in a single issue of the newspaper, one comes face to face with multiple issues over land, lifestyle, displacement, development and progress. In the previous centuries these areas in the Catskills and the Hamptons have been buffeted by numerous changes. Peoples have been displaced; ways of life have disappeared or vanished in mere relics of once thriving vibrant communities. How would you like to be a middle-class family grilling hamburgers on July 4 only to have a tour bus stop to take your picture as a quaint example of a once common way of life?

There are two unrelenting factors in the constant push for development in the name of progress … besides those very values. The first is numbers. When people just keep coming and coming and coming, the people who are already there can become lost and overwhelmed in the process. Think of how the Great Migration from the South now dominates the Middle Passage people population in the north over those who are descendants from colonial people. The wave of people migrating from the city has yet to crest. People can work from anywhere and fall in love with what the rural areas have to offer … as long as they are fully connected, can easily travel to the city, and have all the chain stores necessary for a civilized life.

The second factor is money. The situation is limited to people wanting to move to these areas but often to have second homes there. Communities of second homes, week-end homes, summer homes create a different dynamic. College towns experience something similar with the peregrination of youth. The millionaires and the billionaires present a whole new challenge to historic preservation to say nothing of the social fabric of a community. It is still true that people do not want to lose their land and their way of life.  We have the opportunity now to witness and perhaps experience personally something similar to what happened centuries ago but without the violence.

Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service Part II

July 7, 2017
by Peter Feinman

This post is the second in a series investigating Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, an NPS-commissioned study with implications for the NPS historic sites in New York, the state counterpart with the NYSOPRHP historic sites, as well as for historic sites in general. For Part I, click here.

Imperiled Promise, proposes “a new vision of history” designed to “lift history out if its often marginal state” by stressing its place as a core activity.

So positioned, history can help the NPS better guard the precious resources in its care, and propel the agency toward greater relevance to American civic life….to fulfill its promise of creating an inspired, informed, and thinking citizenry.

The deliberate use of the word “civic” signifies the commitment to the vision of local/state/national history as in integral part of the social fabric of the community, a fabric that is being unraveled even more so today than in 2011 when the report was written. The ongoing controversies about Confederate memorials testifies to the power of historical memory to the present and of the need to bring it out into the open and see the light of day. Since many NPS sites are military battlefields, it should not be surprising that the NPS also is on the frontlines of the cultural battlefields as well. Similarly many other sites, especially colonial, have had the experience of re-evaluating the lives and events of the people associated with the site. Engaging the public in a discourse is fraught with danger and not something all historic sites are equipped to do. But ignoring the past is no solution either.

The authors of the study sent out over 1500 survey forms to NPS staff with history as part of their job description. The positions included rangers, historians, and curators and some archivists and archaeologists based on the government employment codes. Retired people were contacted, parks were visited, and group sessions were held at the annual meetings of the Organization of American History (OAH) and National Council on Public History (NCPH). It should be noted that former New State Historian Bob Weible had been head of the NCPH and that City of Rochester Historian and APNHYS board member Christine Ridarsky has become more involved with NCPH in the last few years. Marla Miller one of the authors who presented at the workshop in 2014 prior to the NYS History Conference is now the Vice President and she informed me at the Massachusetts History Alliance meeting in June at Holy Cross, that the annual NCPH conference would be in our area in 2019.

The Introduction to Part I of the report paints a dire picture. The actual word used by the authors is “distressing.” There appears to have been “a decades-long decline in the relative investment made in ensuring that history scholarship and interpretation remain sound and robust.” One source described the study as “a renewed reminder of the historical staffing crisis that has been growing like a noxious weed in the National Park System over the past decade.” The place of history within the organization is not good:

Even when the consequent attitude toward history is not outright disdain, there is a dreadful tendency to view historic sites as somehow emasculated by the absence of geysers, waterfalls, granite grandeur, and genuine law enforcement challenges.

This blunt and bleak assessment highlights the enormous obstacles confronting any serious attempt to elevate the status of history within the organization.

To gain a better understanding of what is really happening on the ground, the authors examined the history staff of the NPS. They found that these individuals “are dispersed and often only loosely connected.” Even the 182 individual “historians” by job title out of 22,000 total staff including seasonal and temporary don’t necessarily do “history” as someone outside the bureaucracy would understand it. One respondent wrote that history in the NPS is “sporadic, interrupted, superbly excellent in some instances and vacant in others.” A critical shortcoming identified is one which will resonate with the New York history community: “neither the chief historian’s office, nor any other single entity within the service, clearly speaks on history’s behalf or has responsibility for overseeing all history work throughout the NPS.” Gosh, I wonder how that situation could exist or be a problem. I am shocked. Shocked to find out that no one is in charge here.

