In the 1840s, the Old Croton Aqueduct first brought clean country water to Manhattan and passed through Hastings. A 19th-century print shows an arch a few hundred yards south of here where the aqueduct crossed over a narrow railway linking one of the village's marble quarries with the docks. Nearby stood the studio of sculptor Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), and a few dozen yards north was the tiny 19th-century cemetery of the Cooke family. Farther down the hill, at 49 Washington Avenue, was the house and studio of painter Jasper F. Cropsey (1823-1900), who lived in what had once been the home of Hastings' first mill owner, William Saunders. By 1933, a fence blocked access to the aqueduct, which is now a public trail.