About a month ago I decided to go for a walk around Peekskill, NY. The weather had been bad, and I’d been stuck at home for what seemed like forever. It was still pretty hot, but I felt I needed to get out. My plan was to go to Ossining station and take a train to Peekskill. I would then walk around the waterfront for a while, eventually heading off uphill to the main part of Peekskill where I would browse around in the Bruised Apple Bookstore before getting something to eat at Ramenesque. I like Ramen noodles and although I had walked by this restaurant a number of times, I’d never tried it. After that I’d walk back down to the station and head off home.

According to the Discover Peekskill website:

In September 1609, Henry Hudson anchored his ship, the “Halve Maen” (Dutch for Half Moon), along a bay on the Hudson River outside of what would become the City of Peekskill. His first mate, Robert Juet, described in the ship log the location as a “very pleasant place to build a town.” It was to become among the first Dutch trading posts.

Jan Peek was Peekskill’s earliest European resident, recognized as making first contact with the Lenape Native American people that populated the lower Hudson Valley at that time. The name “Peekskill” derives from a combination of the Jan Peek’s last name and the Dutch word for stream “kill.”

At the time of the American Revolution, George Washington established this area as the headquarters for the Continental Army in 1776. Its various mills built along the community’s creeks and streams made the area an important manufacturing center and provided the army with supplies.

Peekskill and Civil Rights History

Peekskill holds a prominent place in the history of civil rights. It is the most significant place in the Hudson River Valley for understanding the history of American slavery and the Underground Railroad, the network of secret sites that helped fugitive slaves travel to freedom. Historical Underground Railroad sites include the home of William Sands known as the “Safe House”, the home of the famous abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, and the A.M.E. Zion Church whose members included Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass.

In 1940 Peekskill incorporated as a city. In modern civil rights history, Peekskill would become known infamously as the place of the “Peekskill Riots” in 1949, local violent protest against the concerts announced by prominent activist Paul Robeson to benefit the Civil Rights Congress. The riot actually took place in Cortlandt Manor.

More recently, Peekskill would become the first city in New York State to elect an African American mayor, Richard E. Jackson in 1984.

A City that Makes Things, Promotes People

Peekskill has always been known as an industrial center – a city that makes things. The mills of Peek’s Creek provided essential gunpowder, leather, planks, and flour for the fight for American independence. The area is also known for its prominence as a maker of brick pavers, iron plows, hats, and stoves—many of which were transported West to fuel the settling of America. Peekskill is also known for the invention of Crayola Crayons at the Peekskill Chemical Works and the Fleishman Factory made yeast used across the country.

Peekskill has been home to numerous individuals that make their mark in the world with an inventive, entrepreneurial spirit. Peekskill was the home of Peter Cooper, who built the first successful locomotive to be used as an American railroad and sponsored the first trans-Atlantic telegraph. L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, attended the Peekskill Military Academy and, while controversial, some believe that the city’s yellow brick roads inspired him. While historians debate the authenticity of that claim, others believe in letting the imagination go along with the fantasy.

In addition to Washington, Peekskill played host to Abraham Lincoln. On his way to his inauguration, Lincoln’s train stopped here and he spoke to a huge crowd.

The artwork above is part of a larger piece that’s all over Peekskill Metro North Station. According to a Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) press release dated April 26, 2013:

The just-renovated train station at Peekskill now boasts “Jan Peeck’s Vine,” a steel sculpture that creeps around columns and railings and spells out the name “Peekskill” under the eaves.

The work by artist Joy Taylor and commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit and Urban Design translates natural forms into dramatic sculptures that echo the structural elements of the existing station, but frees them to run riot in a flowing, whimsical design. The artwork is named for the area’s first European resident for whom the city is named.

“The piece is designed exclusively for Peekskill,” Taylor said. “It incorporates the zigzag structure of the historic station, which transitions into a flowering vine descriptive of the current flowering of the arts in the city. The vine itself is a stylized contemporary vision of the indigenous bindweed that Jan Peeck would have found growing here on his arrival.”

The Vine consists of two matching sculptures on the southbound platform, one on either side of the stairs. From their bases they rise to the canopy roof, surrounding two supporting columns with zig-zag pattern that replicates the lacing historic northbound canopy. As they climb up the columns, they begin to curve and twine, transforming into vines that meet above the stairs like a huge vine-covered arbor welcoming visitors to a local garden.

These sculptural elements are fabricated from carbon steel rod and shaped plate carbon steel that gives the vines, the leaves and flowers a sinuous three-dimensional reality as well as a distinctive silhouette.

Elements of this sculpture recur in the two “Peekskill” monograms atop the elevator entrances. The third element includes several vine-like railing inserts that replace vertical railings in several sections on the northbound platform. Here the design, a near-symmetry reminiscent of the larger vine sculptures, is cut from flat steel and finished to match “Jan Peeck’s Vine,” unifying the elements. The artwork is finished in two colors, gray-green for the vines and leaves, red-orange for the flowers.

While it hints at earlier Peekskill architectural motifs, “Jan Peeck’s Vine” is a thoroughly contemporary piece. It takes advantage of steel’s ability to soar free of support, to twine and suspend itself in air. Its bold color and stylized, oversized leaves and flowers add a striking new layer to Peekskill’s visual life which will become part of the experience of arriving here.

Taken with a Sony RX10 IV

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