History buffs will find themselves right at home in Hastings, as the entire village was turned into a living museum when the Hastings Historical Society created the unique Museum in the Streets a few years ago. The Museum is a walking tour of the village that begins downtown in Boulanger Plaza and continues to 34 locations throughout the village. At each stop, you’ll find a sign featuring at least one historical photo of the site from days gone by as well as a short explanation of its history—in Spanish as well as English. The signs feature more than 80 photos of Hastings’s past from the Historical Society’s collection.
There’s plenty of history to see along the way, like the Revolutionary War-era Peter Post Tavern, the Old Croton Aqueduct, and views of the Hudson River waterfront industries that shaped so much of the village’s past. And more than a few famous people have called Hastings home, including Frank Morgan (best known as the actor who portrayed the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz), birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger, and Admiral David (“Damn the torpedoes….”) Farragut.
For a deeper look into Hastings’s past, visit the Observatory Cottage, the home of the Historical Society, where you can peruse thousands of documents, photos, oral histories, videos, maps, artworks, and artifacts. And if you’re going to live there, why not join the Society while you’re at it?
