Photo of composer Aaron Copland by Alice Leighner. Copland’s home on Washington Street in Cortlandt is now a National Historic Landmark.
A large collection of 35mm photographic negatives, mostly taken for the Croton-Cortlandt News and the North County News in the 1970s and early 1980s, has been donated to the Croton Historical Society by the estate of Alice Leighner.
A small portion of Alice Leighner’s 35mm photographic negatives, stored in glassine sleeves. Most sleeves contain multiple strips of negatives.
Leighner passed away February 16, 2022 in Meriden, Connecticut. She and her husband, Leslie, moved to Croton in 1969 and lived here until 1985. Alice graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1962 with a BA in Journalism and received her MS degree in Journalism from Ohio University in 1967. In the 1970s she started writing for the Croton-Cortlandt News, later becoming the paper’s social editor and photographer.
In addition to the negatives and related material, the donation included framed photos she took of Pete Seeger and Aaron Copland, each inscribed and signed by them to Alice.
Most of the negatives have notes on the glassine sleeves or index cards, indicating the subject matter of the photos. Cataloging, scanning and archiving the collection will be a major undertaking. After an initial assessment has been completed the Croton Historical Society will start a campaign to raise funds to scan the negatives and convert them to positive images so they can be shared with the public.
Tom Simone, President of the Croton Historical Society, said, “We are grateful to receive Alice’s treasure-trove of photographic images of Croton. She was ‘the lady about town’ who captured so many local events with her camera. This will be an incredible record of Croton-on-Hudson during the 1970s and early 1980s."
Village Historian Marc Cheshire said, “This is an important and exciting donation. We suspect that many of Alice’s photos were never published due to space limitations. She may have shot an entire roll of film of an event, but only one photo was used.”
Founded in 1972, the mission of the Croton Historical Society is to discover, collect, preserve and share the rich history of the village of Croton-on-Hudson. The society’s archival collection includes newspapers, maps, photographs, yearbooks and one of the largest collections of photographs and other material documenting the construction of the New Croton Dam.
The Copland photo as it appeared in the January 15, 1981 issue of the Croton-Cortlandt News.