Westchester County has a wealth of vintage homes. In my part of the county – the northern and western portions along the Hudson River – roughly 20% of the houses offered for sale and sold in the last year pre-dated the Second World War, and a significant portion of those were more than 100 years old.

I’ve always been drawn to old, historic homes, an affinity my work as a realtor allows me to indulge. In recent years I’ve sold houses dating from the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s. Some belonged to notable historical figures like Mabel Dodge, Floyd Dell and Gloria Swanson; others were owned by regular citizens, not well known beyond their time or locality. Whatever the case, their houses offer both a glimpse and a reminder of the county’s rich history going back to colonial times.

Sometimes these antiques come with some local lore or limited records of their history. A renovated brick colonial that recently sold on Dutch Street in Montrose, for example, was “known” by long-time neighbors (my wife grew up next door) to have served as a tavern and a brothel in the 19th Century, and a speakeasy during Prohibition in the 1920s. Iron bars on windows in the lower level seemed to confirm other tales that the place had also been used as a jail.

Too often, however, there is nothing to speak of the past of these houses but the “old bones” of the house itself, and the imagination of the modern visitor. The current residents know only what the previous owners told them, and that could be limited to “We think it was once a farm and an orchard.”

In May of this year I listed a house built in the 1700s in Croton-on-Hudson. What realtors like to call a classic rocking-chair front-porch colonial, this house has all the character and charm coveted by devotees of the genre – multiple working fireplaces, wide-plank or random-width wood floors, built-ins, window seats, a big screened porch, lots of nooks and crannies, even an old brick smokehouse outside. But it also comes with a trove of original documents from the distant past, notably a series of “Indentures,” or deeds recording early sales of the property. Written longhand in a penmanship reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence, the earliest of these noted “This Indenture made the Twenty-first Day of January in the Ninth Year of the Independence of the State of New York, and in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Five.”

It revealed that the original 84-acre property had been confiscated from its owner, one William Bayard, by Isaac Stoutenburgh and Philip van Cortlandt, Commissioners of Forfeiture, “appointed in pursuance of an Act of the Legislature of the said State, entitled ‘An Act for the Speedy Sale of the confiscated and forfeited Estates within the State.’” In other words, the unfortunate William Bayard had been on the losing side of the recently fought American Revolutionary War. The sale was recorded “In Consideration of the Sum of One Hundred and Twenty Pounds Lawful Money of the Said State,” less than a pound and a half an acre. (New York State was issuing its own money at the time.) The new owner was Peter Goetschius, a physician, who sold it 45 years later to James Goetschius, who sold it in turn in 1837 to John Goetschius for $573.20 (U.S. money).

For those sales within the Goetschius family and subsequent sales recorded in these documents right into the 20th Century, the boundaries of the three parcels comprising the property were described in language like the following: “Beginning at the highway and running northwesterly to a heap of stones in the line of the lot now owned by Brazilla Dusenberry; thence northeasterly along said Dusenberry’s land to a heap of stones; thence southeasterly along David Ferris’s land to the highway; thence southerly as the road runs to the place of beginning, containing twenty-two acres, two roods, thirty-four rods; be the same more or less.”

The “heap of stones,” like the “certain cherry tree” of another parcel’s description, or such measurements of distance as “eight chains and seventy-one links,” have been replaced in our era by surveys and coordinates of latitude and longitude. But they are preserved in these precious documents, the more picturesque of which are framed on the living room walls of the original house. We have no record of when the house itself was built, and town records are no help. A photograph of the house in the local Citizen Register newspaper almost fifty years ago states that it was built “prior to 1730,” but with no further information.

For much of the 19th Century, the farm belonged to the Odell family. Isaac and Benjamin Odell were identified as owners of adjacent property early in the century, and John Goetschius sold the farm to Betsy & William Odell and their children in 1860. The widow of Jackson Odell sold it to Maurice & Anna Bigelow of the Bronx in 1905. And in a fascinating sidelight, a strip of land was deeded to the Town of Cortlandt around the turn of the century for the purpose of widening Rose Ave., as Watch Hill Road was known at the time. (Rose Ave. was still the street’s official name in the 1995 edition of Hagstrom’s Westchester County Atlas, with Watch Hill Rd. appearing in parentheses.)

Also interesting, a 1916 “Abstract of Title” recording the history of this strip of land places it “at Boscobel, in the Town of Cortlandt, Westchester County, New York.”

From 1857 to 1883, it turns out, Boscobel was the name of the post office at Crugers. To locals, Boscobel is the name of the elegant mansion built overlooking the Hudson River in the early 1800s by States Morris Dyckman and later dismantled to make way for the F.D.R. Veterans Hospital in nearby Montrose. Reconstructed fifteen miles north in Garrison in the 1950s, today Boscobel House is one of the great historical attractions of the Lower Hudson Valley. Another, of course, is Croton’s Van Cortlandt Manor, the restored family estate of Philip van Cortlandt, the Commissioner of Forfeiture who confiscated and sold the house on Watch Hill Road.

Meanwhile, in utter defiance of today’s staggering housing market, that living antique on Watch Hill Road brought eager buyers out of the proverbial woodwork. The old farmhouse, its property now reduced to an acre and a quarter, was listed for sale in May. It drew multiple offers and sold within the first week, well over the asking price of $545,000.

