near
Philipsburg Manor House – part of the area which the early Dutch colonists named "Slapershaven," or "Sleepers' Haven." The name was later
Anglicized as “Sleepy Hollow.” at the Upper Mills The two
square miles of land that would become Sleepy Hollow belonged to the larger domain of the
Wecquaesgeek, a
Munsee-speaking band of
Wappinger people. Their
fort and burying ground may have been located on the hillside where the
Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow was to be built later. In 1609,
Henry Hudson claimed the
Hudson Valley, including the
Tappan Zee area, for
the Netherlands. There was relative peace between the
Native Americans and the Dutch until the mid-17th century, and the
Dutch West India Company had been providing its investors with large land grants called
patroonships to encourage settlement of the
New Netherland colony on lands bought from local Native American tribes along the
East Coast of what is now the United States.
The Upper Mills Much of the land that would become
Philipsburg Manor had previously belonged to
Adriaen van der Donck, who had invested in such a patroonship before the English
conquest of New Netherland in 1664. In 1672, merchants
Frederick Philipse (or Vredryk Flypse), Thomas Delavall, and Thomas Lewis purchased from his widow's brother the first tracts of land in current-day northern
Yonkers. Philipse made several additional purchases between 1680 and 1686 from the
Wecquaesgeek and
Sintsink tribes, expanding the property to both the north and south. Philipse also bought out his partners' stakes during this time, enticing friends from
New Amsterdam and
Long Island to move with him with the promise of free land and limited taxes. The manor grew to around 52,000 acres (21,000 ha) or about 81 sq mi (210 km2), comprising much of today's lower
Westchester County. Philipse was granted a
royal charter in 1693, creating the
Manor of Philipsburg and establishing him as first
lord of the manor. He built a
gristmill and shipping depot, today part of the
Philipse Manor House historic site. A pious man (and a carpenter by trade), he was architect and financier of the settlement's stone church, known today as the
Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, and was said to have built the pulpit with his own hands. The church served successive lords and ladies of the manor and their
tenant farmers (who were largely Dutch, French Huguenot, Swiss, and German immigrants) until the outbreak of the
American Revolutionary War. When Philipse died in 1702, the manor was divided between his son,
Adolphus Philipse, and his grandson,
Frederick Philipse II. Adolphus received the Upper Mills property, which extended from
Dobbs Ferry to the
Croton River. Frederick II was given the Lower Mills at the confluence of the
Saw Mill and Hudson Rivers. Adolphus transformed the Upper Mills into a major commercial operation and managed it for nearly 50 years. The complex then included a stone
gristmill, for exporting grain and
cornmeal internationally and for importing foreign goods. It was surrounded by fields of grain, orchards, stands of timber, and stone quarries. By the time of his death, twenty-three enslaved men, women, and children lived and worked at the manor. They are catalogued by name (and children, also with ages) in the 1750
probate inventory of his properties. As the most valuable "chattel" (
personal property), they are listed first - before cattle, furniture, and tools. Adolphus's nephew,
Frederick Philipse III, became the third lord of the manor upon his uncle's death. The Upper Mills main house, gristmill, surrounding buildings, ponds, fields, woods, and a wharf on the Hudson River (that is, everything related to the large-scale production and sale of flour, dairy products, timber, and other goods) were leased by Philipse to members of prominent local landowning families, first Josiah Martling (from 1752 to 1761) and then William Pugsley (from 1761 till after the
American Revolutionary War). It is the area of this leaseholding that would become the core of the present-day village of Sleepy Hollow. During the American Revolutionary War, the Upper Mills area was situated within the
Neutral Ground, an unprotected buffer zone between British-controlled territory to the south and American lines to the north. Numerous local histories and scholarly articles document the hardships faced by residents in the neutral ground, who were subjected to devastating raids from both sides. Their level of desperation is well illustrated by the oft-quoted description, “They feared everybody whom they saw.” Knowing the terrain well, many local residents served as crucial scouts, guides, and foragers for the
