Early in the last century – the Twentieth, that is – Croton-on-Hudson became a Mecca for New York’s artsy, leftist crowd. Easy access from the City via the new electric trains (which switched back to steam at Harmon, now Croton-Harmon station) enticed both leading lights and fellow travelers – actors, writers, poets, painters and left-wing intellectuals – to build or buy summer or year-round cottages in the hills above the village. By the 1920s there was a thriving bohemian community centered in Croton, which became known as ”Greenwich Village on the Hudson.”

The focal point for this community became Mount Airy Road, which starts in the village downtown and climbs up what old timers still call “Red Hill” for the political leanings of these very particular settlers. A few years ago, long-time Croton resident Cornelia Cotton, artistic and political scion and chronicler of the history of this group, gave a lecture and slide show on historical Mount Airy houses to a standing-room-only audience at the Croton Free Library. She had to stop after 2½ hours and two full carousels of slides, not half-way through her program.

As a realtor with family roots in Croton, I’ve always been fascinated by this history, and if I drive by these noteworthy houses with clients in the car, they’ll probably get the full guided-tour treatment, even when we’re on our way somewhere else. I take special pleasure in showing and selling these homes, and I’ve sold more than my share.

Joseph Freeman, a writer and frequent visitor in the post-World War I period, described the radical colony in his 1936 memoir, An American Testament:

“At this time, Croton-on-Hudson was a kind of literary and political shrine. The sacred grove was a stretch of brown hilly earth known as Mount Airy Road, on both sides of which, separated by an acre or two of land, stood the houses of John Reed, Boardman Robinson, Lydia Gibson, Floyd Dell and Stuart Chase… . It was some time before I realized that Croton was only a suburb of Washington Square.”

Freeman usually stayed with Floyd Dell, who bought the 1892 farmhouse at 75 Mount Airy Rd. in 1919. Dell was an influential editor, novelist and literary critic who held virtual salons at his house for visiting radical artists and intellectuals. Freeman recalls a memorable weekend there with Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, the muckraking novel about the U.S. meatpacking industry that had led to passage of the Pure Food & Drug Act in 1909. Last year I sold this house to a charming young couple who have been restoring it.

Across the street at no. 66 lived Boardman Robinson, artist and political cartoonist, in a classic center-hall colonial perched high on a bluff with views of the Hudson River. The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, another frequenter of the Croton colony, was married in this house in 1923.

Next door and up the hill at no. 70 is the 200 year-old house that belonged to Max Eastman and his sister Crystal. Max was the dashing literary and social critic who was a leader in the radical Greenwich Village community. He was also editor of The Masses, a magazine combining socialist philosophy with the arts. His sister was a journalist and a prominent feminist who co-wrote the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923 and was a founding member and lawyer of the ACLU. Their home was the main crossroads for visiting luminaries, and their house guests included Charlie Chaplin and Max’s great friend Leon Trotsky. As a realtor, I was fascinated to discover that when Eastman bought this house, his down payment was twenty dollars and the purchase price was $1,500. In 2005, it sold for well over the asking price of $799,000.

Around the bend at the top of the hill, at no. 106, stands the 1840 house that John Reed bought in 1916. Reed is best known as the radical journalist who, with his wife Louise Bryant, participated in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and wrote about it in his famous book, Ten Days That Shook the World. Warren Beatty based his great Oscar-winning movie Reds on “Jack” Reed’s story, and part of the film is set in Croton (though it was filmed in England), at the house where Reed wrote his book. Beatty took the role of Reed, of course, Diane Keaton played Bryant, and Floyd Dell was also featured in the screenplay. The Reed house was recently listed for sale.

History might have been different if Mabel Dodge hadn’t turned down Jack Reed’s proposal of marriage early in 1916, the same year he later married Louise Bryant. Dodge was the formidable heiress and patron of the arts who had established a weekly salon at her Fifth Avenue apartment in Greenwich Village. In 1913, she and Reed ran off to Paris, where they became lovers. In Paris and in Mabel’s palatial Tuscan villa outside Florence, they hobnobbed with the likes of Picasso, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, Artur Rubenstein and Andre Gide. Back in the U.S., Dodge lived in a house on Mount Airy, but when she rebuffed Reed’s marriage proposal, she moved to Finney Farm, not far away in the village. There, in a rambling farmhouse built in 1870, she offered Reed the use of the third floor as a writing studio. He tried it for a time, but it didn’t work out. He then bought her Mount Airy house and, that same year, Mabel married painter Maurice Sterne, her third husband. (1916 must have been quite a year.) Finney Farm already had a rich history when Dodge bought it. Horace (“Go West, young man”) Greeley was just one of the prominent visitors there in the mid-19th century. When I sold this house two years ago it was full of documents and other lore evoking this colorful past.

