2015 END OF YEAR REPORT FROM THE CROTON HISTORIAN, DOROTHY PEZANOWSKI

Because we've had so many requests!

Village Historian’s End of the Year Report for 2015

This past year’s acquisitions include a painting of Croton Dam by Mary Crabtree of California.  Mary lived in Croton for a short time and fell in love with our beloved dam; she felt the painting belonged in the village.  It has been in several galleries in California where Mary now lives.

We were also able to purchase a number of copies of “The Liberator”, a socialist magazine which succeeded “The Masses”; they have been added to our growing collection of memorabilia from that era in Croton’s history.

The last four exhibits we have done have been transcribed to DVD’s and are now available for the public to purchase; this also gives a permanence to these and future  shows (Editor's note: see bit.ly/1KFnAgh). This form makes it easier for us to replicate any exhibit at a future date.  We have also been purchasing large quantities of picture frames so that once an exhibit is framed it can remain intact for future exhibits.

The 2013 and 2014 copies of the Gazette have been scanned and added to our hard drive collection of papers.  This form of preservation makes research an easier task, is permanent and is a space saver.

This year saw a number of conversions.  We had a rather extensive video tape collection from local TV interviews called “Noteworthy Neighbors” which again took up considerable space and video tapes are subject to deterioration.  We had previously purchased a converter and were able to convert all the tapes to DVD’s.  We also had the negative collection from Ronald Comstock converted to Jpegs for use on the computer.

On September 20th. our latest exhibit, “Get ready for an Earthquake”, the construction of Route 9 and destruction of Riverside Avenue as we once knew it, had its grand opening.  The opening had a great number of residents and former residents in attendance enjoying more than 40 large photos and the slide show on the big screen TV.  This and all our exhibits are executed by our very able curator, Thomas Simone.  I have attached copies of the visitor book with remarks on this exhibit along with a newspaper article on the opening. (Editor's Note: this is on file in the village office).

I continue to write the quarterly “Historian” which is mailed to our membership of approximately 450 current and former residents.  The research for photographs and enough other materials to cover at least seven pages sometimes presents a challenge but one I usually manage to overcome.

We continue to use E-Bay to add to our postcard collection and also for other materials pertaining to Croton’s history such as scarfs designed by Vera Neumann and autographed photos of Allen Funt.

We answer questions on a weekly basis that come to us via e-mail, telephone and personal visits.  We often scan photos and either e-mail them to people or copy them to CD’s (recently for a firm hoping to use them for part of their interior redesign of a local supermarket).

Respectfully submitted   

Dorothy Pezanowski