in your own backyard
I grew up in Croton, a small town on the edge of the Hudson, that fast-flowing watercourse the Lenape tribe once named Muhheakantuck: “the river that flows two ways.” Mercurial in winter, the Lenape noted that ice floes drifted both north and south, but the observations of a modern day child were quite different. I lived at the highest point in my town, on a hill where the Hessian soldiers once pitched their tents, sitting around campfires under the stars. By the time my father bought the little brown house at the top of the hill, 200 years had passed. The guttural mutterings of mercenaries had been replaced by the clop clop of a renegade horse coming down the hill at night to chomp on our crab apples. Sometimes, my dad threw on his slippers and chased him back up the hill to the barn. As for the river, like an Indian scout, I observed it from the uppermost branches of my favorite tree. There I would sit, staring out over the glorious tree tops, a green canopy stretching down to the river, which ran like a wampum- blue ribbon, reflecting the undulating shadow of Bear Mountain Ridge. THE NEWCROTON DAM: AMASTERPIECE OFMEMORY ANDMASONRY BY JULIA BOBKOFF
Its currents and shifting direction were not my interest. I wanted to know, instead, where it came from, and I was equally curious about the Kitchawonk, the Croton River, a mad-dashing force, harnessed by man and funneled over a magnificent dam that fed back into the Hudson. For those who’ve grown up with the sound of Croton waters gurgling through the trees, or who’ve held a rope tight in their young hands and swung out like Tarzan over the deep, dropping hard into the fishy murk of Silver Lake, memory and water hold special meaning. Maybe you’ve never stood on the girders of Quaker bridge, trembling, mist in your face, daring yourself to take the plunge, or crept into the passageways of the Croton Dam for secret, teenage trysts, or spun down the lazy back of the river on an inner tube, the sun on your face. Nevertheless, you will find in the story of this town and the construction of its famous 266-foot masonry dam, something keenly familiar, even if you’ve lived worlds apart and never dipped a toe in Hudson waters. The New Croton Dam not only changed the landscape of the river valley, but the type of people who inhabited it. In order to bring to life the blueprint of architect Alphonse Fteley, skilled masons were imported in the late 19th century from southern Italy, young men who left their families and culture to work ten-hour days for $1.35. No sooner did they set foot on Staten Island, than a Padrone handed them $25.00 in payment for their passage. After each young man happily pocketed the cash and walked a block in his new country, the Padrone met him at
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