The Greatest Highway in the World / Historical, Industrial and Descriptive Information of the Towns, Cities and Country Passed Through Between New York and Chicago Via the New York Central Lines. Based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

by New York Central Railroad Company

24½ M. TARRYTOWN, Pop. 5,807.

(Train 51 passes 9:08; No. 3, 9:27; No. 41, 1:41; No. 25, 3:23; No. 19, 6:13. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 8:40; No. 26, 9:00; No. 16, 3:18; No. 22, 4:43.)

Situated on a sloping hill that rises to a considerable height above the Tappan Zee, historic Tarrytown stands on the site of an Indian village, Alipoonk (place of elms), burned by the Dutch in 1644. Irving explains that the housewives of the countryside gave the town its name because their husbands were inclined to linger at the village tavern, but literal minded historians think it was more likely that the name came from Tarwen dorp or Tarwetown, "wheat town." There were perhaps a dozen Dutch families here in 1680 when Frederick Philipse acquired title to Philipse Manor, several thousand acres, in what is now Westchester county. Just above Tarrytown is the valley of the Pocantico creek, the mouth of which is marked by the projection of Kingsland Point.

This is the "Sleepy Hollow" of Irving's legend, where Ichabod Crane, the long, thin school-master, whose conspicuous bones clattered at any mention of ghosts, encountered the Headless Horseman pounding by night through the little Dutch village. It was after a quilting bee at Farmer Van Tassel's, where his daughter Katrina and what would come with her in the shape of fat farm-lands and well-stocked barns, aroused Ichabod's affections to the boiling point. He had a rival, however, "Brom Bones," a young black-headed sprig, who watched Ichabod's advances uneasily. After the party Ichabod mounted his old horse, Gunpowder, as bony as he, but no sooner was he well under way than he heard hoof beats on the road behind him and saw, glimmering in the dark, a white headless figure on horseback, carrying in its arms a round object like a head.... Never before or since was there such a chase in Sleepy Hollow. Perhaps the hapless school-teacher might have escaped, had not the Huntsman, just as they reached the Sleepy Hollow bridge, hurled his head square at his victim. The next morning no Ichabod, only a pumpkin lying on the road by the bridge, where the hoofmarks ceased. He had completely disappeared. Some weeks later Brom Bones led Katrina to the altar.

Washington Irving

Washington Irving (1783-1859) was intended for a legal profession, but although called to the bar preferred to amuse himself with literary ventures. The first of these, with the exception of the satirical miscellany, "Salmagundi," was the delightful "Knickerbocker History of New York," wherein the pedantry of local antiquaries is laughed at, and the solid Dutch burgher established as a definite comedy type. When the commercial house established by his father and run by his brother began to go under in 1815, Irving went to England to look into the affairs of the Liverpool house, and as it was soon necessary to declare bankruptcy, his misfortune forced him to write for his living. Returning to America in 1832 after 17 years' absence, he found his name a household word. The only interruption to his literary career was the four years (1842-1846) he spent as ambassador to Spain. For the rest, he passed some little time travelling, but in the main kept retreat at "Sunnyside," where he died, Nov. 28, 1859.

Through this valley, we get a glimpse of the site where Philipse erected, partly of brick brought from Holland, a manor house,* a mill,* and a church,* all of which are still standing.

Old Dutch Church (Built About 1686) at Tarrytown, N.Y.

Irving says: "The sequestered situation of the church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust trees and lofty elms, from among which its white-washed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement." The church is still standing.

"There is probably no other locality in America, taking into account history, tradition, the old church, the manor house, and the mill, which so entirely conserves the form and spirit of Dutch civilization in the New World.... This group of buildings ranks in historic interest if not in historic importance with Faneuil Hall, Independence Hall, the ruined church tower at Jamestown, the old gateway at St. Augustine, and the Spanish cabildo on Jackson Square in New Orleans. And the time will come when pilgrimages will be made to this ancient beautiful home of some of those ideals and habits of life which have given form and structure to American civilization."—Hamilton Wright Mabie.

Old Mill at Tarrytown Built in 1686

The Manor House, the Old Church and the Mill were erected by Frederick Philipse, the lord of several thousand acres, in what is now Westchester County. The mill, much dilapidated, still exists.

During the War of Independence, Tarrytown was the scene of numerous conflicts between the "cowboys" and "skinners," bands of unorganized partisans who carried on a kind of guerilla warfare, the former acting in the interest of the colonists, and the latter in that of the king. On the old post road on Sept. 24, 1780, Maj. André was captured by three Continentals, John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac van Wart. The spot where André was captured is now marked with a monument—a marble shaft surmounted by a statue of a Continental soldier.

