Photo of the Day: Victorian Home, Upper Nyack, NY

I have an abiding affection for Victorian homes, and I could indulge it to the hilt a week and a half ago while walking along North Broadway in Upper Nyack, NY. That stretch of this Rockland County community is simply lined with them—one after another home filled with balconies, belvederes, turrets, multiple porches, and generously applied dashes of color, on properties lining the Hudson River.

I photographed the exteriors of several of these houses, but I decided to highlight this one because of its combination of so many of these elements.

Photo of the Day: Upper Nyack Firehouse, NY

On the same Sunday afternoon walk where I took a picture of Upper Nyack’s Old Stone Church, I noticed another site: the Upper Nyack Firehouse, home of the Empire Hook and Ladder Company, No. 1. This fire station is historically notable for two reasons: its architecture and its association with the first great American tragedy of this century.

This two-story brick structure in the Queen Anne style, finished in 1887, includes a center gable above the main engine door. In its tower, manual wound bells still alert members of calls. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982.

A plaque on the left side of the building gave me a more recent sense of this volunteer company’s tradition of sacrifice. On the morning of September 11, 2001, after the World Trade Center was attacked, one of the company’s members, Welles Remy Crowther, working for a financial company, was credited with leading about a dozen survivors to safety before he died when the towers collapsed.

Two other volunteers—Harry Wanamaker and Joseph Stach, Jr.—were FDNY lieutenants who spent considerable time at Ground Zero assisting in recovery. They died of 9/11-related cancer in 2010 and 2018, respectively.

Photo of the Day: Old Stone Church, Upper Nyack NY

I must have driven by the site a dozen times at least in the past, but I had never taken any real notice of the Old Stone Church in Upper Nyack, NY until I got out of my car and began walking around.

This structure on North Broadway in this village was begun in 1813 and dedicated the following year. The oldest church in Rockland County, it first housed the Methodist-Episcopal Church of Nyack. Later it served as a Unitarian Sunday school, then a non-denominational church. Now, after restoration several years ago, it is listed on the NY State and National Registers of Historic Places.