Sleepy Hollow Country

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is kicking off Spring with 5 consecutive Saturday walking tours of its historic grounds and famous residents. Reserve your spot on a tour by calling the cemetery office at 914-631-0081, Monday through Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Daylight tours: Saturdays, May 3, 17, 31, 2 pm to 4 pm. $15 donation/person. Advanced reservations required.

Evening tours, by lantern: Saturdays, May 10 and 24, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. $20 donation/person. Advanced reservations required.

Cemetery president Dave Logan leads the three daylight tours through the historic lower portion of the cemetery. As you pass the Old Dutch Burying Ground, you will hear about how the churchyard and some of its burials inspired Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. You will visit the cemetery’s receiving vault (a hundred-year-old in-ground crypt), Washington Irving, and other sites in the cemetery’s oldest sections.

Yours truly leads the two evening lantern tours, which will visit the cemetery’s receiving vault, a Revolutionary War general, the cemetery’s Revolutionary War and Civil War monuments, 19th century abortionist Madame Restell, notorious counterfeiter Joshua Miner, the soaring neo-gothic monument of dry goods merchant Owen Jones, artists Jasper Francis Crospey and Robert Havell, industrialists Andrew Carnegie and William Rockefeller, writer Washington Irving, and others.

All tours meet at the cemetery’s south gate, adjacent to the Old Dutch Church. Wear sturdy shoes, as the ground is uneven in places. Tours depart promptly.

If you want to be notified about the next evening tour, email us at publications@sleepyhollowcemetery.org.

Don’t miss the holiday festivities in Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown. Some local favorites:

• Washington Irving’s Sunnyside Evening Candlelight Tours. December 8-9, 15-16. The cottage home of the author of Old Christmas and other holiday favorites (and you thought he wrote only “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle”!) is decorated for an 1850s Christmas. You’ll hear excerpts from Irving’s Christmas tales and family letters and join in song accompanied by the 1830s piano. Tour concludes in the kitchen yard, where hot cider is served beside a roaring fire. Tours start at 4 pm, last tour begins at 8 pm. Reservations required: 914-631-8200 ext 618.



• Van Cortlandt Manor Evening Candlelight Tours. December 21-22, 28-29. The riverside grounds of Van Cortlandt home is rollicking with an 18th-century celebration of “Twelfth Night.” Live music is performed in the parlor, and the tables are set with family china laden with intriguing 18th-century desserts. Stroll through the orchard, lit by candle-lanterns, to the tenant house to meet the Lord of Misrule. Tours start at 4 pm, last tour starts at 8 pm. Reservations required: 914-631-8200 ext 618.
• Christmas Eve services at the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. Candlelight services at 8 pm and 11 pm. 914-631-4497. Free, open to the public.



• Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is home to two figures central to the American version of Christmas. In his History of New York, Washington Irving anglicized the Dutch Sinterklass to Santa Claus, and gave Americans their first image of a thick-bellied, jolly man. Yes, Virginia, the cemetery is also home to the writer of the most famous editorial in American journalism. In 1897 Francis P. Church was the editor at the New York Sun charged with responding to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon’s inquiry about the existence of Santa Claus. The full exchange is here: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” 540 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow, NY 10591, 914-631-0081. Free, open to the public daily.

In honor of the first white stuff this season, here’s a snowy photo from Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The light wasn’t good today, so we dug up a pretty photo from January 2006. Holbrook Blinn (1872 to 1928) was an American stage actor who lived locally in Croton-on-Hudson. He died of injuries sustained in a fall from a horse.

This week Sleepy Hollow Country got a hold of a copy of Haunted by a Headless Horseman, an episode in the 10-part series Dead Art that aired on the VOOM HD Network. Hosted by Dee Snider of rock band Twisted Sister, this episode concentrates on the art and architecture of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and the Old Dutch Burying Ground. Historian Gray Williams and SHC president David Logan introduce famous figures including Washington Irving, Andrew Carnegie, William Rockefeller, and Walter Chrysler, and the art of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Gaston Lachaise, and Andrew O’Connor. Bill Lent of The Reformed Church of the Tarrytowns discusses the history of the Old Dutch Church, made famous in Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

The high-definition travelogue of cemetery art also visits Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, Woodlawn in the Bronx, Forest Lawn in Los Angeles, Cemetery of Père-Lachaise in Paris, and New Orleans’ St. Louis #1 and Metairie Cemeteries.

Sleepy Hollow’s high season continues through the year-end holidays. There’s stuff to do in Sleepy Hollow after Halloween, you ask? Well, sure. We don’t roll up the sidewalks after we give the heave-ho to the last wilting Jack O’Lantern.

