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The Historical Society of Rockland County Vol. 32, No. 3 July-September 1988 Maxwell Anderson MAXWELL ANDERSON ON SOUTH MOUNTAIN ROAD STREET SCHOOL SIXTY YEARS AGO TO SAVE A MOUNTAIN-HIGH TOR IN THIS ISSUE The Rockland Years: Maxwell Anderson on South Mountain Road .. Page 3 Alan Anderson, the second eldest son of playwright Maxwell Anderson, writes about his father’s move to Rockland, his work habits as a writer and his associations with the other writers and artists who lived on “The Road” in New City. Street School Sixty Years Ago Page 11 Maxwell Anderson’s eldest son, Quentin, recalls the one year he attended the two- room Street School in New City. To Save A Mountain — High Tor Page 14 Isabelle Saveli reconstructs the events that led to High Tor and nearby land being incorporated into the Palisades Interstate Park system. BOARD NOTES: Ira M. Hedges of Pomona has been elected by the Board of Trustees to serve as 2nd vice president. John Scott of West Nyack has accepted the position of senior historian. Myra Starr has been hired as receptionist/secretary for the Society. We thank Gretta Balias for serving in the position during the difficult period following the death of Louise Winkley. THE SOCIETY’S ADVISORY COUNCIL: Robert B. Allison, Joan D. Bruckler, Nash Castro, J. Martin Cornell, F. Gordon Coyle, Patricia D. Cropsey, John Gum­ ming, Daniel deNoyelles, Sr., Elizabeth A. Finck, Dr. Charles F. Gosnell, Thomas A. Griffin, Jr., Dr. John F. Hopf, Jr., Robert P. Knight, Edward C. Leber, Robert P. Lewis, Harold Lindland, Robert F. Rubin, Frederick R. Van Wort, Jr., and John R. Zehner. COVER PICTURE. Maxwell Anderson as a student at the University of North Dakota, 1908-1911. Photo courtesy of Alan H. Anderson. ©1988 The Historical Society of Rockland County Editor: Marianne B. Leese Chm. Publications Comm.: John Scott Layout: Agnes Vandenberg Senior Historian: John Scott Printed by Print Sprint 2 The Rockland Years: Maxwell Anderson on South Mountain Road by Alan Haskett Anderson The imagined world of the writer is three years old and they were living in peopled with himself, his family, his Andover, Pennsylvania, his father was friends and his villains. The images offered a Baptist ministry and promptly against which his people move and the took it, happy to quit working on the things they touch are the houses, the railroad. Granddad had no particular trees, the streams, the laundry lines of background for the ministry except that his life. he had a good voice, some knowledge of Interwoven in his mind are the words, the Bible and was well liked. He was the music and the images from the hale, hearty, bluff, good-natured, and Greeks to Greenwich Village. bombast came easily to him. He studied When my father was 34 years old, he at night and soon became so popular that came to New City with his secret he had no trouble finding another parish storehouse of words and music, and when the church elders refused to among the myriad images were the vast increase his miniscule pay. Either stretches of North Dakota, the sea through disaffection on one side or the pounding on the rocks of Big Sur, the cool other or because he heard of a better and shaded spring in the shallow ravine opportunity, the moves from church to at his grandmother’s farm in western church went on and on. Pennsylvania. Maxwell, the eldest son, inherited his * * * mother’s personality and none of his father’s. He was quiet, reserved and James Maxwell Anderson’s world thoughtful. His mother managed to began in a tiny, farmland community in supply her children with books to read, Atlantic, Pennsylvania—difficult to find and Max, as he was nicknamed, devel­ on the map. By the time he was 19, his oped a voracious appetite for reading. He father had moved the family 11 times to devoured the English poets and the plays other little farming communities of and poems of Shakespeare and began to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and North write poetry, a pursuit he hid from every­ Dakota, to a new town, a new house, a one but his sisters for a time. Writing new school and new friends every year poems was not considered acceptable or, at most, every two years. activity for a healthy young male in the There was a reason for William Middle West farm communities. Lincoln Anderson to suffer his family After Max graduated from high school this nomadic life. When Maxwell was in Jamestown, North Dakota, he was on 3 his own for the first time. For several about 1880 or 1890 and was quite un­ years he continued the