Tarrytown lies principally along either side of a broad and winding highway, laid out in 1723, from N.Y.C. to Albany. It was called the King's Highway till the War of Independence, then called Albany Post Road, and the section of it in Tarrytown is known now as Broadway. The delights of traveling in the days when the road was first laid out are suggested in the following description: "The coach was without springs, and the seats were hard, and often backless. The horses were jaded and worn, the roads were rough with boulders and stumps of trees, or furrowed with ruts and quagmires. The journey was usually begun at 3 o'clock in the morning, and after 18 hours of jogging over the rough roads the weary traveler was put down at a country inn whose bed and board were such as to win little praise. Long before daybreak the next morning a blast from the driver's horn summoned him to the renewal of his journey. If the coach stuck fast in a mire, as it often did, the passengers must alight and help lift it out."

Many of the stirring incidents of Fenimore Cooper's novel, The Spy, occurred in this neighborhood, and the town is particularly described in The Sketch Book of Washington Irving who was for many years the warden of the old church and is buried in the old Sleepy Hollow burying ground.

With Cooper and Washington Irving (1783-1859) American literature first began to exist for the world outside our own boundaries. The Knickerbocker History of New York, in which the Dutch founders were satirized, was practically the first American book to win appreciation abroad. This and later books "created the legend of the Hudson, and Irving alone has linked his memory locally with his country so that it hangs over the landscape and blends with it forever."

Harvey Birch, the hero of The Spy, is a portrait from the life of a revolutionary patriot who appears in the book as a peddler with a keen eye to trade as well as to the movements of the enemy. One of the best known incidents in the book is that in which Harvey, by a clever stratagem, assists Capt. Wharton to escape. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was born at Burlington, N.J., but was reared in the wild country around Otsego Lake, in central N.Y., on the yet unsettled estates of his father. It was here he learned the backwoods lore, which in combination with his romantic genius, made him one of the most popular of authors.

Among the literary residents of Tarrytown have been Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, well known to a previous generation for her romantic novels, John Kendrick Bangs, the humorist, and Hamilton Wright Mabie, editor and essayist. Carl Schurz (1829-1906) is buried here in the Sleepy Hollow churchyard. Tarrytown is the trading center of a prosperous agricultural region; it also has about 100 manufacturing establishments with a large output. Just north of Kingsland Point (seen at the left, on the east bank of the river), the seat of William Rockefeller comes into view on the right, and behind it, among the hills, is the estate of his brother, John D. Rockefeller.

John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 at Richford, Tioga Co., N.Y., but his family moved to Cleveland while he was still a boy, and his career was begun there. In 1858 he went into the produce commission business, and 4 years later his company invested in an oil refinery. Mr. Rockefeller kept constantly adding to his influence and possessions in this field until by 1872 the Standard Oil Co. was organized with him as president, and a practical control of oil production in America was secured. This was the first great American "trust." Mr. Rockefeller himself retired from active business in 1895. While his wealth is enormous, his benefactions have been on an equal scale, comprising gifts to the Baptist Church, the founding of educational institutions and the supporting of those already existent. Scientific research in medical fields has been a particular object of his generosity.

Mr. Rockefeller's country estate is called "Kijkuit," meaning look-out—a name given by the early Dutch settlers to the beautiful hill on which it stands, and which, rising to a height of 500 ft., gives a lovely view up and down the Hudson, across to the distant mountain ridges of N.J., and inland over Westchester County. The house and gardens are famous not only for their splendour, but for the priceless works of art they contain. Among the treasures which have been worked in as details of the landscape gardening is a fountain which for years has been considered unrivalled by experts. The huge basin, 20 ft. 8 in. in diameter, was cut from a single block of granite weighing 50 tons and brought on the deck of a schooner from an island on the Maine coast to the dock at Tarrytown. The heroic figure at the top represents Neptune, and the figures below symbolize the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

In the "morning garden" at the rear of the house is a bronze Victory (a facsimile of the Pompeiian Victory at Naples), which stands on a marble column with a Byzantine capital brought from Greece. The 13th century relief set in the wall of the pergola at the left came from a church in Venice.

Descending a flight of steps to the westward, one comes upon the Aphrodite temple. The style of this is Graeco-Roman, with columns of marble supporting a dome decorated after the fashion of the portico niches in the Massimi palace in Rome, which was designed in the 16th century by Baldassare Peruzzi. Under a roof of copper and bronze, on a high pedestal, stands "Aphrodite," resembling the Venus de Medici, but so superior to her in line and proportion that many critics believe it to be a Praxitilean original from which the Venus de Medici was clumsily copied. This is the greatest art-treasure in the garden.