HV-Rob

Firth Carpet mills fire, again

Posted on June 25, 2012 by HV-Rob

The Firth Carpet Company mills caught fire on Wednesday June 20. The site burned once before in January when a great conflagration left much of the western portion of the complex of mill buildings in ruins. The ruins were still standing when I photographed them in May, as shown below. Of the new fire I have only found one decent newspaper article so far (which seems to be copied all around the internet) and one photograph, both of which do not make clear the extant of the current damage. I wish I had known earlier as I was up in that area on Saturday and could have seen the site first-hand.

I will again be in Cornwall “tonight” (Monday June 25), presenting the Hudson Valley Ruins lecture at 7:00 p.m. at the Munger Cottage behind the Cornwall Public Library, sponsored by the Cornwall Historical Society. My apologies for the very late notice of this talk.

Here is a link to my earlier post regarding the January 2012 fire, and a link to a new set of photographs from that time.

UPDATE JUNE 26, 2012:
I drove into the mill site last night and did not see evidence of the most recent fire. The still-actively used buildings at the northeast corner of the property are still intact and in use. The fire must have been relegated to the one small garage-like building shown in the newspaper photograph that I linked to.

Posted in Demolition Alert, Orange County | Leave a comment

HVR News – May 11, 2012

Posted on May 11, 2012 by HV-Rob

I received a card a couple of days ago from Historic Hudson announcing tours of the Oliver Bronson House, May 19 and 20, 2012, 1pm and 3pm daily. This early 19th century home was remodeled by Alexander Jackson Davis in a style that later became quite popular and is referred to as “Hudson River Bracketed.” The Bronson house was one of the great ruins of the Hudson Valley, having been abandoned since the early 1970s until recently. Currently Historic Hudson has a lease to the house and is undertaking restoration work to this great house. I strongly urge any fans of Hudson Valley Ruins to sign up for one of these tours. For more information, follow this link.

October 2005
I took this photo a week before the Hudson Valley Ruins book went to the publisher. Two and a half years later, Tom Rinaldi and I returned and delivered a lecture at one of the first fund-raisers held at the Bronson House. It was also part of our unofficial “Lecture at a Former Ruin” series. Photos below are from that event, May 24, 2008.

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Hudson River State Hospital is for sale. The Poughkeepsie Journal announced on April 28 that CPC Resources has dropped plans for Hudson Heritage Park and has placed the abandoned hospital on the market.

Although the severely dilapidated north and south wings of the Kirkbride building will have to be entirely gutted should restoration over occur (and many sections of the building have already taken care of that due to fire or decay), the time delay is just going to make renovation of the well-kept main portion of the building even more expensive.

It’s just peeling paint, not a structural issue, but look at what six years of abandonment will do to a building. The first photograph was taken in 2005, only a few years after the state closed the administration wing and sold the property. The second image was recorded in 2011.

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I recently discovered that this fantastic mid-19th century brick house at Verplank’s Point in the Town of Cortlandt has been demolished. What a shame. It seems to have disappeared like a ghost in the night, but when another nearby house of similar vintage was razed in 2001, the story made the New York Times.

Photograph by Tom Rinaldi, perhaps 2004 or 2005. I took the following photographs November 23, 2009.

This building is Verplanck Point’s* lone mid-19th century brick house, next to the site of the razed Campbell House.

*(At the actual point, not on the entire peninsula of Verplanck.)

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A group called the Galvan Foundation wants to move a historic home in the city of Hudson. The house, on Tanners Lane, doesn’t seem to be located on imperiled ground. They just want to move it to a “nicer location.” It is currently vacant and appears to have been stripped of interior finishes a few years ago.

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Also in Hudson, a performance artist wants to convert a former theater into a performance space. I don’t know performance art, but apparently this is big news, of some kind.

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As I was starting this blog entry Wednesday night I received word from a reader named Jared in New York that the New York Central Putnam Division Railroad Station at Millwood was demolished. Recently the owner of the building applied for a demolition permit. The building, moved once before from Briarcliff Manor, may be replaced by a replica to be built on Westchester County-owned land a short distance south. Why didn’t the county just move it one more time?!? Apparently the idea was considered. Now this is truly a shame and a loss that really did not have to occur. It seems that the path to demolition was sped up by some townsfolk who got tired of looking at the abandoned building.

June 9, 2006.
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The Orange County Government Center is safe for now, as the County legislature voted not to fund its replacement.

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RUPCO (Rural Ulster Preservation Company) is planning to renovate a vacant lace factory into apartments. The Kingston Times has some information.

Posted in Columbia County, Demolition Alert, Dutchess County, Orange County, Tours Lectures and Events, Ulster County, Westchester County | 4 Comments

Lower Hudson Valley Tour April 2012 – Part 2

Posted on May 5, 2012 by HV-Rob

Continuing from Part One, here are photographs of the Yonkers Power Station and Hudson River State Hospital.

YONKERS POWER STATION

HUDSON RIVER STATE HOSPITAL

Posted in Dutchess County, Westchester County | 3 Comments

Lower Hudson Valley Tour April 2012 – Part 1

Posted on May 5, 2012 by HV-Rob

Recently I had the pleasure of showing an out-of-state friend some of the highlights of ruins in the Hudson Valley. Nailhed and I spent two-and-a-half days visiting locations between Yonkers and Poughkeepsie, after which he continued on in his travels. Well-versed in all sites Michigan, he has in particular studied the Wayne County Training School.

Nailhed’s trip from Detroit took longer than expected so our first, very late, meeting took place over drinks at Tarrytown’s Setback Inn, a place that seemingly hasn’t changed much in fifty years of business. In the morning we started our first day of exploring with a driving tour of notable Yonkers sites including the sugar refinery, Yonkers Teutonia, Public School 6, the Alexander Smith and Sons carpet mills, and the Longfellow School before settling in at the Yonkers Power Station. We later went past the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research. Photos from our exploration of the power station are found in Part Two of this thread.

We stopped for lunch at Nick’s Pizza in Irvington, but not before detouring for a glimpse of the famed “Octagon House.”

We spent the afternoon checking out a couple of iron mines in Harriman State Park. Using Edward Lenik’s out-of-print, highly-priced “Iron Mine Trails” book as a guide, we first visited the Boston Mine. Lacking visual depictions, the book made it hard to tell which mines would be best to visit. Though the Boston Mine site turned out to be impressive, the mine was entirely flooded and entrance was not possible.

Boston Mine, Harriman State Park

The rain forecast for that afternoon only amounted to a light drizzle, but the temperature was cool and there was a misty October-ish feel to the day as we hiked to the Bradley Mine. Here we found something more like what we were hoping to find. The mine here is also flooded, but there is enough of a slope to the sidewalls that exploration is possible. Nailhed found his way to the back, while lacking a tripod I took some hand-held shots with an off-camera flash near the front.

Bradley Mine, Harriman State Park

We crossed the Bear Mountain Bridge back into Westchester County, stopping on the parkway’s overlook for a view at Iona Island. (Normally closed to the public, a limited number of people will be allowed to visit Iona May 19 and 20. Follow this link for details). We continued our explorations at St. Mary’s in Peekskill and a drive-by of the Lent House, Peekskill’s oldest house. Now dark, we settled for a drive-by of the Brandreth Pill factory in Ossining. I had been planning to write a blog post on Brandreth after it appeared in the Demolition Alert earlier in 2012, but someone else beat me to it. Dinner was had at Demeter’s Tavern in Tarrytown.

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On Day Two, our planned-tour of Bannerman’s Island Arsenal was cancelled due to high winds and rolling whitecaps on the Hudson River. So we drove by some more sites in Irvington including the Strawberry Hill mansion and the former Abbott House campus before deciding to head up to Millbrook and see what’s up at Halcyon Hall and the Bennett School for Girls. Halcyon Hall is fenced off now, but the building is still standing despite a village-ordered demolition date of October 1, 2011.

Halcyon Hall, Bennett School for Girls, Millbrook

We got lunch at the Millbrook Diner and went over to Poughkeepsie for a few hours of exploration at Hudson River State Hospital. Photographs from our visit to the hospital are found in Part Two of this thread.

On our way back south, I took a detour off Route 9D to see the Garner Bleachery in Wappingers Falls and to drive along the river through Chelsea. We ate dinner at Tito Santana Taqueria in Beacon and followed the meal with driving tour of the mills at Matteawan and Tioronda.

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For Day Three Nailhed and his chainsaw joined myself and Thom Johnson for a planned clean-up of the Northgate Ruins in Cold Spring. Nailhed and another volunteer named Ziggy made great progress by cutting down some trees while Thom and I cleared some vines from the top of the ruins. Our seemingly-simple task was made complicated by three to five inches of rich soil and vines rooted into the stonework. We mainly cleared off the port cochere and then carried cut trees and branches away from the ruins.