peripatetic life of distinguished. The property on which his father. He was in Grand Forks for this third one stood did, however, have three years, until he graduated from the one very distinctive feature: a wide, deep University of North Dakota. After ravine lined with caves with a magnifi­ graduation, Max married his classmate, cent waterfall over which a large brook Margaret Haskett, a tiny Irish beauty, splashed and roared impressively. bright and independent, who loved words as much as he. They moved to Dad simplified the choice for the other Minnewaukan, North Dakota for a year, two by announcing that he had decided then to Stanford University for his M.A., on the humblest house of the three. to Palo Alto, California, to Whittier, to Frank chose the one right across from San Francisco, and, in late 1918, to New Dad because it had flat land on which he York City. could build a tennis court. Rollo was happy with the third, which he called By now Dad needed a home for a Brook House for the very good reason family of four. My brother Quentin was that it was snugged between “The Road,” born in 1912 in Minnewaukan and I as South Mountain Road was often appeared in 1917 in Whittier. Dad was referred to, and a fast-running trout hired first by the New Republic maga­ stream, the same stream that created zine and then as an editorial writer for Dad’s waterfall. It has occurred to me the New York World. Frank Hill, who that the moment Dad saw the waterfall had been a classmate at Stanford and he was aware that it was a far grander was now on the paper with him, told Dad version of the shallow ravine and spring about Rockland County. Maxwell sent at his grandmother’s farm in Atlantic, for his family and we all settled in a little Pennsylvania, where he spent a glorious house in Grand View-on-Hudson—for summer when he was 12 years old and one year. The nomadic life had not ended. fell in love for the first time—a love affair Next was Glen Cove, Long Island, then that was the subject of a novel, Morning back to a bigger house in Grand View for Winter and Night, that he wrote under a another year and finally, in 1922, to pseudonym in 1952. South Mountain Road. By then, brother We spent the summer and some Terrence was one year old, born in New weekends on The Road. While he was still York, and we were a family of five. working for the newspaper, Dad rode his bike to Haverstraw, took the West Shore The Move to Rockland Railroad to Weehawken and the ferry to There were three or four farm families Manhattan. We spent the winter in a who owned large stretches of South rented apartment in Greenwich Village. Mountain Road. Among them were Coming to Rockland was to begin the George and Peter Jersey. Peter Jersey most creative period of my father’s life. had over a hundred acres for sale with Once White Desert was produced on three houses. Dad and two friends, Broadway in 1923, he was determined Frank Hill and Rollo Peters, an actor, that the theater would be his career. The decided to buy the land and the houses next year when he read the rave reviews together. That done, the next problem of What Price Glory, he phoned his boss was to decide who would get which at the World and said, “Pm not coming in. house. Two of them were built in the I’ve quit,” and hung up. Teaching and 1700s and were far more attractive and newspaper work were behind him valuable than the third, which was built forever. For the first time, the nomadic 4 The waterfall that attracted Anderson to the farmhouse. pattern was broken. Dad’s life was to Have seen long lights on a dim shore, center on South Mountain Road for the Heard the reluctant waters’ roar, next 30 years, during which he wrote an Felt the soaked leaves beneath my feet astounding 39 plays, 28 of which were And known the earth, that it was sweet. produced on Broadway. Of the remain­ —from “You Who Have Dreams” ing 11 full-length plays, several were produced in regional or university She walked as one who thought herself theaters. In addition to this massive unseen, productivity, he wrote several radio A slim child clad in heavy peasant’s wear, plays, which were broadcast during and Fog clinging to her clothing and her hair. after World War II; a volume of poetry, —from “Storm Flowers” which was published in 1925; and the We all became familiar with Dad’s novel about his childhood, published in passion for wet weather. Water was more 1952. than a need in his life—more than drinking and washing—it did something Love of Water for his spirit and his dream mechanism.

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