P E E K S K I L L ABOUT SIX MILES UPRIVER from Croton is the small city of Peekskill, New York, population more-or-less 22,000. Its name is derived from "Peecks Kil," Dutch for Peeck's Creek, after Jan Peeck, a Nieuw Nederland merchant who established a trading post here in the seventeenth century. Settlement began in the middle 1700s. It saw significant fighting during the Revolutionary War. Later it became the birthplace of CRAYOLA crayons. Those who have called it home include Henry Ward Beecher, a prominent abolitionist, and Chauncy M. Depew, a US Senator in the early 1900s and one-time president of the New York Central Railroad. Pee-Wee Herman and former governor George Pataki both come from Peekskill. The town is blessed with a setting that is extraordinarily picturesque even by the standards of the Hudson Valley, at a sharp bend in the river that marks the south gate of the Hudson River Highlands.
AROUND A BEND in the river to the south stands the Indian Point nuclear power plant, opened in 1963 on the site of a landscaped park. A true product of the atomic age, this was one of the world's first nuclear generating stations. It has consistently been the ire of environmentalists, conservationists, and lately of many who fear its vulnerability to terrorist attack. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, over-zealous law enforcement officials have repeatedly threatened to jail camera-toting tourists and amateur photographers attempting to shoot this especially picturesque stretch of the river, though usually the smoke stack in view belongs not to Indian Point but to the Charles Point garbage incinerator. As one of the oldest nuclear power plants in the world, the day is probably soon coming when Indian Point's fate will go from an environmental debate to a preservation one.
DOWNTOWN PEEKSKILL lies about a half-mile up a steep hill from the river. After falling on hard times in the latter 1900s, Peekskill is changing visibly now. Though many continue to regard Peekskill as a rather run-down, undesireable place to live, its streets in some places are downright charming, thanks largely to a good number of attractive old residential and commercial buildings that escaped destruction during urban renewal in the 1960s and '70s. Among these stands Peekskill's remarkable Paramount Theater, built in 1930 and one of the greatest old theaters on the Hudson today. The theater operated intermittently in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and fell for a time into city ownership before being recussitated by a non-profit group. Today known as the Paramount Center for the Arts, the theater hosts independent films and live performances.
PEEKSKILL'S WATERFRONT is also home to an interesting, colorful variety of fine old buildings of different shapes, sizes, function and condition. Here as in nearly every town on the lower Hudson, large scale residential development has significantly altered the character of the Peekskill waterfront, and proposals for more condominiums keep coming as more people discover that Peekskill isn't such a bad place after all.
THOUGH PEEKSKILL today is enjoying a measure of revival, a number of old ruins can still be found knocking about here, especially near the river. For the time being, these places evoke a sort of rustic character common along the Hudson near the end of the twentieth century, a character rapidly yielding to increasing development pressures and the rising price of real estate. Some of these places have already disappeared, others have benefitted from the real estate boom and been adapted for new uses.
SOME BUILDINGS that still lie abandoned here in 2006 include the Lent house, built c.1780, said to be the oldest building in Peekskill. By the landing, the old freight railroad station, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is in the process of being restored. Within sight of it stand the Centennial Hose Company, an old firehouse straight out of a children's coloring book, and a deteriorating nineteenth century brick industrial building that may have been part of the Union Stove Company, one of Peekskill's most important industries. Hopefully the forces planning new development will recognize the potential these buildings have to maintain the valuable historic character of Westchester's northernmost river town. © T.E. Rinaldi, 2006
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