This relatively new public park in Sleepy Hollow provides access to a stretch of Hudson River shoreline that has not been accessible for more than a century! The new park, known as the Sleepy Hollow RiverWalk, hugs the perimeter of the former General Motors Assembly Plant property in the village.

The first phase of the park included paths to provide access along the waterfront from River Street as far north as the historic 1883 Sleepy Hollow lighthouse. A second phase extended the path further north to Kingsland Point Park. These pictures cover the stretch from the lighthouse to Kingsland Point, featuring the mural: The Wishing Wall. According to an article: The Wishing Wall Colors the Sleepy Hollow Community in Westchester Magazine.

A 520-foot community-painted mural brought local residents together during a trying time, thanks largely to the efforts of two area women. Sleepy Hollow’s Kersten Harries knew that a lengthy concrete wall, left after a GM factory closed shop decades ago, could be transformed into something beautiful. As early as 2019, she had been reaching out to owners of the site, Edge-on-Hudson, about turning the space into a temporary art installation. It wasn’t until the summer of 2020 when her dream became a reality, working with Sleepy Hollow community liaison Diane Loja, Edge-on-Hudson, and the Village Board of Trustees to form The Wishing Wall, a mural adjacent to the Tarrytown/Sleepy Hollow Lighthouse, painted by both community members and area artists.

So how did Harries and Loja, project managers for The Wishing Wall, find enough artists to cover a concrete canvas roughly one-tenth of a mile long? “A Call for Artists was used to select a core team of designers [Erin Carney, Tim Grajek, Katie Reidy], who utilized the community’s ideas to create a cohesive design concept that was laid out along the entire wall, which also included locating spots where selected volunteer artists and groups could directly paint their submitted ideas,” explains Harries. “An additional eight artists and community art educators were part of the core team responsible for executing the painting of the mural, with the help of many volunteers who signed up.”

This article, written in 2021 states: “…the wall is slated to come down in 2022”. Well, it’s now mid 2024 and it’s still there. I hope it stays. I like it.

Like all the other paintings this butterfly is very colorful.

Headless Horseman. And why not? This is, after all, Sleepy Hollow – the real one, as described in Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.

Taken with a Sony RX100 M3