Time capsule offers glimpse into West Nyack past
A West Nyack community is getting a glimpse into the past as residents opened a time capsule that was almost completely lost. Nancy Robinson Brecher was the first person to touch items in the time
News 12 Staff
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Apr 17, 2015, 6:43 PM
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Updated 3,290 days ago
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A West Nyack community is getting a glimpse into the past as residents opened a time capsule that was almost completely lost.
Nancy Robinson Brecher was the first person to touch items in the time capsule since they were sealed away in 1938 by the first settlers of Van Houten Fields.
Inside the time capsule were coins, maps, a pipe, and some old newspapers.
Van Houten Fields was founded in 1937 by a man named Ralph Borsodi.
His vision for the 106-acre Dutch farm was for it to be turned into Rockland County's largest self-sustainable agrarian community, with plots leased-out to people like Brecher's parents.
Today, the land is mostly divided up into 69 one-acre plots.
The time capsule was retrieved from the very first home built on the settlement over 75 years ago.
Resident Johnny Laguna asked the current owner's permission to retrieve the time capsule from the property before renovation on the old home began.
"He let us go on and take it out, which is a great thing that we did, because that would've been a terrible loss," Laguna said.
