Gem Archives - The Inside Press

I already anticipated tranquility and beauty before visiting the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden in North Salem, so I was not surprised to experience just that–a welcome reminder that this Westchester County gem offers a grand opportunity to ‘just breathe’ after this challenging stretch of time.

That alone would be ‘enough.’ But as a pleasant surprise, it turned out to be delightfully more than that, too. It offered an opportunity to celebrate women, via showcasing deeply thoughtful, mega-talented women artists, their heartfelt works inside the newly reopened museum, or elegantly presented as sculpture throughout its plush and stunning gardens. That aspect of a Hammond experience may well have been in the spirit that its passionate founder, Natalie Hays Hammond, envisioned for visitors, too.

Director Liz Hammer stands in front of the Hammond’s Tea House, through which visitors enter the Japanese Stroll Garden and first experience the Zen rock garden and gain a moment of quiet and contemplation.
PHOTO by Grace Bennett

“Natalie was a woman ahead of her time…” began Elizabeth Hammer, Executive Director of Hammond, at the start of a toasty July tour of this sprawling 7-acre gem which sits gracefully atop rolling hills, a bucolic and elegant neighbor to the horse farms of North Salem–described to the public as a “fabled center of innovative art and Asian culture”–a truth immediately made evident on a tour which took place three months following the Museum’s celebrated reopening following a painful 17 months of Covid-induced closure.

At the outset, I learned that the Hammond family name comes with considerable accomplishment. Natalie Hammond was born in Lakewood, New Jersey, in 1904. Never married and childless, she started the museum on her own in 1957, as an heiress to her father John Hays Hammond, a mine engineer who together with Cecil Rhodes developed the diamond mines in South Africa. Her brother John Jay Hammond Jr., who was married (but also childless) was an inventor who founded the Hammond Castle in Gloucester, MA. Hammer relayed that Natalie’s activity and interest in the arts was boundless and varied–from a passion for the symbolic patterns of needlepoint (she authored a book on the anthology of pattern) to helping establish a woman’s production group with the Martha Graham Dance Company. The seeds to a life mission–to foster an East/West cultural understanding–began with travel to Japan in the 1920s; the culmination of her learning and efforts may have been with the opening of the Japanese Garden in 1961.

So, mission accomplished by Natalie who also recognized the special challenges women faced; Hammond’s rotating exhibits perhaps reflect what the board and staff have gathered was understood to be an unyielding support for women. A current Broad Powers exhibit celebrates the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffragette movement; in it, three artists collaborated to share their whimsical visions, and challenge visitors. Marcy Freedman, also an art historian, for example, takes landmark paintings of women and transposes them into contemporary clothes and occupations. “It gives you a window to learn about someone through their activity,” explained Hammer. Carla Rae Johnson, a second artist, asks you “to envision yourself as a Virginia Woolf or Harriet Tubman but in her mind in a contemporary progressive setting of going to clean the river or help children at the border.”

One of the three collaborators of Broad Power, Mary McFerran examines the sacrifices and contradictions experienced by the Suffragists as they struggled to achieve women’s right to vote.

Mary McFerran brings to life the contradictory messages women grappled with as they fought vigorously for their freedom. “Fashion was not so free; women were still wearing corsets,” noted Hammer. “Today’s stilettos?” The artist challenges you “to not forget what women put up with–harassment, divorce, and ostracism–all for agitating for the right to vote.”

Meanwhile, in the exhibit called Voices: I Remember, each of the six women artists ‘voices’ rings loud through their works. Jill Parry painted images of her mother while the artist kept vigil over her final days. At the other end of life, Eleni Smolen, inspired by a photograph of herself when she was young, painted the Girl by the Sea and Guardians Series as an exploration of memory and the ambiguity of nostalgia.

While the museum exhibits challenge you to think, the stroll will reward you with a chance to simply relax and enjoy Hammond’s glorious nod to nature, and indeed to capture the Zen of humanity’s fresh start today… as you admire Japanese cypress, “a grove of maple trees that turn really bright red and orange in the autumn,” a dense stand of bamboo and ‘smoke bushes’ which dot a ‘mature’ 60-year-old garden. Take your time, too, contemplating each of the artists’ sculptures under the open skies; at least a half dozen, along with traditional Japanese statuary, are interspersed on Hammond property throughout the stroll garden. For a dash of something fun, consider the giant stone chess ‘board’ on one lawn, with its oversized pieces for a family match.

FALL PROGRAMMING

The museum and stroll garden are open April through November, Wednesday through Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. Come with your family and friends…and bring a picnic lunch and a blanket and enjoy the tranquility and beauty of your surroundings.

A complete schedule of coming events and lectures, including the museum’s popular Moon Viewing Festival on September 11th and a symposium about the garden on September 24th, as well as information about memberships, member benefits and the opportunity to arrange for an individual, family or group tour of the gallery and stroll garden, can be found on the Hammond website: www.HammondMuseum.org. To schedule a docent-led tour with tea and Japanese sweets, call (914) 669-5033; for special pop-up events and extended hours, visit the website.

The Hammond can also be booked for special family occasions such as weddings, bar- and bat-mitzvahs and family reunions as well as corporate events with a flair and surrounded by the serenity of nature.

It’s hard for me to put into words the feelings I have for the place that was a huge part of growing up. Lange’s Little Store and Delicatessen, the small, simply furnished family-oriented deli that my family has frequented since the very beginning.

I am proud to be a second-generation Lange’s-goer. My dad grew up in Chappaqua and his family ate there. I’ve been going for as long as I can remember.

If you aren’t the kind of person who likes to run into everyone you know, I wouldn’t recommend going to the Little Store at lunch time on any given weekend.

I however, live for the social scene. Although my dad doesn’t like to admit it, I know it’s his claim to fame. We can’t go there without seeing someone from his childhood. An old friend, coach, father of an old friend. You name it, we see it.

But the one person I never tire of seeing is the legend himself. The man behind it all – Mr. Lange.

Sweet. Funny. Caring. Kind. If there was a Mad Libs page for this guy, those adjectives would fill the page. I’ve never met someone like him. I think of him and see a man with a big smile and open arms.

When my family eats there, he walks upstairs and joins us. We bond over our love for Cape Cod and dachshunds. In high school, he would ask about my soccer games and my sister’s basketball games. He also gives great advice.

Today he told me that we learn something new every day. Something we’ve all heard before, but for some reason coming from him, it sounded different. He told me that every day he still learns something new.

Lange’s is a place that many people find comfort in. The hot plates and breakfast sandwiches too.

When my grandpa died, Mr. Lange was there for my family. Shortly after, my parents found platters of food atop of my grandpa’s car. No note. No ringing the doorbell. No nothing.

When my dad went solo one Saturday because I was sick, he noticed and sent my dad home with a large container of chicken noodle soup.

And when our town experienced a tragic loss two summers ago, Lange’s seemed to be a place of comfort for all. After the funeral, my sister and I felt that we needed a Lange’s sandwich to make us feel better. I guess it was a common thought. We saw many of the same faces eating sandwiches that we had seen an hour before sitting in the pews. Including members of the Lange family.

In my eyes, it’s the staple social hub of Chappaqua and a place that embodies what it means to be a community.

I felt a sense of pride as a high school freshman having just made the varsity soccer team, walking into Lange’s and seeing my face on the varsity poster hanging on the wall. I then felt a sense of pride as a sophomore, junior and senior going and hanging up the poster myself. I felt a sense of pride whenever I was introduced to someone as Gary Klein’s daughter while waiting for my sandwich. And I felt a sense of pride today when I gave Mr. Lange a hug goodbye and he said, “aw my buddy,” as he patted my back. The people that I see in Lange’s have changed over the years.

I see younger families come in after AYSO soccer games on Saturdays and think of my younger self. I see the oldcomers and think of how Lange’s has been the go-to lunch for me and my cousins whenever we all ate at Grandma’s. Turkey, coleslaw, Russian on rye bread. The Klein sandwich.

Going to college meant no more Lange’s. I was back three weeks after I left, sitting in the dining room with my parents. Mr. Lange asked why I was back so soon. My response? “I needed my Lange’s fix.”

Although the people, decor, my order and myself may change. Two things never do: Mr. Lange and my beverage selection.

I always get a Snapple. Which means I always get a Snapple fact. Mr. Lange was right. I learn something new every time I walk into Lange’s Little Store and Delicatessen. Today’s fact: “Real Fact” #845: a lemon contains more sugar than a strawberry.