Slide Lecture: "Phantoms of the Hudson" by Monica Randall

Monica Randall, regional historian, photographer and author, will present a slide lecture at the Irvington Public Library on September 29 at 2 p.m. "Phantoms on the Hudson," will offer a visit to lavish mansions and castles built along the Hudson River by railroad kings, oil barons and financiers during the Gilded Age.  Subsequent generations of their family, strangled by taxes and heating bills, could no longer afford to maintain them.  Most were simply abandoned and survive only as ghostly ruins, but a few have been reinvented as tourist attractions and hotels.  Featured will be the Bannerman's Residence, Wilderstein, Dick's Castle, Rokeby, as well as Lyndhurst and Kykuit.  Monica Randall will show photographs of these manses in their heyday and of what remains of them today.  Free.  Irvington Public Library, 12 South Astor Street, Irvington.  914-591-7840.  www.irvingtonlibrary.org