Deep Woods 5: Holiday House

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL: The women and girls who came here, many of them, were from Brooklyn and probably lugged their scuffed travel bags and duffle rolls over two recently erected Washington Roebling bridges to find the healthful river valley and the broad veranda where maids poured them tea, they sipped from china cups swirling local honey and silver spoons. It was a long way from their Brooklyn.

“Holiday House,” as it was known, was a memorial established in 1892 in grief over a lost daughter by the van Ingen family and administered by St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. Edward Hook van Ingen had been the first wealthy Brooklynite to build his country home above the Shepaug River when the winding Shepaug Railroad made the valley accessible in 1872. Others followed to enjoy the forest balm. Fine air that made hives flourish might also revive mortal lungs fouled by fourteen-hour, stale air days at the sewing machines and spinning mules of Brooklyn’s woolen factories. 

I try to imagine the women and girls with their bundles as they stepped from the railcar at Valley Station and crossed Roebling’s delicate Arts & Craft bridge, the grand, three-story gables of the 65-bed Holiday House visible on the hill above them. Mr. Van Ingen would welcome and escort them up the hill to a small reception. For two weeks the girls would see few men and be as idle as they chose, until they returned down the path and over the same two suspension bridges to their mills and their mules.

Holiday House was closed before WWI and dismantled sometime after the war. It’s said parts of Holiday House are in homes all over Washington but the veranda on the hill where labor leisured is today deep woods, practically stone age.

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NOTE:  An excellent discussion of Holiday House by Louise Van Tartwijk can be found here: http://www.steeprockassoc.org/the-van-ingen-family-and-holiday-house/