Orangetown History Talk in May

A public presentation on the history of Orangetown will be given Wednesday, May 4 in the Pearl River Public Library by the co-authors of the new book by that name which was released for sale just last month.

The speakers will be Orangetown Historian Mary Cardenas and Paul Clark, a volunteer at the Orangetown Historical Museum and Archives, who together produced the 128-page book “Orangetown” for the Arcadia Publishing Company’s’ Images of America series.

The talk will begin at 7 p.m. in the library’s community meeting room, as a part of the monthly meeting of the Rockland-Bergen Post Card Collectors Club.

The meeting itself will begin at 6:30 p.m., with trading of post cards among members and guests. After the talk, the club will conduct a short business meeting. Guests are invited to attend any part of the meeting they wish, and can just stay for the book presentation if that is their primary interest.

Many of the club’s members collect historical post cards of their own home towns, and many of these have been incorporated into the book, which contains over 200 century old photos of Orangetown scenes.

The book is divided into ten chapters, with each giving a short photographic and written narrative of one of Orangetown’s ten hamlets and villages. Included in the book are the villages of Nyack, South Nyack, Piermont and Grand View, and the hamlets of Pearl River, Blauvelt, Orangeburg, Tappan, Palisades and Sparkill.

Following the presentation by Ms. Cardenas and Clark, which will include a power point showing of nearly 50 of the views in the book, there will be a question and answer period for the audience to interact with the speakers. Copies of the book will also be available for sale at the meeting, at a cost of $21.95 plus tax, with the proceeds going to the Museum and Archives.

Residents interested in post cards of any kind are also invited to attend the meeting, and find out more about the club if they have an interest in the hobby. In addition to hometown views, members collect by topics such as holidays, patriotic, comic, animals, flowers, transportation, states and foreign countries, costumes and hundreds of other categories that interest them.

The post card club meets at the Pearl River Library the first Wednesday of every month from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The May 2 meeting will feature a talk by Stony Point photographer and historian George Potanovic on his newly printed book on the history of Pearl River’s Lederle Laboratories, which was published by Lederle’s current owner, the Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company.

  library, orangetown, Orangetown Historical Museum, Pearl River Public Library, rockland county