The building in my sketch at left, located in Haverstraw NY and the subject of Edward Hopper’s 1925 painting, House by the Railroad, maintains its vigil on Route 9W. Hopper’s haunting depiction of the three-story house came to the attention of the cast and crew of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie classic, Psycho. The painting inspired not only the design of the Bates Mansion in the 1960 production, but the mood of the film as well.
House by the Railroad captures the fading elegance of this victorian-style home, located just south of St. Peter’s Cemetery. His composition shows a solitary structure, cut off from the world by a set of railroad tracks. Today, the building is still visually incarcerated by a heavily trafficked road, power lines, a chain linked fence and the railroad that gave the original painting its name and theme.
In Hitchcock’s film, a newly constructed interstate highway isolates the Bates motel and mansion, stranding Norman Bates, portrayed by Tony Perkins, to stew in his psychosis.
During the 18th and then 19th century, the location of railroad lines and highways would pick economic winners and losers. If you didn’t have a train stop or off ramp, businesses and families would relocate to towns more connected to regional transportation. Hopper’s painting and Hitchcock’s film reflect on how these abrupt disruption impact the human personality.
In 1919, Rockland County Attorney General, Thomas Gagan, bought the house. His daughter, Amo, lived there for 50 years. According to legend, as a 13-year old, she saw Hopper seated at his portable easel on the gravel sidings of the train track creating the painting that would become a masterpiece of American art and the prototype for an iconic image from American cinema. I chose the same perspective for my sketch.
The current owners have restored the exterior of the house to a pristine state that would have pleased Hopper and Hitchcock. The lawn is manicured, the original clapboard and windows have been expertly restored. With its widow’s peak, curved mansard roof, and shut blinds, I thought I had stumbled upon an architectural time capsule. The building came to life as the door swung open and I met the owner, Lori.
Lori and her husband, Edwin, are the loving stewards of this American treasure. Edwin didn’t know the Hopper-Hitchcock connection when he acquired the property. He soon noticed that cars would pull into his driveway to marvel in silence or snap photos of his house. Now, reproductions of the Hopper painting, as well as renditions by friends and relatives, adorn the interior of the house (except in rooms formed by the hourglass-shaped roof with sloping walls that cannot accommodate hanging pictures).
The construction of railroads, highways and bridges have caused upheaval in American communities for over a century. In Nyack, a railroad has come and gone, one highway and two major bridge construction projects have taken homes, and our connection to the public transportation grid remains tenuous.
Thanks to the efforts of the Edward Hopper House Art Center, and artists like Kris Burns, who screened Psycho on the side of the Verizon building in 2012, the artist who was skeptical of the benefits of transportation developments, attracts the traffic of cultural tourists to Nyack.
On Friday, November 7 at 7pm at the Edward Hopper House Art Center, artist Wendell Minor will discuss the process of creating “Edward Hopper Paints His World,” a picture book biography that introduces Hopper to the next generation. The Edward Hopper House Arts Center is located at 82 North Broadway, Nyack.
This story first appeared at Nyack News & Views.
I lived in the Haverstraw area for over ten years, passing this home hundreds of time and had no idea of its past. Thanks for the story!!
Almost every facade conceals an intriguing story, but in this case, some more than others! Thanks for your comment.
I lived in that house from 1971 to 1974 on the second floor, both sides. I had no idea of its history.
My sister lived in that house…..I pass it everyone day!
Thanks for the story and info. I grew up in Rockland and my father said he met Alfred Hitchcock.
So I actually worked on the Roof at the house and had No idea of the History…My Wife told me about it and the other day went went to MOMA ( Museum of Modern Art ) in NYC and we saw the Painting, it was Amazing ???
The story is so cool, learning that Hitchcock was so inspired, enough by Hopper’s painting of the house, that he decided to use it in his movie Pycho.
I live in Rhode Island and we have a very early museum called the South County Art Association. A show is starting on September thirteenth. A Gary Chesky will be showing his painting, his own take on Edward Hopper’s painting – House by the railroad.
I’m so glad you have this site up. Joan
I used to believe this was the house in Hopper’s painting, but after looking into it more closely, I don’t think it is. The two houses share the same basic style but there are a lot of differences between them. The Gagan house is significantly larger, so first Hopper would have had to cut off half the house as he painted. The ledge with the brackets is different. The layout is different. The windows are quite different. The porch is not similar at all.
Years ago I parked at the old train station and walked north along the tracks to put myself in the spot where the house would have been viewed in Hopper’s painting. Because of the high embankment, the house is barely visible from the railroad tracks at that point. You would have to be right on the roadway of 9W, well above the tracks to see the entire building as depicted in the painting, and of course the tracks would be behind you. Further, Hopper’s wife has said that he didn’t go out and set his easel up to paint houses on location. He knew the architecture of these Victorians and created the buildings in his mind. He did sometimes make quick sketches on location, and there is a sketch in the archives of the Whitney museum that is clearly the basis for “House by the railroad tracks”. This sketch predates the painting by at least a year, and possibly two years, so when Amo Gagan talked about seeing someone painting a picture of her house, it probably wasn’t Hopper. Hopper wasn’t famous and his face wouldn’t have been recognized by a stranger, so who knows who she saw? Hopper included the lawn and trees and even the houses adjacent to it in the Whitney Museum sketch, and none of these things matches the Gagan house. So although I think it’s possible that Hopper was inspired by looking at the Gagan house and others like it, the house in his painting was never meant to represent the actual house in Haverstraw. It was Hopper’s own creation. The story of the Gagan house has become sort of an urban myth IMO.
