When Morris Rosenblum arrived here nearly two decades before it was at a time when bridges backward into history could still furnish a perspective on the transcendent qualities and continuing presence of tradition. He came in 1935 to resolve some historic relations between local real estate and manufacturing properties that were involved in corporate settlements and debt entanglements. This involved the complex linage of those that summered here and his only intention was to meet with them and resolve these issues.

What he found, though, was an under-served resource whose role in insulating this place from the impact of the depressed economy was under-appreciated. They were a captive presence of seasonal visitors that arrived here annually out of tradition to either open their country homes or to take up residence in the ones that were converted to board those who once had a home here but were now of slightly lessened means. For the past half century the metropolitan townhouses to the south had been emptying every summer to fill destinations such as these. This was a social function that did not change just because current means were diminished. Regardless of their circumstances, these families were required to be “in residence” here in summer months.

These were all the children and grandchildren and the nieces and nephews and their families whose seasonal presence was regarded here as a display of heritage passed down to them from a founding generation. Their residences were called estates and had names like Bright Bank, Clifton, Clovelea, and Stroomzeit. There were also once great estates that retained their identities as Idlewild, Oak Ledge, and others, that now catering to the familiar but presently estate-less “refined classes” in their great houses, now referred to as resorts. Their annual ritual was not just a retreat from the city and summer heat for them; it was a reminder of their roots in a golden age when this place was the seat of their family identity.

Personal wealth here had long been expressed by maintaining seasonally occupied homes with their scenic views over finely kept grounds, kept by resident herds of sheep in the time before the lawnmower and now by the equipment of their resident groundskeepers. The original builders started out as the owners of the local manufacturing businesses whose main residences were townhouses in upper Manhattan or Brooklyn. In the “season” these country homes had the special purpose of showing a proprietor's presence; an obligatory involvement in civic affairs where they also took the reins of the government and served on church councils and bank boards; part of the requisites of their local business relationships.

Later many of these estate settings were purchased by the even more well-to-do and many recreational and cultural facilities were financed by them to show that their private appreciation of nature's beauty was accompanied by a love of public settings where they could show off their families and keep their visitors amused with the summer socials they organized. The sharing of the private lawn, park and trail facilities between their large estates was the predecessor of the many local recreational benefits which grew to support the destination promotions of the ever expanding list of local resorts and summer boarding houses.

Right up to mid-century this made up a sizable indirect economy. Each estate depended on a staff of indoor and outdoor help throughout the year. A sign that this economy was destined to decline was that it became a curiosity to speculate on when competitive employment opportunities moved in with the thruway and the large national employers it attracted drew from the local workforce.

For ten or more generations this place had regarded employment as a demand opportunity; for the farm harvests, the ice harvest, the months when quarrying was practical or when the river was open; and this work related to the summer visitors followed this familiar pattern. Even as late as the last quarter of the last century this type of employment held on here. It did just as long as these places felt that their contribution to the economy was recognized. Ironically, the tradition of associating seasonal visitors with the luxuriant accommodations of the steamboat formed a vernacular term for tourists often spoken disparagingly now by the very sort that benefited most from their employment and lost the most with their leaving.

But Morris found that this presence in the depression years promised economic stability for those with something to offer. The contacts that could be made by being where this quality of people amused and recreated presented opportunities for a livelihood that would otherwise be a struggle in these particular times. So he gambled that supporting the currently fragile rights and tastes of this privileged group would be a full time occupation for one capable of steering a course through the fragile reality of the fleeting past they represented.

Those with cultural interests and a respect for history blended most easily into this society, especially if one didn't have aspirations that threatened the confidences it offered. During these years there was a particularly strong match between their pride in the industrial heritage their families built and a contemporary emphasis on the heroic industrial landscape artists chose for the themes of their works. The cultural values both they and the artists brought from their city homes led to diversionary visits to the neighboring art colony where their receptivity and patronage could pay homage to the perseverance of the industrious. During these lean years this was one of the few ways they could sustain their connection to manufacturing and reinforce that identity here.

The cosmopolitan interests Morris acquired in his college and early working years in the City, as well as the original purpose of his introduction, made him highly acceptable company. His abiding interest in knowing the history that drove their affairs brought him into their conversations. Their common history was the vocabulary and connective tissue that guided all their activities and being included in their personal conversations brought an understanding of the cultural trappings and general familiarities they shared. Totally unlike the litanies of common families, their's delved into a more comprehensive drama from these complex ties.

The character of their conversation had gone through generations of investigation, analysis and introspection to come out recited as a Greek chorus. Every season their discussions memorialized a formal account of precedents, presaging every time a change was imminent. Before every new social age, the past was made an historical age they all agreed to recall. This custom of perpetuated identity was later to become one Morris would embrace.

From these remembrances he observed there evolved formal collections of information that enshrined proof of the special historical times of those that remembered. These physical collections were family heirlooms. The credibility of a memory was verified through this reference material made up of deeds and ledgers and contracts and surveys and letter books that often went back a hundred years. These were the province of the family elders or, in the fractious family, the counselor. Permission to witness any of these articles was a sign of deference since belief in their significance was expected.

From his associations in the pre-war years Morris was one of the few that retained the confidence of these families in the later years when increasingly there was little recognition of the significance of their presence as a new population rapidly grew. The duality of his foresight as witness to the encroachment of a future course of land use and his parallel sympathy for a history that no longer had a place for these estates ironically favored him to preside over their sale and oversee breaking them into parcels as their heirloom history collections were entrusted to him to be kept as the final testaments of this departed gentry.

Within the second decade after the thruway opened Morris was instrumental in making three of the larger holdings into housing developments, dividing another so the high school campus could be placed there, and negotiating retention of the largest estate as a trophy possession for a careless investor that allowed the mansion and other structures to rot... this was what he regretted.

As the subdivisions and chain store parking lots took over once great lawns and estate lands there was not one tearful farewell. By the time Morris too was gone recognition of these landmarks had twice been removed from memory as the past half century witnessed their replacements age to be themselves replaced. With all physical presence erased, the meaning heritage brings to the reason those who were here the longest show off as their right of passage is quickly lost out to the reason why those who were newly arrived with the Thruway and suburbanization had for ignoring any would-be historic identity.