Continental Army in the infamous neutral ground. The
Old Dutch Burying Ground, the area's oldest cemetery, holds one of the highest concentrations of Revolutionary War veteran graves in the state of New York. In the late 1790s, Washington Irving visited the Sleepy Hollow area with his local friend
James K. Paulding, a Revolutionary War militiaman who in 1780 had helped capture British Major
John André in what is now known as
Patriot's Park and thereby foiled the plans of
Benedict Arnold. Together they explored the area, hunting, fishing and talking with the local folk. The visits of Irving—and the local folklore and ghost tales he heard while there—were immortalized in the enduringly popular story
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Beekman Town (1851), depicting one of the early landmarks of the Sleepy Hollow area; it vanished before 1893. In ''
Wolfert's Roost'', Washington Irving writes: "In a remote part of the Hollow, where the Pocantico forced its way down rugged rocks, stood Carl's mill, the haunted house of the neighborhood." In 1779, Frederick Philipse III, the last lord of Philipsburg Manor and a staunch
Loyalist, was
attainted for treason by New York's revolutionary government. Philipsburg Manor was confiscated, split into about 300 lots, and then sold at
public auction. Most of the buyers were Philipse’s tenant farmers who used the opportunity to buy the small plots they worked. A much larger Upper Mills property, about , the law predated all other emancipation-related landmark events in the United States. Beekman used the property as farmland; his tenant farmers were veterans of the American Revolutionary War, as was Beekman himself. Ironically, the first American ancestors of both Frederick III, a Loyalist, and Gerard Beekman, a
Patriot who acquired his confiscated land, reportedly arrived in the New World on the same ship. Beekman later expanded his property to nearly 900 acres. He died in 1822, and his widow, Cornelia, laid out the central portion of the estate into streets and sold building lots. The development eventually became known as Beekman Town (also spelled Beekmantown), with Beekman Street, soon to be upgraded to Beekman Avenue, as its main street. The street follows the route of the old “road to landing;” the latter was an important local shipyard, “where many vessels were built... with timber cut in the dense forests of the Mill Woods.” Cornelia was a well-known figure among the Westchester Patriots and the daughter of
Pierre Van Cortlandt, the first
lieutenant governor of New York. She named one of the streets "Cortlandt" and another "Clinton," She donated a plot at the top of Beekman Street, a triangular island where the flagpole and the village clock stand today, for "the public use forever." from Frederick W. Beers's
Atlas of New York and Vicinity Meanwhile, Beekman Town's closest neighbor,
Tarrytown, was developing as a trading center on the
Albany Post Road and a commercial port on the Hudson River. The
Industrial Revolution brought to it a
railway station on the
Hudson River Railroad, industrial mills, banks, and throngs of new people. Eventually, the industrial boom started spilling over into Beekman Town. Constructed between 1837 and 1842, the first
Croton Aqueduct, New York City’s original water supply system, passed through Beekman Town as part of its route to the city. It was built primarily by Irish immigrants (as was the Hudson River Railroad), many of whom settled in the village. Before and during the
U.S. Civil War, the
Underground Railroad ran through the neighboring Tarrytown. Tarrytown's famous
Foster Memorial AME Zion Church served as a vital Underground Railroad stop. Known as the “Freedom Church," it provided food and shelter to escaped slaves en route to Canada. Company H of the
32nd New York Infantry Regiment that served in the
Union Army during the Civil War was composed exclusively of volunteers from the Tarrytown area, including Beekmantown. They fought in the
First Battle of Bull Run, the
Peninsular Campaign, and the Battles of
South Mountain,
Antietam, and
Chancellorsville; and their letters home were often published in local newspapers. Many of them are buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the Civil War Soldiers Monument was erected in 1890 in their honor. Its granite base is topped by a 7-foot-6-inch bronze statue of a Union infantry soldier standing at "parade rest"; bronze plaques on the base list some 240 names.
