Katonah Village Improvement Society introduces a walking tour app
By HERB FOSTER
It is free, interesting and fun. Why would anyone not want to go on the Katonah Walking Tour, recently launched under the sponsorship of the Katonah Village Improvement Society?
This innovative audio tour is a walking history of the village that includes nine stops accompanied by captivating commentary and pictures. It plays on the TravelStorys mobile app that triggers the narrative at each location, using the phone’s GPS.
People can also access this tour with a smartphone app or through a QR code, available on the library’s website katonahlibrary.org/kvis-katonah-walking-tour/) or simply by visiting the library itself where staff can assist you.
When you launch the app, a map will be loaded on your mobile device, guiding your tour. It starts at the library, and one hears about its placement in this historic location after the move. Then the tour goes down the street, and the audio starts automatically at each stop. At stop number four, one learns all about the history of Kelloggs & Lawrence — not only the building and store but the families involved as well. The tour continues through buildings listed in the residential National Register Historic District of Katonah and properties that were moved over 100 years ago.
The original spark for the walking tour came from Joanne Marien, a former superintendent of schools in Somers who resides in one of the houses along the tour. When signs were put up marking the property as one of the original homes moved from Old Katonah, many people passing by stopped to ask questions.
“I became a front yard historian as much as I was able,” she says, and “I started to think how nice it would be if we could offer the public much more, and I began looking for partners on the project.”
Her search led to Vicki Marwell, a longtime resident of Katonah, and Edris Scherer of the Chamber of Commerce, Katonah Historical Society and the Katonah Village Improvement Society. They spent time determining the correct way to do a walking tour and later were joined by Mary Kane, director of the Katonah Village Library.
Together they came across a company called TravelStorys, which specializes in audible historical tours. They worked last winter developing content and then got Katonah residents and actors, John Bedford Lloyd and Anne Twomey Lloyd, to do the narration. Robert Kessler of Katonah donated his recording studio, Kessler Media Productions.
“Putting together the tour was challenging, says Marwell. “The history is so rich, but we were fortunate that over the years that many people worked hard to preserve the history of the village. We had a wealth of resources available.”There are three minutes of commentary at each location, filled with fun historical information. When you stop at number six, the Old Firehouse, you learn about the history of the fire department and two very destructive fires, in 1874 and again in 1902.
You hear that behind the Blue Dolphin, there is the location of the last movie theater in the hamlet, which was very popular playing silent movies for 15 to 35 cents. Stop number eight is the Katonah Memorial House, built in 1918 as a place for World War I veterans to socialize.
The last stop on the tour is the Chapman House, one of 55 Old Katonah buildings moved in the 1890s to make way for the dam project.
The tour includes a narrative on how the houses were moved and includes pictures and details on how the moving was accomplished. It is hard to imagine, in this day and age, but these houses needed to be jacked up by hand and then pulled by horses to the new location. It took six months to move each one, and sometimes people lived in the home during the move.
KVIS found several advantages of this new format. The tour doesn’t need to be used as one unit, but individuals can walk one segment and then come back later and pick up the tour. The QR code can be sent to people not in town for them to learn about the village. People can access the site at their leisure and revisit some of the interesting narratives.
“We wanted to do something that is easily accessible now that the technology is there to do it,” Marien says. “This is not dependent on guides being available or any printed material. If people want to find out about the history, architecture and stories about Old Katonah, they can do it easily now.”
The organizers emphasize that this is not meant to be an architectural tour, but more focus on the human interest stories. KVIS developed a walking tour several years ago and references can be found online; this audio tour makes it much easier for people to learn about the village.
“Our goal was to increase awareness of the rich history of Katonah,” says Marwell. “There is a lot of curiosity about our town, especially about the moving of the houses. This walking tour answers that need.”