Brickhenge
Upon arrival we found some bricks from around the ruins artfully-assembled into a henge on the west porch. I am told it was rearranged a few days later. Nice work.

Northgate Ruins, Cold Spring
With a ladder we were able to peer down into the ruins for the first time.

Northgate Ruins, Cold Spring

Northgate Ruins, Cold Spring
Here the difference is visible between the porte cochere that we cleared of vines and soil, and the rest of the house ruins. This should help protect the ruins by keeping growth from settling into and between the stones and loosening them.

Northgate Ruins, Cold Spring

All of our work at Northgate is done with the permission of New York State Parks and with the assistance of the Friends of Fahnestock and Hudson Highlands State Parks as we would not be allowed to do this kind of work otherwise. Anyone wishing to help should contact FoFHH and join us as we do have a plan and we are not cutting everything in sight.

We had a PBJ lunch at the ruins before deciding, with our limited remaining time for the day, between a hike to the dairy farm or a drive by of several other nearby ruins. We gave some random hiker a ride back to Cold Spring so she could catch her train and and then we headed over to the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, which is now quiet again after years of archaeological excavations by Michigan Tech’s Industrial Archaeology program.

This important historical site is a personal favorite of mine, having been one of the first ruins I explored in the mid-late 1990s. I am also fond of the Foundry for having volunteered for three days each summer in 2007 and 2008. (Not only is the site is a trove of buried historical treasure, but the staff and students of Michigan Tech were great and I was able to help them take a tour of Bannerman’s Island Arsenal.)

Despite all of the important research that occurred here in the past decade, the Foundry site looks as much as it did when I first visited in 1997, as the excavations have been re-buried to protect the structural fragments that were studied. With better resources and permanent protection, these digs could possibly be reopened in the future to allow the public to look into the excavation sites.

A window in the Office, West Point Foundry, Cold Spring.

West Point Foundry, Cold Spring.
I believe this brick arch to be part of the ruins of a blast furnace that stopped operating in 1844. The furnace was the subject of a 2006 archaeological thesis.

West Point Foundry, Cold Spring.

We still had some time left in our day so I stopped in Garrison to give Nailhed a view of West Point, USMA, from Garrison Landing. We parked in front of the only remaining original wooden 1850s Hudson River Railroad Station. After that we took a short stroll to the ruins at Arden Point. I also go way back to the Arden Point ruins. I didn’t own a car when I began exploring ruins in the 1990s and they were visible from the train and close to the train station, making for an easily-accessible site. I don’t know anything about the ruins, except they were possibly the kinds of hotels or rooming houses typically found in the old landing towns.

Hudson River Rail Road station, Garrison.

Arden Point ruins, Garrison

We had to part ways in Tarrytown mid-afternoon, as I had other plans for the night, but we made one last stop at the site of the General Motors factory in Sleepy Hollow. The factory was torn down around the time when I started to photograph the changes to the built landscape of the Hudson Valley. Over a decade later the factory site is still an empty 90-acre lot, which provoked comparison to the larger but equally vacant Buick City complex, a site more familiar to my visitor from Michigan.

It was a fun two-and-a-half days of exploring, and it allowed me to chance to see some new sites that I might not have explored on my own and provided an opportunity to see old familiar places in a new perspective.

General Motors site, Sleepy Hollow, NY

Visit Part Two of this thread for photographs of the Yonkers Power Station and Hudson River State Hospital

PS – Thanks to the one hundred or so of you who crammed into Scenic Hudson’s River Center in Beacon last month for the Hudson Valley Ruins lecture by Tom Rinaldi and myself. Thanks too for buying out our stock of books. It was a beautiful night on the Hudson and we were glad to share it with all of you.

Posted in Dutchess County, Orange County, Putnam County, Westchester County | 5 Comments

St. George’s Church, Mohegan Lake, NY

Posted on April 25, 2012 by HV-Rob

The family of prominent painter, muralist, author, and stained glass designer John LaFarge is associated with this formerly abandoned church (Bing aerial), located in northern Westchester County. John LaFarge’s widowed mother, Louisa Binese LaFarge, moved into a nearby Swiss chalet-style house in 1870 after her marriage to local businessman Thomas Jones. John LaFarge was a frequent guest there and considered taking up residence as well but his wife declined; she preferred Newport to rural northern Westchester County.

