#TBT WORLD WAR I VICTORY ARCH, 1918
from news photo by T. Kirkman of Garnerville
West Haverstraw arch with the Allies’ colors at Bridge Street, which in early years comprised three streets: Cottage, John and Bridge. The villages lent the arch to Stony Point, where it was destroyed when a car smashed into it.
This image appeared on the cover of “South of the Mountains”, published by The Historical Society of Rockland County, Vol. 19, No. 2 April-June 1975
This issue of SOTM included an article entitled VIVID MEMORIES OF WWI IN HAVERSTRAW VILLAGE (the third, in a three part series) by Daniel DeNoyelles. Here is a short excerpt:
Secure in our homeland far from the combat zones and the war’s desolation, we teenagers of Haverstraw and North Rockland went to school on time, collected our pennies and turned them in to our teachers to be forwarded to Washington to help build a battleship. We worked on Rockland County farms or in our family gardens in the spring and summer of 1918 to stretch the food supplies of the Allies. A few of us worked on the brickyards, then limited to a meager non-essential production. We sold Liberty Loan bonds after our prominent men talked to the citizenry on many occasions, especially before the movie shows in Waldron’s Opera House or in The Majestic on New Main Street. We pushed the sales of Miss Margaret Christie’s Smileage Books — small collections of coupons which could be redeemed by the men in the training camps on this side of the Atlantic for small purchases.
Waving our flags to encourage the men leaving for pre-war training, we marched from our school at the corner of Hudson and Fairmount Avenues a block or so to Haverstraw’s West Shore depot. And at night we studied our school books or watched the brilliantly lighted night boats sail north on the Hudson for Albany or Troy. The Berkshire, the C. W. Morse, the Trojan and the Rensselaer sent their probing searchlight beams on our front porches and we kids, hoping to be seen by the ships’ passengers, danced in the rays. I have often wondered if the sailing public ever were aware of our antics on the riverbank.
The battleship fund mentioned above kept many of us interested, perplexed and vexed. Should we spend the munificent amount in hand at Lago-marsino’s, Cahill’s or Hahn’s candy stores before we hit the classroom or turn the money in ? I think the fund was started by a woman, Marjorie Sterrett, who eventually was ready to turn over to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels $200,000. For some reason, he refused it. Where all these pennies wound up I cannot say.
Our local paper did print an item about a fund which was successful and which aided a Nyack industry. Three New York boys had collected $21,000 and contracted with Julius Peterson and his Nyack shipyard to build a U-boat chaser. In August of 1917 the boat, first of its kind, was launched on the Hudson. Some say master craftsman Peterson had built the fastest boat of its class. While its speed was a secret, it was rumored about our village that it could skim the water at 25 miles per hour. This construction job was one of many activities at Nyack’s wartime shipyard.
Perhaps our most entrancing diversion from our youthful problems was going to the movies — a new avenue to pleasure which local people took to their hearts. The movies had been introduced to Haverstraw’s theatre-loving public in the old Waldron’s Opera House somewhere around 1912 though the old show palace had been built some 30 years prior to that date...
To read the complete series of articles, visit our digitized archive at
Hudson River Valley Heritage Digital Collections
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