The stories and the history go on and on. Farther along Mount Airy, at no. 131, is another landmark of the time, Longue Vue Farm, the grand estate where Gloria Swanson lived and entertained in the late 1920s, and where Isadora Duncan loved to dance on the terrace of the castle. I sold this property too, but that’s a topic for another time. Croton’s history is too rich to be covered in other than small, manageable bites.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar

People who follow the ebbs and flows of real estate sales will know that the luxury home market has been suffering. Those who have a high-end home to sell know this in their gut. That suffering hits them personally.

Here in Croton-on-Hudson, the picture is especially stark. As of early November, a month into the fourth quarter, Croton has a whopping 21 houses for sale in the million-dollar range*. Yet the total number of million-dollar houses that have sold so far this year is just four, one in February, one in April, two more in October. With just one other recently in contract, chances are slim of another closing in 2009. At that rate, we have a five-year supply of luxury homes for sale – provided no more come on the market.

Recent reports have noted an up-tick in sales activity that might portend a long-awaited turnaround in real estate. But that good news is offset by the fact that, while houses are selling in greater number, prices continue to decline. The freeze at the high end accentuates the overall drop in prices. Most of the sales these days are concentrated at the low end, spurred on by the federal stimulus program that offers substantial tax credits to first-time home buyers in 2009. But without sales of costlier homes to balance the cheaper home sales, both the average and the median home prices get driven down.

Croton has always had its sprinkling of luxury homes – up in Teatown, off Mount Airy, out the Post Rd., overlooking the Hudson. Still, sales of homes for over a million dollars used to be a rarity in Croton, limited to the occasional estate property or exceptionally large or luxurious house. That all began to change in the late 1990s – just yesterday, it seems – as builders started feeding a hungry market with the new big-box colonials for the first time locally. The Arrowcrest subdivision off the Albany Post Rd. was the biggest development of these houses, but prices there initially didn’t approach $1 million. One Indian Summer Drive, the 5,000 sq. ft., 5-bedroom model for the development with Hudson River views and all the bells and whistles, sold in 1999 for only $753,000.

By the turn of the century, however, the market heated up enough to drive prices for high-end houses into seven figures. In 2000 an Arrowcrest house, one of the biggest in the development, sold for the first time for over $1 million. Two other properties, both older estates, also broke the million-dollar barrier that year. In 2001, four houses sold that had listed at over a million, then eight in 2002 and eleven in 2003. By 2006, that same model Arrowcrest house, the one that sold for $753,000 in 1999, was being offered for sale at $1,599,000! From 2002 through 2008, an average of eight houses a year, the majority of them newer construction, sold in the million dollar-plus range.

Then the bottom fell out. Or more precisely, since the subject is luxury homes, the top fell off. By the third quarter of 2008 the real estate bubble had burst nationally and the collapse of credit and the meltdown in the financial markets had hit the fan. The housing market had been softening and then slumping for a year already, but now it went into virtual hibernation. Buyers didn’t want to purchase in a falling market, and sellers didn’t want to take the losses the market seemed to demand. The Wall Street bonuses that traditionally fueled high-end sales after the holidays just never materialized.

Luxury home sales in Croton had an above-average year in 2008, when ten houses were sold at a million dollars or more. But 28 other such houses on the market in 2008 failed to sell; 14 of these were either withdrawn or expired without selling, the other 14 were carried over as still active into 2009. It’s even worse in 2009. Besides the 21 active houses, 10 others have already been taken off the market without selling, and a high number of the 21 remaining actives will likely be withdrawn or carried over into 2010.

What can be done? How can these houses get sold? Well, nothing can be done by sellers (or their agents) to change a bad market. They can’t persuade reluctant buyers to come in and start scooping up what are some pretty amazing bargains. But there are ways to differentiate a house from the competition.

Pricing is one answer. A Croton luxury home that didn’t sell at $1.4 or $1.3 million in 2008 was withdrawn long enough to update the kitchen and make other improvements. It was then returned to the market this year at $925,000, was in contract a few months later, and just closed at $910,000. Ouch! And, Hooray! The sellers were able to approach selling their home as a hard-nosed business proposition. They decided to bite the bullet and get on with their lives.

But pricing isn’t the only answer. Sometimes, after a series of price drops, it isn’t even the right answer. A house can be too big or too sumptuous or too unusual for buyers in its price range. The better solution might be to wait (if possible) for the right buyer, the one who appreciates the house and is willing to pay reasonably for it. Or wait (if possible) for the market to come back.

In the meantime, the suffering is bound to continue for luxury home owners, probably for the next year, maybe more. There is a sense among realtors of a pent-up demand among potential buyers, who have been putting their plans on hold but may be drawn back into the market by the undeniable bargains on offer. But that may be wishful thinking. Indeed, what buyers there are seem to be more intent on getting the deal of their dreams than the house of their dreams. Pretty cold comfort for sellers.

*I’m counting as million-dollar homes any house that was initially marketed at $990,000 and above, regardless of selling price or final asking price.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar