Past Times

When I was a young boy my family often went for rides on Sundays.  Often, the ride would lead around the Tarrytown Lakes, past the pump house, then through a beautiful tree-lined street that made a canopy over the road.  Off on the right side of the road was a large mansion,  but what fascinated me most was a life-size bronzed statue of a prancing  horse.  I would wonder, “Who owns that house?”  I would like to tell you the story of the man that owned and made the estate he called Eastview Farm.

The man’s  name  was James Butler.  He was born in County Kilkenny, Ireland in 1855 on land that his family had been farming for fifteen generations.  He had been educated nearby in the parish school in the village of Russellam.   When he was twenty years old he emigrated to Boston and began working on a farm at Goshen Mountain, continuing the family tradition of farming.   However this was soon to change.

Read more: The Egg and Butter Man of Eastview

The historic Tarrytown Train Station is 120 years old this year, and I recently reflected on my earliest experience with this landmark.

It was back in the early to mid-1950s, when I was a kid living in the Crest.  On rare evenings, my mother would bundle her children into the backseat of the family car — a 1949 Plymouth — and drive down to the Tarrytown Train Station to meet my dad.  There were no car seats or seatbelts then; I think my sisters and I used to stand or kneel on the backseat and watch the scenery through the windshield as the sedan cruised down Neperan Road and onto Main Street.  On that stretch we could feel the rails of the old trolley line under the car tires. Usually, at that late evening hour, Main Street was subdued and dark, except for some bars, the marquee of the Music Hall, and the old incandescent street lamps.

Read more: Stories in Stone – A Tarrytown Landmark