John William Draper, M.D., in a photograph of an oil painting by Hastings artist Carl Brandt, ca. 1870s. (Courtesy Hastings Historical Society.)
Draper Park in Hastings-on-Hudson is a familiar place for many residents in the Rivertowns. Perhaps they have taken a yoga class there or attended a music festival. It also is the site for an occasional gathering of amateur astronomers, who bring their telescopes and welcome the community to come look at the moon, planets, and stars. This last use of the park is particularly fitting, given the contributions to the field of astronomy by the remarkable Draper family of Hastings.
John William Draper (1811–1882) was already an accomplished medical doctor, chemistry professor, author, and co-founder of the medical school at what would later be known as New York University when he bought 20 acres in Hastings in 1847. Among Draper’s many interests were the mechanical and chemical properties of light, leading him to his trailblazing contributions in the nascent field of photography.
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This first image of a female face was taken by John William Draper in 1840. The original daguerreotype was accidentally destroyed in 1937. (Courtesy Hastings Historical Society.)
By improving upon the methods of photography pioneer Louis Daguerre, Draper was able to achieve faster exposure times. This made it easier for subjects to sit still long enough to be photographed, resulting in much clearer images. About seven years prior to his arrival in the village, Draper already had taken the very first daguerreotype of a female face (his sister, Dorothy Catherine) and of the moon through a telescope. The latter was certainly among the first applications of photography for scientific inquiry.
Of John William’s five accomplished children, it was his second son, Henry (1837–1882), who followed most closely in his father’s footsteps. He became a doctor and professor at the medical school. From an early age, Henry had also showed an interest in photography and helped his father to take the first photographs of slides through a microscope (photomicroscopy) when he was only 13 years old.
In addition to his work at the medical school, Henry became an internationally renowned astronomer, doing much of his work in that field in Hastings. After graduating from medical school in 1857, Henry set in motion plans to build an observatory modeled after one that he and his brother, Daniel, had seen while visiting Ireland. For this observatory, Henry chose a site on his father’s property in Hastings (in today’s Draper Park) based on its relatively high vantage point.
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Telescope in the 1869 observatory dome, ca. 1880. (Courtesy Hastings Historical Society.)
By walking a treadmill—human-powered but originally using dogs—Henry and Daniel ground lenses and mirrors for a 15.5-inch Newtonian telescope, which they built and placed in a revolving dome. When the Draper Observatory was finally finished in 1860, Henry made use of astrophotography (photography to study the heavens), a technique pioneered by his father. By 1863, Henry was taking hundreds of photographs of the moon from his observatory in Hastings. He perfected his method for taking photographs through a telescope and, that year, made the clearest photographs of the moon that anyone had taken to that time, bringing worldwide attention to his work.
Portrait miniature of Anna Palmer Draper painted by Nina Fagnani in 1898. (Courtesy Hastings Historical Society.)
In 1867, Henry Draper married [Mary] Anna Palmer, who was from a wealthy Dobbs Ferry family. She proved to be a willing and talented partner in his endeavors, in addition to helping fund them. In fact, a day after their wedding, the couple went shopping for glass that could be used for the mirror on a new telescope.
Remarkably, Henry continued his teaching duties at the medical college in New York City while pursuing his interest in astronomy. Excited by his success in that field and determined to pursue astrophotography full-time, Henry resigned his professorship in 1874.
Read articles from current and all previous issues of The Neighborhood Buzz: Rivertowns, plus receive a printed copy of the magazine every 3 months.
The Draper Observatory, ca. 1880. The original 1860 observatory is on the right; the 1869 addition is in the center. (Courtesy Hastings Historical Society.)
A second dome was added to the observatory in 1869, and a much larger telescope was built for it. In 1878, with Anna as his assistant, Henry traveled out west to photograph the total eclipse of the sun. Two years later, he was the first to photograph the Orion Nebula. Henry went on photograph the spectrum of the bright star Vega and over 100 other stars. Sadly, he contracted pneumonia and died unexpectedly in 1882 at the age of 45.
After Henry’s death (John William had predeceased him by just a few months), Mrs. Draper closed the observatory in Hastings and sent the telescopes to the Harvard Observatory at Harvard University. She established a memorial in his name to finance the Henry Draper Catalogue, a landmark index of over 300,000 stellar spectra completed at the Harvard Observatory. Mrs. Draper also established the Henry Draper Medal, which continues to be awarded every four years by the National Academy of Sciences to honor original work in astronomical physics. In recognition of Henry Draper’s significant contributions to the field of astronomy, a small crater in the moon’s Mare Imbrium is named for him.
Read articles from current and all previous issues of The Neighborhood Buzz: Rivertowns, plus receive a printed copy of the magazine every 3 months.
Henry Draper’s niece, Antonia Maury, at her telescope in 1932. Photograph shows Draper Park and the former Draper Observatory in the background. (Courtesy Hastings Historical Society.)
Yet another member of the Draper family made noteworthy contributions in the same field. Antonia Maury (1866–1952), John William’s granddaughter and Henry’s niece, graduated from Vassar College in 1887, with honors in astronomy and physics. After graduating, she went to work at the same Harvard Observatory where Henry’s widow had established the Henry Draper Catalogue.
Miss Maury was hired to work on the catalogue as a “computer,” the term for a data analyzer. She was overqualified for the routine job of computing but was happy to join a project that carried her uncle’s name. While at the Harvard Observatory, Miss Maury developed a classification system for stellar spectra (used to identify the properties of stars) still in use today. She also is noted for her groundbreaking work in the study of spectroscopic binaries. These are double stars that are not seen as separate when viewed through a telescope but, instead, by measuring variations in the wavelength of their emitted light. Antonia Maury was recognized by the American Astronomical Society as a distinguished woman astronomer in 1943.
After she retired, Miss Maury lived in Hastings for a few years (from 1935 to 1938) at Henry Draper’s former observatory, which had been converted to a residence in 1912 by Dorothy Draper Dixon, one of John William Draper’s daughters (and an heir to the property). Miss Maury erected a telescope in the park and had hopes of making the building and adjoining land—the part of the Draper estate that had been established as the John William Draper Memorial Park under the direction of Mrs. Dixon’s will—into an astronomical and botanical museum. Her dream was never realized, likely due to financial constraints and perhaps disagreements over the use of the property.
The Observatory Cottage in April of 2019. (Courtesy of Jan Clough.)
The Draper Observatory Cottage was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975. It is now the home of the Hastings Historical Society, which welcomes visitors to come see a permanent exhibit on the amazing Draper family as well as a print of Henry Draper’s famous 1863 photograph of the moon.
Moon-Related Merchandise
Notecards and T-shirts with an image of Henry Draper’s 1863 photograph of the moon are available for purchase. Visit the Hastings Historical Society’s website at hastingshistoricalsociety.org/our-shop/ or in person at the Historical Society in Draper Park to purchase these items.
Draper Park
Visit Draper Park by entering southbound from Broadway just south of Washington Avenue in Hastings. The Observatory Cottage is open Mondays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. as well as the first Saturday of every month (September to June) from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.