The authors, who themselves are historians by training and profession, recognized that there is a problem across all history organizations including museums, colleges, universities, schools, and public programs. The challenge they identify is to make history, historical thinking, and historical training relevant and intelligible. As an example of critical thinking, suppose a President of the United States claimed that a certain Secretary of State was the worst one in American history and that America has been a loser in all the treaties it has signed (so we are going to return Alaska to the Russians, thank you very much Secretary of State William Seward of Florida and Auburn, New York for that folly!). On what basis was that historical conclusion reached? On what basis can it be challenged?

The authors bemoan the popular perception of history as “either a boring recital or memorized facts or a series of arcane and tedious debates about esoteric subjects.” To those one might add that contrary to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, people are entitled to their own facts. In this environment when people have the right to alternative facts it is difficult to make the case the NPS should encourage and foster critical thinking skills as part of a park visit. Of course, the report was written when there was a former professor in the White House. Times have changed. What do you as a ranger when confronted with someone who prefers an alternate universe? Rangers don’t have the option to change the channel.

The author’s discovered some ingrained institutional issues that compromised the position of history within the NPS. An internal divide is expressed through the shorthand of “nature” and “culture.” Within the culture realm there is another division, this time between:

Cultural resources management or the preservationists who protect the physical remains of the past, and interpretation or education-oriented processes aimed at fostering public appreciation for the resources and introducing larger narratives of the American story.

According to the consultants, the past 40 years of the NPS has been a confining of history, historical research, and history programs to preservation. The story began in 1935 with the passage of the Historic Sites Act. Suddenly a nature and scenery organization had thrust upon it responsibility for historic sites (just as happened to the Office of Parks in New York). There already was an NPS Chief Historian beginning in 1931 tasked with an education mission for the nature sites. As it turned out, the Chief Historian had an academic history background and he envisioned the history sites as classrooms for the teaching of history. Therefore he needed a history staff. Since all this was happening during the Depression, he was able to hire Ph.D.’s in history and soon had a staff of 60. But the marriage of history preservation behind the scenes and history presentation to the public was a tense one.

By the 1960s, the preservationists had won the battle. Broad historical themes were out and targeted messages conveying specific information about the specific site one was in. With the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the new National Register of Historic Places operated under the umbrella of the National Park Service. The result of various shifts in department organization and practices was according to one survey respondent that NPS historians are “buried under compliance and a variety of bureaucratic mandates.” Instead of practicing the craft of history, the NPS historian survey respondent wrote: “Much of our professional talent in the cultural resources disciplines spends the bulk of its time on resource management” and not applied research. Furthermore, there is a gap between history or what passes for it in the NPS and the best professional, scholarly practices in history. That discrepancy is part of the reason for this study through the Organization of American Historians. That discrepancy is part of the reason why professional historians were asked to conduct the study. That discrepancy is part of the reason why professional historians with an emphasis on public history were asked to conduct this study.

With this background in mind, we can now turn to:

1. What was recommended?
2. How does it applies on the state level to government owned and operated historic sites.
3. What are the lessons for non-federal and non-state history museums and societies?

To be continued.

Imperiled Promise: History and the NPS (and OPRHP)

June 28, 2017
by Peter Feinman

Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service is the title of a study commissioned by the NPS in partnership with the Organization of American History (OAH). Although first published in 2011, it was slow to see the light of day. In 2014, it was the subject of a pre-New York State History Conference workshop which I attended and wrote about during the NPS Centennial in 2016. I had intended to delve more deeply into the report itself which I downloaded but never quite got around to writing about it. In this post I wish to begin to address the findings of the study. As you will see, the comments are doubly important for New York State:

1. We have many NPS sites in the state
2. The issues raised frequently apply to state historic sites as well.

The findings also are related to the fledgling Massachusetts History Alliance’s efforts to forge exactly what the name says, a history alliance in Massachusetts. I recently attended its conference held at Holy Cross and will reporting on those developments in future posts.  There is a lot going on and it is difficult to keep up.

