New-York tribune., 1921-11-06

y Q YOU like to dream dreams about
a old houses? Do you like to investi-
gate neglected mansions Of a past
age, picturing the life that flowed
through the high-ceilinged rooms now SO rnusty
and decayed?
If you are a New Yorker It isn't necessary
to travel TO New England TO indulge in this
pastine Forty minutes by subway from the
shopping district, brief walk, and you are in
= region Of old houses. Some crown the green
hills Of Inwood, which downtown excursion
ists are beginning to discover, and some,
stranded en- the streets, are rudely shouldered
by modern apartment houses Of glaring brick.
But there they are, and in some of them you
vii find white-haired men and women whose
talk takes you back to day earlier than that
in which the characters of Edith Whartons
The Age of Innocence lived.
Fancy going into house a few steps from
the Dyckman ferry and finding two brothers
and sister who have dwelt there sixty
years. These are the FIitners, children of
Maine sea captain, who, landing at the Hud-
son River dock with barges Of lumber from
the North was SO charmed with these shores
that he brought his family here to live. Get
them talking and they tell you Of time when
there were but seven buildings above 18th
Street, east Of Kingsbridge Road. In their
childhood the winter skating was the social
event OF the locality. The lads damned up a
brook that ran just north of Inwood Street,
now Dyck1nan Street, and made wide pond
Oetween TWO small hills. At night they lighted
nres Of tar barrels and waste wood the
banks, and the community gathered and sang
and shouted and did marvellous things on the
ice Perhaps the winters were colder then,
Tor, Charles Flitner remembers it, there
was always ice from fall to spring.
The Fitner house is well preserved. But
iust above it, at the first turn of Bolton Road,
Is square red house of spacious rooms and
staircasea OF noble lines going to rack and
ruin IN way one hates to see, all the more
Because 1t is a common story in these parts.
Old Inhabitants say it was the policy Of the
New York Central that left Tubby Hook, as
inwood used to be called, in forgotten pocket
between two rivers, unpeopling the beautiful
houses and abandoning them to ghosts. In
1911 that railroad diverted its trains. save
one or two slow locals from the Hudson River
tracks 70 the east bank Of the Harlem Not
lA 800 did the first trolley cars run to Kings
bridge, and it was five years later when the
subway was extended to Dycknan Street. For
good many years this most attractive part
q Manhattan Island was rather inaccessible,
exert for the men who could afford their
her~cs.
< 1874. when Samuel Thomson, wealthy
man Of affairs, built the little church that
sui stands at Broadway and Dycknan Street.
men were content TO be leisurely- Tubby
Rockers who went to business by the 1853
sosslped in agreeable groups on the station
piattorrn till the conductor decided that there
we're no more tardy passengers to arrive.
Elegant ones drove to the city over the Blcom-
sagdale Road shaded street that ran down
hFeakneck Hill past the Hamilton Grange,
<ha these who remember say it was fine
'ieht To see the elder James McCreery, the
4sFrhant prince, coming down from his home