What Is It Named After? Hudson Valley's 'Fictional' Village

HUDSON VALLEY, NY — Was Washington Irving inspired to write "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by the namesake town or was a Westchester County village simply renamed as an homage to the spooky Halloween tale?

In this special "chicken or egg" edition of "What Is It Named After?" perhaps both can be true.

"By an overwhelming margin, the people of this struggling Hudson River village voted today to change its workaday name to the more evocative appellation of Sleepy Hollow, in the hope that it will bring a much needed economic lift," The New York Times' Joseph Berger wrote in a December 11, 1996 article about North Tarrytown's bid for notoriety.

On the other hand, Irving almost certainly used the river town where he lived and worked as a muse for his most haunting cautionary tale.

"Not far from the eastern shore of the Hudson River is a little valley known as Sleepy Hollow," Irving famously wrote. "A drowsy, dreamy atmosphere seems to hang over the land, as if it were under the sway of some witching power ..."

Even if the renaming of North Tarrytown as Sleepy Hollow was a recent and transparent bid for tourist dollars, the village left a mark on Irving's writing as much as he left a mark on the village. The nearby village of Irvington, nee-Woodlands Park, is an entirely different story, for another day.

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