North Tarrytown of the 1960s-1970s, when other parts of the village’s business district were rebuilt. Beekman Town's post office opened in 1871. In 1874, the village incorporated as North Tarrytown, using the recognizable name of its commercially successful neighbor to the south. Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants began settling in the Tarrytowns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to open stores and shops and join the industrial workforce. North Tarrytown began its association with the automobile industry in 1899, when "
Renaissance man"
John Brisben Walker (who at the time owned
The Cosmopolitan magazine and lived in nearby
Irvington) acquired the
Stanley Brothers steam-car patents. He bought part of the former
Ambrose Kingsland estate in North Tarrytown and built there a large factory, designed by
McKim, Mead & White, to produce steam-powered "Mobiles." In 1900, his Mobile Company of America went into operation at the foot of Beekman Avenue. When the first Mobile was completed, approximately 180 men worked in the new factory. Walker began
subdividing the northern part of his North Tarrytown property, attempting to capitalize on the site's location along the
Hudson River Railroad. One of his selling points for this residential development, called Philipse Manor in a confused reference to nearby
Philipsburg Manor House, was the rail access, but this failed to materialize, and Walker's Philipse Manor Land Company floundered. The Mobile Company of America also failed: steam-powered carriages proved to be inferior to gasoline internal combustion vehicles. Bell, with his extensive experience in railroad development, not only continued the residential construction at Philipse Manor but also made the rail service possible by building the station and presenting it to the railroad. Wealthy New Yorkers started eagerly buying homes in the
Philipse Manor neighborhood. A second residential neighborhood,
Sleepy Hollow Manor, was developed in the vicinity of the station in the 1920s, on the former estate of renowned explorer and politician
John C. Frémont. Today, the two neighborhoods form the northern part of the village. The
Philipse Manor station is on the
National Register of Historic Places. A parcel of the former Ambrose Kingsland estate where Kingsland's opulent mansion once stood was acquired by New York's
Westchester County in 1924 and converted into a public park. It opened in 1926 and was named
Kingsland Point Park. In 1903, the closed automobile plant at the foot of Beekman Avenue was leased (and subsequently sold) to
Maxwell-Briscoe, manufacturer of gasoline internal combustion automobiles. Destroyed in a fire in 1907, it was rebuilt and acquired by
Chevrolet in 1914-1915. In 1918, Chevrolet was integrated into
General Motors, and the plant became the GM
North Tarrytown Assembly facility. To alleviate housing shortage for workers of the expanding plant,
John D. Rockefeller Jr. (whose estate was two miles from North Tarrytown) conceived and financed the construction of a large
housing cooperative on Beekman Avenue. Completed in 1929, the five-story Van Tassel Apartments complex, arranged around a large
courtyard, is a prime example of early
garden apartment architecture. Bricks for the building were imported from the Netherlands, and its design embraces the area's Dutch heritage. The main entrance is flanked by
bas-relief medallions featuring explorer
Henry Hudson and Katrina Van Tassel, the building's literary namesake from
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Other bas-reliefs on the building depict scenes from
Dutch colonial history. (The idea for the building's name and the bas reliefs belonged to
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Rockefeller's wife. In 1940, John D. Rockefeller Jr. purchased the property to preserve and restore it. as well as French Canadian, Polish, and Slovak immigrants, followed by Cubans, Dominicans, Ecuadorians, and others. people. It worked around the clock, running three shifts. Everybody in the village knew the schedule of shift changes, because all roads would be clogged by cars coming to and from the plant. The industrial heyday of the Tarrytowns lasted until the
1973–1975 recession in the United States. Manufacturing employment in the Tarrytowns started steadily declining, following a nationwide trend. The
Duracell (formerly,
P. R. Mallory and Co) battery manufacturing facility on Elm Street closed in 1984. The North Tarrytown Assembly followed in 1996. When the last vehicle rolled off the line at the end of June 1996, it concluded "the run of the longest continuously operating manufacturing facility in the GM family.")
The Village of Sleepy Hollow window featuring the
Headless Horseman With its days as a factory town over, North Tarrytown began reconnecting with, and drawing upon, its storied history, literary heritage, and natural beauty of its surroundings. Luckily, much of its historic and natural sites survived the industrial era, largely through the restoration and preservation efforts of
John D. Rockefeller Jr. and other members of several generations of the
Rockefeller family. In 1996, the same year General Motors closed its North Tarrytown operations, the village voted to officially change its name to the historical name of the area immortalized in
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. The idea of Sleepy Hollow disaffiliating from the town of
Mount Pleasant has been raised periodically (most notably in the mid-1970s and again around 2007 by longtime mayor Philip Zegarelli) often as a way to consolidate services and save money by eliminating one layer of government. These attempts did not succeed. After years of site decontamination and re-zoning, the former GM site was developed into several residential communities, the largest of which is Edge-on-Hudson. It is a village-within-a-village, with more than 1,100 residential units, that range from affordable housing and rental apartments to condominium buildings and luxury townhomes. offering breathtaking views of the Hudson River. Sleepy Hollow has become a major tourist destination, especially during the
Halloween season, when tens of thousands of people flock to the village, drawn by its myths, legends, and historic sites. In the words of Washington Irving, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. == Geography ==