Posted by:  Bruce Dollar

Walking across the Croton Dam with my dog Ella last week, I came upon a man hunched over a serious-looking, tripod-mounted telescope, his own dog pressed against his legs in the chill air. The scope was trained on the distant shore of the Croton Reservoir, a good half-mile away across open water. Glancing over his shoulder as we approached, he said, “You want to see a bald eagle?”

It wasn’t easy at first. With an 80X power telescope held steady by the tripod it’s your head that has to become motionless enough to focus on an object that far away. But a bright white head stood out from the gray-brown mass of bare winter branches, and there it was. “I’m pretty sure that’s the male,” the man said. “The females have the same white head and tail, but they’re larger, a third again as big.”

“I knew there were some eagles over-wintering here,” I said, “but I thought they had all left for Canada by now.”

Bob Breen has been watching eagles on the reservoir for two years – since he retired as police chief of the nearby town of New Castle. A few weeks ago he counted 16 bald eagles on the ice of the frozen reservoir, the most he has ever seen at one time here. Most of them have since headed north on their spring migration, but this pair has been nesting at the reservoir for three or four years. Agents for the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which monitors the birds, has concluded that their nest has eggs in it.

We are seeing the fruits of a state-sponsored program to restore bald eagles to their old habitats in New York. When the program began in 1976, the entire state had just one pair of nesting bald eagles, but they failed to produce any offspring. By 2009, that number had increased to 173 nesting pairs.

In 1997, the first bald eagle was born along the Hudson River in more than 100 years. And by last year, 20 breeding pairs were nested along the Hudson, producing 32 fledgling eagles.

The total DEC count of bald eagles over-wintering in New York statewide for last year was 401 – 241 adults and 160 juveniles. (Bald eagles reach sexual maturity at five years of age, when their head and tail feathers turn white.) The final statewide tally for this year has not yet been released, but preliminary results suggest that the number will be an all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 573 set in 2008.

“Let me see if I can spot the female in the nest,” Bob said. The nest was not hard to find. Eagles mate for life – which can be more than 30 years – and they tend to use the same nest, adding to it year after year. Built high in the branches of a white pine by the water, it can be as much as six feet across, eight feet deep and weigh hundreds of pounds.

“There she is, her head just popped up!” Bob yielded his place at the scope and, sure enough, I could see the magnificent head of the female just above the rim of the huge nest. It made my day.

Croton-on-Hudson is a prime area for viewing bald eagles in winter. Morning commuters often spot them from the train as it crosses the mouth of the Croton River where the river empties into the Hudson. Some of those birds make daily flights a few miles up the Croton River to the dam. Other local vantage points include George’s Island Park in Montrose; the Verplanck waterfront; Riverfront Park and Charles Point/China Pier, both in Peekskill; and the Route 6/202 overlook above Iona State Park, one of the great scenic lookouts of the Lower Hudson Valley at any time of year.

For more information on bald eagles in our area, go to the Web sites of The DEC and The Eagle Institute.

Photo sources: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkadog/3683073458, http://www.flickr.com/photos/dobak/86751957, http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanvernon/3228433079.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar

Home buyers who are drawn to Westchester County for its proximity to the majestic Hudson River sometimes insist on a house right on the water, and are willing to pay for it. When told there are virtually no houses with direct water access they are incredulous. Thirty-five miles of shoreline from New York City to Peekskill, and the number of waterfront houses for sale is zero? How is that possible?

The explanation is quite simple: the railroad. In the 19th Century, trains offered a faster, more efficient means of transport than boats, and the shoreline, unlike the rocky hills above it, was flat. Tracks were laid in 1850, and soon attracted factories and warehouses that cemented the character of the riverfront as largely commercial and industrial.

Not that there’s any shortage of houses with great views of the river. And commuters to Manhattan get the full benefit of those Hudson Line tracks, watching the changing seasons as the river scrolls by, and those glorious sunsets on the way home. But homes on the water? Mostly ruled out.

There are a few exceptions. Condos, for instance. In the late 1980s a strip of land on the water side of the tracks in Croton-on-Hudson was reclaimed for development of Half Moon Bay, an upscale, gated condominium complex. (More about that in a future blog posting here.) Similarly, another luxury condo complex, Ichabod’s Landing, has just been constructed where the huge former General Motors assembly plant used to sit, on the water just north of the Tarrytown train station.

Farther north, just above Croton, the tracks suddenly veer inland at Crugers and don’t reappear at the water’s edge till Peekskill, leaving the river hamlets of Montrose, Verplanck and Buchanan on a peninsula free of the railroad. Most of the shoreline here is taken up by a veterans hospital, a county park, a power plant, a yacht club and some light industrial buildings. There are, however, a few tiny enclaves of mostly (but not exclusively) modest houses on the water that very occasionally come on the market. It helps to know an agent who pays attention to these areas who can alert a buyer to an upcoming opportunity.

The next best thing to actual water access is a close-up river view from just behind the tracks, and here there are usually some interesting opportunities, especially between Tarrytown and Ossining, including Sleepy Hollow, Philipse Manor and Scarborough, but also in Croton and a bit farther north. More distant river views are more plentiful, and they too will be addressed in future postings. The point for now is to have realistic expectations of houses with direct water access on the Hudson River.

For more detailed information, contact me at Bruce@BruceDollar.com.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar