Saga of a Sleepy Hollow fireboat
In a New York village of literary fame, a new kind of monument stirs controversy.
SLEEPY HOLLOW, N.Y. — About an hour’s drive north of Manhattan, past the point where the Hudson River widens out, sits a quiet nook of a town, just two square miles. Streets slope upwards from the waterfront, passing stone churches and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the writer Washington Irving is buried.
The small glen, which every fall welcomes out-oftowners with haunted hayrides and meals at the Horseman diner, was the site of Ichabod Crane’s illfated attempt to woo a young lady in Irving’s 1820 story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Down at the river’s edge sit a four-story apartment building and a townhouse complex, both built in recent years. To the south looms a new bridge replacing the former Tappan Zee crossing. Visible under it, a miniature New York City skyline beckons, and to the north, the open Hudson.
Extending out from the waterfront is a wooden pier, and at the end of that the newest addition to Sleepy Hollow — one that some residents aren’t too happy about: a retired fireboat.
On Friday, the 129-foot John D. McKean rocked from its mooring on the wind-whipped waters, its red water tower shooting up toward the sky. Below deck, four 1,000-horsepower engines — two to power the boat and two to pump water — thundered as the owner showed how to start them.
The boat, which once belonged to the Fire Department of New York, is now the property of a restaurateur based in North Salem, N.Y., who just opened an outpost in Sleepy Hollow.
Named after a marine engineer fatally burned in an explosion on another boat, the McKean was commissioned in 1954 and has played more than a bit part in New York’s history.
In the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it drafted water from the Hudson River to put out the fires. When Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger landed a plane on the Hudson in 2009, the McKean ferried passengers to safety.
In 2010, after 56 years, the McKean was retired.
Two years ago, Edward Taylor bought it at a city auction with business partner Michael Kaphan for around $70,000, Taylor said. They refurbished it, scrubbing the wheel and brass fixtures, replacing the rotting floors and freshly coating it in gleaming red, white and black paint.
“You come on board an old gal like this and you don’t want to see her go to the scrapyard,” Taylor said.
On Thanksgiving the McKean pulled into the cove at Sleepy Hollow, straight down the pier from Taylor’s new restaurant in the riverfront apartment building. That’s when the trouble started.
At the village Board of Trustees meeting in November, residents complained that the boat blocked their views. “I woke up from a nap Sunday morning, and I saw a ship. This isn’t a boat. It doesn’t belong here,” said Michael Savitsky, who lives in a river-facing apartment.
“I had a reasonable expectation to at least have forewarning of a major change in my neighborhood,” said Paul Viboch, whose townhouse sits on the inlet’s northern edge.
Savitsky and Viboch said Taylor didn’t have the right permits to moor the boat at the pier or build a gangway to it. They worried he would use it as an extension of his restaurant, disrupting the tranquil adjacent path.
Taylor said that the McKean was legally moored and that as a citizen leasing the pier, he was within his rights to bring the boat to Sleepy Hollow. He also said he planned to operate it as a nonprofit educational institution open to the public.
Village Administrator Anthony Giaccio said the site is under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers, from which the boat’s owners were in the process of getting a permit. He also said the building department had notified the pier’s owners that they will have to amend their site plan for the gangway, subject to a public hearing.
“I don’t have an opinion and the Village Board hasn’t issued any judgment,” Giaccio said. “What I can say is we’ve gotten a lot of emails and letters in support of keeping the boat there.… We’ve received more in favor than against.”
Some of those in favor say the boat is part of riverfront life. “Look at that — it makes the scene,” said Kim Babicz, a resident who was eating at Taylor’s restaurant Friday afternoon. “You’re on the river — get a grip!”
Others said the boat should be honored for its history. John Korzelius, chief of Sleepy Hollow’s all-volunteer Fire Department, which assisted on 9/11, said, “For us, that boat has a special meaning…. The whole Fire Department is 100% in support of that fireboat.”
Lt. Billy Ryan, a New York fireman who lives in the village, worked at ground zero. On Friday he described searching for survivors in the burning remains of the twin towers. All the water mains and hydrants in the area were broken.
“If the water wasn’t there from that boat, we wouldn’t be alive,” Ryan said.
“I understand [some residents’] displeasure,” he added, “but I have an obligation to be respectful to the boat and its history.”
Those opposed to the McKean’s presence say they don’t discount its historic value or beauty.
“It’s a nice boat. It’s in the wrong place,” said Michael Aaronson, adding that “it should be in a museum somewhere.” Standing in the ground-floor living room of his townhouse along the inlet, he pointed toward the boat, which filled the better part of the view. “Look at what that did — I used to be able to see the city,” he said.
Aaronson may not have to wait long to see the skyline again. Taylor said that when construction on the new bridge is complete, he plans to pull his boat in lengthwise along the dock — under an apartment building currently being built.