After Louisa’s death in 1897 her daughters Marie and Aimee assumed ownership of the house. Aimee’s husband George Lewis Heins died in 1907 and in his memory Aimee hired the New York City firm of Hewitt & Bottomley to design the stone Norman-style chapel, which was built in 1911-12 across the street from her house. George Heins and nephew Christopher Lafarge were partners in the firm Heins and LaFarge and were responsible for the designs of for City Hall Station (New York City), New York Zoological Park (Bronx Zoo), and the Roman Catholic Chapel at West Point, among other notable commissions. John LaFarge designed three of the stained glass windows at St. George’s Church himself, which was finished two years after he died. Those windows have since been replaced.

St. George’s Church was last used for services in 1983 and then-owner Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish sold the church amid plans to build a new place of worship. The country chapel sat vacant until a developer renovated it in the early 2000s. The new owner announced plans in 2001 for an upscale restaurant, but was rejected in 2005 as local officials claimed there was not enough room for 50 parking spaces required by zoning laws, as well as the proximity to wetlands, despite the existence of adjacent commercial space.

On May 10, 2005, I happened to meet the developer, a man named Michael Palmietto. I was taking some photos from the road when a pickup truck came around the corner from the back of the church. The man driving the truck got out and inquired of my interest in the building. Eager to show off his recently completed interior renovations, Mr. Palmietto invited me inside for a peek. I took some hand-held photos with my first generation digital point-and-shoot camera, hoping to return another day with more time for properly composed and exposed photographs. I never followed up, but these photographs will suffice for the historical record.

Later in 2005, Palmietto sold the church to Tom DeChiaro. DeChiaro also proposed opening a business in the old stone church, and his plan stirred debate in the political arena and controversy among the town’s landmarks preservation board. Recently, I learned that DeChiaro has prevailed and the formerly abandoned St. George’s Church is now open for business as the Winery at St. George.

With Information From The Yorktown Historical Society:
Article about Endangered Buildings
Article about the LaFarge Family

And this last photograph was taken April 23, 2011. The signs seems to have sprung from the political action that kept the winery from opening up for so long.

Posted in Historic Preservation, Westchester County | 16 Comments

Orange County Government Center, Goshen, NY

Posted on April 12, 2012 by HV-Rob

A preservation battle is brewing in Orange County and stirring up national interest. The subject is the Orange County Government Center (Bing aerial), hated by some, loved by others. Its Modernist boxy look contrasts with the pre-Revolutionary village of Goshen’s 19th century homes and the harness racing track, sites generally considered more historically acceptable by the population at large. But as unloved as Modernist buildings might be to some people, they are unique and interesting structures and ought not all be dismissed outright.

Built in 1967, the Government Center is nearing the accepted 50-year benchmark to be considered for most historic registries. As buildings of that period approach the 50-year mark, a wave of interest in their preservation has developed just as some of these buildings are being condemned.

Cited for leaky roofs, the building was closed in the fall of 2011 after its basement flooded. The roof problems could be attributed as much if not entirely to deferred maintenance and not to design imperfections. The same problems might well arise in a new building. As for the flooded basement, considered the last straw by the county executive, it almost seems like it was an event that was awaited for in order to manufacture an excuse to leave the building. Just about every building in the Hudson Valley it seems was flooded by Hurricane Irene last year. Not all had to be torn down for flooded basements.

To read more, please visit the following links. My photographs here were taken in October 2009. I did not get any interior photographs then.

Save the Orange County Government Center

World Monuments Fund Watch Site – One of six sites in the United State to make the Full list of sites.

New York Times “Architecture’s Ugly Ducklings May Not Get Time to Be Swans” (April 7, 2012).

Bloomberg News – “Wrecking Ball, $67 Million Bill Hang Over Leaky Landmark.” (James S. Russell, March 19, 2012.)

New York History blog – “Preserving the Recent Past” (Chris Pryslopski, February 25, 2012.)

Architect Paul Rudolph designed the Orange County Government Center. It is not his only endangered building in Orange County. Middletown’s John W. Chorley Elementary School is threatened with demolition as well. The Preservation League of New York added the Chorley School to its Seven to Save list in 2010.

