The Mill Dam at "Sleepy Hollow"

Currier & Ives, the New York-based lithography firm, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life. People eagerly acquired Currier & Ives lithographs, such as those featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, railroads, portraits, hunting, fishing, domestic life and numerous other categories, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments.

Among the most popular and enduring images were those of New York sites, including this charming lithograph depicting a fisherman standing on a footbridge above a small dam near an old mill, which had particular historical significance for residents of NorthTarrytown and the Hudson River Valley. In the 1670s, Frederick Philipse, a Dutch colonial New Yorker, acquired the property so he could build a dam across the water of the Pocantico River, thus forming a mill pond to provide water power for the grinding of grain in this rich agrarian area. The sale of flour made at this mill provided a considerable income for the Philipse family over years. During the American Revolutionary era, however, the Philipse descendants moved to England, so the property changed ownership. This Currier & Ives print, which provided a fairly accurate picture of the mill, mill pond and dam as they appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, would have appealed to collectors who sought images of places tinged with state history.

The Currier & Ives firm operated until 1907, making lithographic prints of more than 4,000 subjects for distribution across America and Europe of such popular categories also including marines, natural history, genre, caricatures, portraits, history and foreign views. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company. In the late nineteenth century, Currier & Ives began to print lithographs in color.