One of the best American writers of the 1800s lived in this converted farmhouse in Tarrytown.
by Rich Watson
Washington Irving was an acclaimed writer from the nineteenth century, whose works are well remembered today.
The New York City native (it was Irving who gave New York the Anglo-Saxon nickname “Gotham,” meaning “goat’s town”) served in the War of 1812. He then spent seventeen years traveling in Europe, beginning in 1815. He returned to America in 1832.
Three years later, he purchased a house in a town upstate in which he had stayed briefly as a child: Tarrytown.