Rockland County, A Destination for Three Centuries

Rockland County - a Destination for New York Residents for Three Centuries

This story is not intended to be a very scholarly academic treatise based on historical research. Its sources are folks who have lived in Rockland for their entire lives and in many cases are 3rd & 4th Generations.

Of course even 4 generations can only go back to the very late 18th Century, so I begin with the late 1700s.

Rockland was not seriously impacted by the millions of immigrants from Europe in the last decades of the 18th Century. Its residents were mostly native born farmers and most of the County was farmland. But one major “Draw” was the Brick industry in Haverstraw. It began in the late 1700’s, but exploded in 1850. It became a national premier industry. It needed hundreds of workers. All the giant buildings in New York City were being constructed with bricks from Haverstraw. It was before concrete and steel took over. It’s a fantastic story worthy of a Hollywood movie or a Netflix Original, but not here and now.

But what was a much bigger Draw was Rockland’s open spaces in the 19th Century. It became a destination for State institutions for the mentally ill and the intellectually/developmentally disabled. The State had common sense purposes which were the affordable space and its fresh air. Both Letchworth Village in Haverstraw and Stony Point and Rockland State Hospital in Orangetown were gigantic, mini-cities. In total, they served over 15,000 adults and children plus thousands of Staff. They had a noble vision.

But interests other than the State Government had eyes on that affordable space and clean air. The New York City orphanage world ! Its was the time of European immigrants. It was a time that these folks found a city of congested slums, polluted air, very unhygienic settings and early adult deaths that produced orphans by the thousands. At one point in time, Rockland was home to dozens of orphanages. This too is a story worth telling.

In the interest of brevity, let’s skip to a more recent time that brought two mega government construction products into being while the Bronx was on fire. I am talking about the construction of the Tappan Zee Bridge and the Palisades Interstate Parkway, with made escaping from the Bronx very convenient. That was from 1950 to 20 years later.

I am one of the escapees. I was born and raised in the North Bronx and even went to College in the Bronx. After College I went on active duty in the Marine Corps. Upon my return I found my old neighborhood was no longer my old neighborhood, plus all my pals were living in a place called Rockland, which proved to be the best place in the universe to raise childen and still is.

And just when I thought that the immigration to Rockland was over, my fiends in the Real Estate business tell me there is another immigration of people escaping Manhattan. I leave that to another day.