A tree-lined sidewalk in front of the Orange County Government Center. The building has been likened to a manor house in the middle of a large estate. Locating a huge parking lot next to the building has ruined some of its visual effect, as seen in the photographs at top. The parking lot is located directly in front of the west, most interesting facade; perhaps the lot should have been located more to the north (the east end of the building is similar to the west end, but its view is blocked by newer construction).

Posted in Demolition Alert, Orange County | 2 Comments

Briarcliff Lodge and the Titanic

Posted on April 11, 2012 by HV-Rob

There is a lot going on in the news regarding the upcoming 100-year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic and I may as well join in on the big boat bandwagon. There is a direct connection with Titanic and one of our Hudson Valley ruins. Two of the survivors of that maritime disaster lived at Briarcliff Lodge in Briarcliff Manor, NY.

Demolished c. 2003-2004, the Lodge stood abandoned for almost a decade prior, and in its last years I took many photographs there. A small selection of images already appear on my website and in my book Briarcliff Lodge (Images of America). Tonight I went into the archives and scanned negatives and slides that I took in the Oak Room, a 1909-addition to the Lodge and the one-time apartment of Ella Holmes White.

Edgewood Park School Spanish Club 1939, from the Sketch Book (school yearbook, author’s collection.) Here are two more photographs from my book Briarcliff Lodge.

In 1912 Ella Holmes White was a 55-year old widow and lived in an apartment at Briarcliff Lodge. It was not uncommon in the early 20th century for wealthy people to live in hotels, often in a city residence for most of the year and a country hotel for the summer. Mrs. White lived with a companion named Marie Grice Young, a 36-year old musician who once taught a daughter of Theodore Roosevelt.

Ella White and Marie Young visited England and France in early 1912 and boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France, for the voyage home. The pair were traveling with White’s maid and manservant. Also on the boat for Mrs. White’s trip to New York were French chickens. The manservant did not survive the disaster; I don’t know about the chickens, however well they may have been cared for. White was able to get to safety in a lifeboat where she found the men rowing her craft to be inept. She also managed to still have her cane with her, and with its lighted tip she tried to flag down a nearby rescue boat . Ms. Young’s recollections of the disaster, told six months later, can be read here. Ella Holmes White died in New York City in 1942, and left most of her estate to Marie Young.

Here are new scans of old photos of the Oak Room, Ella White’s apartment at Briarcliff Lodge.

Fireplace, February 10, 2000.
When buildings eyed for demolition are abandoned, developers and town leaders like to say things like “We have to tear it down, kids have gotten in there and broken windows and vandalized fireplaces.” I really don’t think “kids” managed to steal a stone fireplace mantel that weighed who knows how many hundred of pounds. I bet it decorates the home of someone who was “on the in.”

July 1, 2000.

July 1, 2000.
Looking west, door to main hallway.

February 4, 2001.
Looking east, door to the Oak Room.

February 4, 2001.
Looking southeast.

October 20, 2000.
Looking northeast.

February 10, 2000.
Looking northeast.

May 28, 2000.
Looking east.

February 10, 2000.
Looking southeast.

February 10, 2000.
Looking west.

May 28, 2000.
Looking southwest.

February 10, 2000.
Oak Room exterior.

BONUS:
It was 12 years and two days ago that I toured Briarcliff Lodge with Robert Worth, a writer for the New York Times. (I remember it was a beautiful spring day, with t-shirt weather. The next day, it snowed.) His article, one of the earliest pieces on the embryonic “Hudson Valley Ruins” project, was published on June 4, 2000.

Posted in Westchester County | 12 Comments

Tamarack Lodge fire

Posted on April 8, 2012 by HV-Rob

The Tamarack Lodge in Greenfield Park (Ulster County) burned on Saturday April 7, 2012. Over 30 buildings were destroyed; some were occupied but the main building and others were abandoned. The Times-Herald Record has an article here and a video here. Pictures of the abandoned lodge can be found all over the internet; here is one set on flickr and a more thorough study of the various bungalows on the great Vanishing Catskills website.

UPDATE #1: Here is a good follow-up from the Daily Freeman.

UPDATE #2: Tamarack’s buyer charged with arson. Also from the Times Herald-Record, a history of Tamarack Lodge. The Albany Times-Union has a good photo of one of the main structures burning. And a bonus today, an article about the shutdown of Tamarack Lodge in 2000. Apparently it shut down a few times in its last years; I don’t believe it reopened after the 2000 incident.