According to the Executive Summary of Imperiled Promise, history is at the heart of approximately two thirds of nearly four hundred national park units. At the time of the report, 182 NPS employees carried the job title of “Historian.”  However, the authors pointed out that people without the classification may do history-related work as well. I don’t know what the comparable figures are for the NYSOPRHP.

The attendance of the sites is part of the story. By way of perspective, a local news report in 2016 provided the following NPS attendance figures for 2015 in Dutchess County:

Vanderbilt Mansion drew 431, 961 visitors ranking 133rd of 368 NPS destinations but 6th for National Historic Sites. By comparison the White House had 526, 623 visitors.  Other NPS sites in Dutchess include, FDR ranked 11th and the related Val-Kill ranked 26th.  All these sites were outdrawn by Walkway over the Hudson, a state site with 448, 719 and some by the Dutchess County Fair with 394,422.

These numbers can be deceiving especially in a PowerPoint presentation. Vanderbilt Mansion on the Hudson River serves a community park much like Central Park. It is a lovely setting for painting, photography, dog-walking, jogging, and other park activities that just happen to occur on land which has an historic mansion. Similarly the Walkway over the Hudson River is another spectacular recreation setting. By and large both sites with free grounds access are day trips if not after-work visits. By comparison, the Grand Canyon drew an estimated 5.5 million people the same year. Besides the admission fees, people who visit it spend money on meals, souvenirs, lodging, and transportation. Attendance numbers need to be treated very carefully depending on what one is trying to prove or demonstrate. They also highlight a divide noted in the report between the recreational and historical sites managed by the same organization. As I recall at a preservation conference in 2016, even NYSOPRHP joked about the number of historical versus recreation sites under its umbrella. Obviously in New York, Jones Beach and Niagara Falls will outdrew any traditional historical site and that does affect the allocation of funding and management time.

Returning to the Executive Summary, the following observation bears notice. I know that my blogs can be very pointed but pay attention to what was reported in this NPS-commissioned study:

“[The NPS’s mission] has been imperiled by the agency’s weak support for its history workforce, by agency structures that confine history in isolated silos, by longstanding funding deficiencies, by often narrow and static conceptions of history’s scope, and by timid interpretation.”

Not exactly subtle or complimentary. Do these conditions apply at all at the state level as well?

Naturally, the authors of the study have recommendations to remedy the situation. The issue of whether or not these recommendations were implemented or whether the report was filed on the consultant reports  shelf as one NPS Ranger delicately phrased it will be deferred until after they are presented.

The first recommendation required a commitment by the NPS to history as one of its core purposes. That commitment required the NPS to “invest” which has the implication that at some point money is required to do what the report recommends is needed to be done. The investment should be for:

1. creating a robust place-based visitor engagement with history
2. connecting the history of the site to the histories beyond the boundaries of the site
3. forthrightly addressing conflict and controversy in history and its interpretation in the present.

To achieve this vision, the NPS would be obligated to overcome the legacies that undermined the effort.  The negative legacies included:

1. underemphasis and underfunding of historical work
2. artificial separation of cultural resources management from interpretation
3. artificial separation of natural resources interpretation from cultural and historical interpretation
4. overemphasis on mandated compliance activities
5. a misperception of history as a tightly-bounded fixed and accurate story instead of being an ongoing process of discovery with changing narratives and multiple perspectives.

To address these concerns, the authors proposed almost 100 recommendations (which I will not list).  They involve the management, workforce development, and funding. In general terms, one may say there is an issue of the “historian” function at an historic site. What is the training necessary to become an historian? How does one maintain competence in the field or engage with ongoing scholarship to remain current? Are there organizational meetings devoted to history that staff at historic sites should attend? How can existing state and regional organizations support history in addition to curating and exhibit presentation? Would some kind of history certification process be beneficial such as teachers have using professional development to increase their salary? How relevant is all this for the local often volunteer municipal historical society and museum?

Two items in the Executive Summary recommendations bear special notice. They both involve bringing together and creating an empowered leadership. The authors of Imperiled Promise challenge the NPS to create two groups:

1. History Leadership Council, an internal group comprised of the most talented and influential historians and interpreters
2. History Advisory Board, an external-based group comprising the nation’s leading public history professionals, innovative curators, insightful scholars, savvy administrators.

The authors felt that if such groups were formed with legitimate leadership and authority from the NPS, the other challenges could be overcome. In-other-words, they proposed a top-down solution that would gradually impact the grassroots level at the individual sites. Care to guess what actually has happened?