Thanksgiving Weekend
Historic Hudson Valley properties are open 10 am to 4 pm, Friday through Sunday, 11/23-11/25. 914-631-8200. All Historic Hudson Valley sites are closed on Thanksgiving Day

• Washington Irving’s Sunnyside and Van Cortlandt Manor are decorated for the holidays in period style. Theme tours and costumed guides focus on historic traditions of winter holidays. Both sites feature hands-on workshops for children. Free admission for HHV members, all others regular admission. Sunnyside: 89 West Sunnyside Lane, Tarrytown NY 10591, 914-591-8763. Van Cortlandt Manor: 500 South Riverside Avenue, Croton-on-Hudson NY 10520, 914-271-8981.



• Union Church of Pocantico Hills. View the stained glass window by Henri Matisse (the design for the rose window was his last work of art before his death) and nine windows by Marc Chagall. Self-guided or guided tours. Free for HHV members. Weekdays (closed Tuesday): 11 am - 5 pm; Saturday: 10 am - 5 pm; Sunday: 2 pm - 5 pm. 555 Bedford Road, Sleepy Hollow, NY 10591. Tour schedule: 914-332-6659.



• Step back in time to the year 1750 at Philipsburg Manor, a farming and trading center owned by the Anglo-Dutch Philipse family. The millpond is the very one from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” around which Ichabod Crane sauntered with a bevy of country damsels (if recreating Ichabods wanderings, you may need to supply your own country damsels). Free admission for HHV members, all others regular admission. 381 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow NY 10591, 914-631-3992.



• Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is open to the public every day of the year: Monday to Friday 8 am - 4:30 pm, Saturday and Sunday 8:30 am - 4:30 pm. Visit Washington Irving, Andrew Carnegie, William Rockefeller, Walter Chrysler, Elizabeth Arden, Leona Helmsley, Brooke Astor, and many others. 540 North Broadway, Sleepy Hollow, NY 10591, 914-631-0081. Free maps at the cemetery office, 540 N. Broadway, and in the literature box at the gate next to the Old Dutch Church.

The Headless Horseman isn’t the only specter to haunt the hollow. In 1970 Dan Curtis, the creator of the Dark Shadows television series, brought his Gothic soap to the big screen. The feature length film House of Dark Shadows was shot largely at the Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown, with additional footage in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The cemetery’s receiving vault made its Hollywood debut as the haunt of the vampire Barnabas Collins. Cemetery records show that the producers first inquired about the pink-granite mausoleum of Darius Ogden Mills; there is no record of a response from the Mills family.

We like opening the receiving vault for visitors. It’s built into a hillside and it can be pretty creepy–especially after dark. Twenty-one marble crypts line each side of a central hall, none presently in use. For the past few years bats have been hibernating inside, which adds considerably to the atmosphere of the place. Inspired by our little upside-down friends, we set out to create a t-shirt. Wildlife artist Sherrie York drew the little cutie for us and, in keeping with the Dark Shadows association, made him a vampire bat. Shirts are available at Sleepy Hollow Gifts Online.

Thanks to everyone who joined us on last night’s walking tour of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Buffeted by winds from the remnants of Hurricane Noel, we could have called it the Dark and Stormy Night tour.

After paying our respects to Washington Irving, we ducked into the cemetery’s receiving vault, a hundred-year-old in-ground crypt with space for 42 interments. It’s unused now, except for two hibernating bats. Along the way we visited a Revolutionary War general, the cemetery’s Revolutionary War and Civil War monuments, 19th century abortionist Madame Restell, notorious counterfeiter Joshua Miner, the soaring neo-gothic monument of dry goods merchant Owen Jones, artists Jasper Francis Crospey and Robert Havell, Andrew Carnegie, William Rockefeller, and John Dustin Archbold. No sightings of the Headless Horseman.

If you want to be notified about the next evening tour, email us at publications@sleepyhollowcemetery.org.

We were starting to think there was a semi-permanent rain cloud over Historic Hudson Valley’s Halloween events. On our first Blaze two years ago we got soaked by a downpour. This year we aborted our first attempt due to torrential rain, and our excursion to Legend Weekend at Philipsburg Manor on 10/26 was soggy enough that we cut it short. But the skies finally cleared the night before Halloween and three of us piled into the car for the drive to Croton. Even with a total of 19 nights this year, the evening was sold out.

We managed to snap a few decent shots among the crowd and would have done more had there been room to set up a tripod for long exposures. Still, the Nikon D200 did ok set to auto ISO and programmed auto.

This is our chronicle of the goings on in Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, New York. There’s lots to do year round here in what Washington Irving called “Sleepy Hollow Country,” and plenty of information available. However, through our involvement with Sleepy Hollow Cemetery we often get asked for a local’s perspective on what to see. So for all those who’ve ever asked for our opinion on where to go and what to do, this site’s for you.