I never did shoot Tamarack Lodge myself (Bing aerial). It was on my to-do list but it never quite made it to top of the list as a priority.

On the positive side, a local village board actually had the backbone to deny a demolition permit for a historic home. The Bedford-Pound Ridge Record review reported on March 30 about a mansion, known as the Belfry, on Holly Branch Road in Katonah. Read about the decision to protect the house here.

Posted in Demolition Alert, Ulster County | Leave a comment

Pittsburgh Civic Arena update

Posted on March 29, 2012 by HV-Rob

This is it. The Igloo will soon be entirely demolished. All of the movable roof panels have been pulled down. The east skyboxes, in place during my last visit one month ago, have been torn down. Most of the ring that supported the roof panels has been jack-hammered away. All that remains to be taken down are the two fixed roof panels and the support arm that held up the roof, and that all may come down in a few days.

I have been lax in posting photos from this project but now that it is near its end, I’ve got to decide how to present the better images of the thousands I have taken.

Here is a sample from March 2, 2012, from my last trip out to Pittsburgh.

The Igloo after the exterior stainless steel skin was cut off the roof.

One of the original gate pillars. In recent years the pillars were covered in bright yellow (plastic?) sheaths.

Food concessions along the east concourse looking towards the demolished seating area.

A view of the inner workings of the roof panels. For demolition prep, the panels were moved by hand and they glided around on the ring quite easily.

Demolishing the walkway surrounding the arena. That’s the office tower of Union Station in the background.

Support arms that held the upper deck (north end) (later addition) in place.

The D-Level seats on the east side.

Adjacent panels were moved away from this one in preparation for its pull-down.

I was able to set up a camera inside to record this pull down. Workers used blowtorches to cut part-way into the beams at the top of the panel. Cables were fastened to the beams and then pulled by one of the largest machines used in the demmolition, bringing down the roof panel.

Under the ring after the panel was pulled down.

A long view into the arena where a panel had just been pulled down.

This view of the debris is from near the north tunnel entrance into the arena floor, looking over what had been the outer walkway around the building. The new rink, the Consol Center, is barely visible at upper left.

East skyboxes and D-Level seats.

Looking up the ramp to the C-Level on the east side.

View of the downtown skyline. This was intended to be the backdrop when the roof was opened for performances and events.

BONUS:
I just came across this set of excellent construction photographs, 141 in all. So strange that I have essentially taken some of the same exact photographs 50 years later, but in reverse.

Posted in Hockey / Sports Arenas, Pennsylvania, USA Travel | 5 Comments

Playland Amusement Park, Rye, NY

Posted on March 28, 2012 by HV-Rob

Westchester County is currently vetting proposals to reinvent the historic Playland Amusement Park in Rye (Bing aerial). Citing financial losses in recent years, County Executive Rob Astorino “invited developers to do away with the amusement park entirely, if they chose, or to expand it. The only stipulations: public access to the beach and the boardwalk had to be maintained, and housing was off limits” (New York Times March 27, 2012). I certainly hope that the amusement park is not done away with and I don’t think that drastic changes are necessary – I am pretty happy with Playland as it is. “Improvements” are fine as long as the site remains in majority an amusement park with its seven historic rides intact, perhaps along with a few of the better newer rides/attractions.

Playland shouldn’t be redesigned to compete with the vast Six Flags-style parks – the size and historic nature of the park are what make it appealing (Playland is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is also a National Historic Landmark). I guess the lack of frequently sold-out crowds is not good for the bottom line, but I would much rather take Playland’s rides over and over than go to a more popular park and wait in line for 30 minutes for a one-minute ride.

Playland is one of my favorite places to visit in the summer – in some years it has been a birthday week tradition of mine to go there, with the big day coming at the high water mark of summer. Usually I go on a Wednesday night when there are fireworks and when the park is less busy than it would be on a weekend.

Playland is not just a summer attraction but there is an ice rink, er, casino too. That sheet of ice was the second-best surface I ever skated on, behind West Point’s Tate Rink. Memorably Playland was my home rink in 1993-1994. The New York Rangers still practiced there in that Stanley Cup-winning year, and we often watched the end of their sessions before taking the ice for our own practices

There will be a meeting Wednesday March 28 at 7:00pm at the White Plains Public Library for the presentation of one group’s plan to reinvent Playland. Presentations of other proposals will follow at later dates.

Here is a sample of photographs taken in July 2011.