Tarrytown Mansard

The past and the present live together quite comfortably in the Rivertowns. This is most obvious in the grand and grandiose 19th century mansions and estates lined up along the Hudson, imagined by their plutocratic owners to have been the new Castles on the Rhine. But many more, and more modest, homes of the period have lived into the present, giving our neighborhoods a characteristic look and feel.

I know nothing about the house in this photo—sitting on a prominence in Tarrytown—aside from the fact that its square shape and mansard roof suggest some antiquity. I've tried to see it here as it might have looked in earlier days. The photo is a fantasy, an imagining, and makes no claim for historical accuracy.

Sometimes I find myself wondering what it would be like if I could walk our streets as they were one hundred, two hundred years ago...a futile enterprise. Then I remember that this is what our streets looked like, long ago when they looked like this. Time travel is possible after all...