In any event, one can readily observe that similar considerations apply at the state level as well. One may even add that historic sites are owned and operated not just by the states but by counties, cities, towns, villages, and privately.  As it turns out, all history organizations in the state would benefit if some of the recommendations were opened up to extended beyond the NPS itself. In future posts, I will explore in more detail what the Imperiled Promise report specifically recommended and provide some examples of what the NPS in New York actually is doing.

New York’s Historic ‘Bridges Over Troubled Waters’

April 22, 2013
by Peter Feinman

The High Bridge is scheduled to reopen. This bridge is not to be confused with the High Line in Manhattan which is not a bridge. The High Bridge is a closed pedestrian crossing connecting the Bronx and Manhattan. The 1200 foot span was built in 1848 and is the oldest bridge in the city. It was constructed as part of the Croton Aqueduct system which carried water from Westchester to New York City.

The Croton Aqueduct still functions in Westchester not as a water-carrying system but as an elongated trail somewhat paralleling the Hudson River from Croton to Yonkers. The Aqueduct has devoted followers and a friends group and always is being used by hikers, strollers, runners, and families. It forms a living thread uniting the communities of the county. Continue reading “New York’s Historic ‘Bridges Over Troubled Waters’” →

Community Narratives: The Importance of Story-Telling

March 26, 2013
by Peter Feinman

We are a story-telling species. Storytellers need an audience. Storytellers and the audience need a place to meet. The venue may vary, the technology may change, the message evolves, but somehow, in some way, we will tell stories. They define who we are as individuals and as members of something larger than ourselves, a family, a community, a county, a state, a country, or a religion.

How exactly would we celebrate Easter or Passover without a story to tell? Would we even celebrate them if there were no story?  With these thoughts in mind, I would like to turn to some examples of the importance of storytelling and community which I have noticed. Continue reading “Community Narratives: The Importance of Story-Telling” →

The State of NY History: The Westchester Experience

January 10, 2013
by Peter Feinman

January is the traditional time for looking forward and backwards according to the two-faced Roman god Janus. In that spirit, I wish to start 2013 with a look back on some developments in local and state history by focusing on Westchester County both because I live there and because I happen to go through an old folder of Westchester material as I was cleaning up. Continue reading “The State of NY History: The Westchester Experience” →

Saving Cities: Learning from Melanie Griffith

December 19, 2012
by Peter Feinman

One of my favorite movie scenes is from Working Girl when Melanie Griffith explains while riding up the elevator with Trask and Indiana, how she came up with the idea for the corporate merger. It wasn’t as if she had been thinking about anything even remotely related to it. Her insight derived from a chance juxtaposition perceived by a mind willing to learn and open to new possibilities. Continue reading “Saving Cities: Learning from Melanie Griffith” →

On New York’s ‘Ruin Porn’

December 10, 2012
by Peter Feinman

Ruin porn is in. Ruin porn is hot. Ruin porn is sexy. Ruin porn is the term coined by Jim Griffioen, who writes a blog about his life as a stay-at-home dad in Detroit.

As part of that effort he periodically posts photographs he has taken of the more than 70,000 abandoned buildings in his city. Such images included (as reported in the New York Times) “‘feral’ houses almost completely overgrown with vegetation; a decommissioned public-school book depository in which trees were growing out of the piles of rotting textbooks”. The term has become a familiar one in the city not without some misgivings by the locals as they watch tourists take souvenirs of their city back home. Continue reading “On New York’s ‘Ruin Porn’” →

Bowling Alone in 2012

August 20, 2012
by Peter Feinman

“Harlem Loses Its Bowling Alley” was part of the headline for an article in the New York Times on August 6, 2012. The article told the story, not of some hallowed bowling alley from the time when life was simpler, but from 2006 when with great fanfare and former President Clinton in attendance, Harlem once again had a bowling alley decades after its last one closed in the 1980s. Continue reading “Bowling Alone in 2012” →

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (2012)

August 13, 2012
by Peter Feinman

Once upon a time, as all good stories begin, in the fair village of North Tarrytown (later to be renamed Sleepy Hollow), there was a beacon of light in the river that ran two ways.

Located a quarter mile from the shore of village on the river, this lighthouse had been built in 1882-1883 by strong and sturdy men back in the day when strong and sturdy men built and made things along the Hudson River and before it became a valley of ruins with a book of a similar name. Continue reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (2012)” →