I’m going to check this theory. One thing I will remind, houses change. I recently found a drawing of a house by my 4th Great-Grandfather. Turned out to be his house, and the house he died in. Widows were different, a chimney was removed, many changes since 1900 when he passed. There were, however, marks to connect. A concrete base to both the actual house, and the house in the drawing that was very unique and unchangeable. Sunken hole in ground where outhouse pictured. There were a handful of other markers like this. A knock on the door, and current resident explained removal of chimney. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine all the changes and see past them to what once was.
Absolutely! I actually found an old postcard of the house that I grew up in and couldn’t believe how different it looked back then.
Some of the things that are different between the Gagan house and the Hopper painting, though, are things that probably haven’t changed. For instance, every window in the Hopper house is a double unit with two arch topped windows. The Gagan house has single windows with no round arches, except for the one single window near the top of the tower. The porch is completely different on the house in the Hopper painting too, and the porch seen on the Gagan house is known to be original to the place. I found a picture of the sketch that Hopper did at least a year before painting “House by the Railroad”. Although the house in the sketch looks somewhat is different from the house in the painting as well, to me it seems like a much more likely inspiration for the painting. The tower with the round topped dormers and arched double windows match almost perfectly, and the porch looks quite similar too. https://www.flickr.com/photos/37270547@N08/18534050513/in/datetaken/
Of course this is only a theory and will probably always be just that.
In a way, I can speak about this. My mother was a schoolmate of Amo Gagan’s. Of course, Amo’s mother noticed young Mr. Hopper drawing across the tracks and sometimes invited him to lunch. Mom was also there for lunch once or twice.
Hopper’s painting took great liberties with the house to provide greater drama. In his painting, the house looks isolated and stark. In reality, the house was well-raised above the railroad tracks. The back yard had a flower garden and backed up against a large, craggy hill we called High Tor. There were plenty of trees around the house.
When I first saw ‘Psycho’ it never dawned on me that the house was a house my family had known for several generations.
Great liberties…yes, that’s just one of the reasons I don’t believe that Edward Hopper was the person Among Gagan saw that day. It doesn’t make sense to go sit on a relatively busy road with an easel and canvas and paintbox and palatte if you’re going to take such great liberties with the way your subject looks in the end. Why bother sitting there looking at a house for (presumably) hours
and hoursif you’re just going to paint a totally different-looking house? Again, Hopper was a creature of habit, and he just didn’t do his oil paintings en plein air. He did do some of his Gloucester watercolors that way, which makes sense because watercolor paints dry quickly and must be done fast, but he did all his oil paintings in his studio at home, either from sketches he made previously or from his imagination. If someone saw a man painting outside with oils and canvas in 1925, it almost certainly wasn’t Edward Hopper. That’s not his m.o.
My grandparents were
also friendss of the Gagans. Like Mr. Gagan, my grandfather was a lawyer in Rockland Country. I believe one of my uncles, who was later Rockland District Attorney just as Tom Gagan had been, may have clerked for him at one point. My mother was still a student at Have straw HS when Amo Gagan started her first teaching job there. Hers was the last class to go all the way through high school in the old building before it was burned down. They actually had their graduation ceremony at the Episcopal Church on Hudson Avenue that year because the high school had just been torched.
Among Gagan was interviewed and spe ifically asked about Hopper’s painting. All she said was that when she was 13 years old, she remembered seeing a man with an easel painting a picture from across 9W. She said this more than sixty years after the fact. She always assumed it was Hopper, but she never said a word about speaking to him or knowing him or her mother inviting him to lunch. She would certainly have mentioned that while being interviewed for an article she knew was about Edward Hopper and his famous painting, wouldn’t she? Why tell a reporter about seeing him from the window but omit the fact that you had lunch with him? And if Hopper had been asked to lunch, I doubt he would have accepted. He was
known to have been extremelyy shy, to the point of being antisocial. His wife said talking to Eddie was like throwing a stone into a well except that he didn’t make a sound when the stone hit the bottom. He just didn’t like to talk to people he didn’t know. And young Mr. Hopper wasn’t so young either. When he painted “House by the Railroad Tracks,” he was already in his forties.
The sketch Hopper did before the painting, which was posted earlier, looks more like the inspiration for his painting than the Gagan house does. Again, I wouldn’t be the least bit siprised if being familiar with the Gagan house helped to inspire Hopper’s painting, but it just doesn’t make sense to think he sat there and painted House by the Railroad Tracks while looki ng at that particular house .
They’re too different.
It’d be sort of like an artist setting up his easel next to the old Peck Mansion at Samsondale and painting
a picture thatt
looks like The White House. They’re both mansions and the both have columns in front, but they’re two completely different buildings.
We were by the railroad tracks in Haverstraw today retracing the steps as well before reading this 🙂 Does anyone know if the house in the sketch is in Nyack?
Edwin is father. I grew up in that house. I’m his daughter. It was always just a normal house to me. But the history is cool.
My friend’s boyfriend lives in the house just next door to this one! I just found out last night about the history of this house and I find it so interesting. Psycho is one of my favorite movies.