National Learn to Row Day at the Haverstraw Ferry Landing at Dr. Girling Drive, Haverstraw, NY.

Each year, the North Rockland Rowing Club hosts Learn to Row Day to expose more New Yorkers and Rocklanders to the sport of rowing or crew. Refine your technique on a rowing machine and/or get in a boat to learn the basics. The Club will take you out on the Hudson River to experience rowing firsthand! Don’t worry, they take numerous safety precautions when introducing beginners to the sport. This is a great event for families and children, as well as adults that are looking for new ways to stay fit.

www.northrocklandrowingclub.org 845.942.1030

When? April 14, 2013 at 10:00AM | Where? The Four-faced Clock @ New Main Street & Maple Avenue

Check out the pics from 2012 and 2013 below (thanks to Alex Guarino and Tom McGuire for taking them – that’s why they’re not in the pictures!):

And . . . the State ought to be thinking about expanding existing transit that we have. Imagine what we could have done with $7 Billion?

In other news, the Chair Factory site just north of Emeline Park in the Village of Haverstraw is to become a major staging area for Tappan Zee Bridge construction activities. Iron workers will fabricate massive bridge sections at the site and then float these components by barge to the Tappan Zee. Some State officials expect the Village to be flooded with iron workers and others working on the bridge project. The staging area will effectively tie up future development on the Chair Factor site (originally intended to become Phase III of Ginsburg Development’s waterfront revitalization project) until at least 2019. The original Tappan Zee Bridge components were fabricated in dry dock at the former clay pit that now is home to a deep water harbor, Haverstraw Marina. Both bridges, new and old, was and will be born in Haverstraw.

#thestrawny is the probably the best instagram hashtag for good Haverstraw pictures. Check it out soon.

Which town looks more like Brooklyn? Top Row (Haverstraw) or Bottom Row (Irvington)? Photo creds: Ken Karlewics and Cat Alley

Hot off the presses, this New York Times article “Creating Hipsturbia in the Suburbs of New York” touches a whole slew of nerves and advances shallow ideas regarding demographic shifts in the Hudson Valley. The article confidently declares that Westchester Hudson River villages of Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown, Irvington and the like are becoming enclaves of that same Bohemian lifestyle that brought downtrodden Brooklyn back to life. No mention of Beacon, New York here. The article is the latest in a raft of publications and posts since 2010 that avow the too-cool aspects of the Hudson Valley. This edition is particularly sad because it fully ignores these towns’ history, while somehow comparing the “transformation” of these places to Brooklyn’s revival. The villages mentioned in the article are some of the whitest, wealthiest, and most educated zip codes in North America . . . and they were that way well before the word “hipster” existed. This is nothing like Brookyn’s transformation – in fact, it is astroturf.

“Welcome to hipsturbia,” indeed. Ms. Alison Bernstein, a realtor highlighted in the article, discusses a “mass exodus” of hipsters from Brooklyn to towns like the Hudson River towns, Montclair, New Jersey and Larchmont in eastern Westchester. Again, these towns have none of the characteristics that originally made Brooklyn attractive to the Creative Class. The only similarity is that they are “sprawl free” and “not very big-box retail-y, not strip-mall-y,” says Bernstein. Yet, these towns contain very little demographic diversity. Are these wealthy Brooklynites selling out, or in other words, committing hipster suicide by succumbing to a Cheeverian nightmare? In a word, yes – but it doesn’t have to be this way. Just look westward beneath the peak of High Tor.

Before going any further, the migrants detailed in this article are white, wealthy and highly educated. They may just belong in these towns as they fit exactly within the demographic that always lived here. They wear a sheen of creativity and alternative counterculture (and tattoos) that makes them in one way or another different than the Martha Stewart clones pushing expensive Bugaboo baby carriages. To somehow relate their movement from Brooklyn to ultra-wealthy Hudson River towns is ignorant, especially considering that one of the main redeeming qualities of urban pioneers is that they are economically transformative. These migrants are transforming nothing, just changing the decor. It’s not a bad thing that wealthy Brooklynites are moving into wealthy Westchester downtowns. At least they’ll bring some eclecticism. It’s hard to imagine a Rye, New York with too many art galleries or an overabundance of artisinal cheese shops.

The New York Times must go back to focusing on those river towns that are physically and socially analogous with Williamsburg or Bushwick – places like Peekskill, Yonkers, Newburgh and Haverstraw. Unfortunately, it seems that realtors like Alison Bernstein that “specialize in relocating New Yorkers to the suburbs” are pandering to the embedded “whites only” mindset that is not unlike the prevailing trends during the urban exodus of the 1950s. This article has the fingerprints of Koch Industries all over it; I’m kidding and I’m not.

I have some advice for these astroturf hipsters: Visit Haverstraw or Newburgh before you get sucked into Irvington or Mamaroneck. You can’t be truly hip in a wealthy Westchester suburb.

NRRC – Join Now! Spring 2013

Hudson Valley Brickyard 5000 – October 14, 2012

In 1911, the Village government held a referendum to provide funds to purchase property and materials to build a more modern fire house. Relief 3 shuttled hundreds of its supporters to the polls to vote in favor of the appropriated funds. In the end, $400 was spent on acquiring land at the corner of Conklin Avenue and George Street and $3,593 was set aside for construction materials. 97,000 bricks were donated by various local brickyards. A list of brick donations per brickyard is pictured in the slideshow below. The building itself is mainly brick with a pond stone façade. Charles D. Baisley was awarded the contract to construct the firehouse, and C. I. Springsteen, an architect from the Nyack area designed the building. Interestingly, the firehouse that stands on Railroad Avenue in West Haverstraw was built of the same design and plans drawn by Springsteen. The West Haverstraw firehouse lacks the stone façade that Relief 3 boasts.

The main apparatus floor, where today’s modern fire truck is parked, is comprised of original hardwood. It is rare to find original hardwood floors intact on the main floor of any firehouse; it is an odd sight at that. The walls and ceiling are adorned with ornate pressed tin – highly decorative tin ceilings and walls were common in Haverstraw at the time (see the slideshow). The entire firehouse is polished clean and the hardwood floors shine.

Scottish masons that immigrated to the United States just after the turn of the century could not find work in New York City. Relatives mentioned that there was work to be had in Haverstraw, just up the North River (Hudson River) from the City. The masons arrived and went to work on the firehouse, laying brick and the intricately mortared stone façade. Each day the masons led a horse-drawn wagon into the area surrounding Letchworth Village in Thiells, several miles from Haverstraw. They pulled pond stones, or rounded river rock from the Minisceongo Creek and from other bodies of water before hauling the rock back down to the Village.

By Saint Patrick’s Day of 1912, the cornerstone was laid and a time capsule was placed beneath it before construction of the main structure. The firehouse finally opened for service by late 1912. The firehouse is preparing to celebrate its 100^th birthday over the next few months.

Fire Department culture is still very strong in the Village of Haverstraw. Each year, the various Village departments attend regional parades and conferences. For over 100 years, Relief 3 has been attending these events in locations as far as Coney Island. The regalia and trophy case in the main meeting room above the apparatus floor is filled with silver cups, ornately engraved trophy bugles, and other mementos from the house’s rich history. When the firehouse is manned, the front barn doors are wide open. If you have a chance, stop by and chat with one of the firefighters about the department’s rich traditions and the house’s great history.