Arts for Transit and Urban Design

Wassaic

Anne Huibregtse

Arrival, 2000

Cast bronze sculpture near stairs to platform

Arrival is a bronze bas-relief of life-size dairy cows facing commuters and their trains. "I want the cows to remind both local residents and visitors of the region's rich farming past," says artist Anne Huibregtse. "The local agricultural economy may be shrinking, but it remains an important part of our community and rural landscape." The Wassaic area had turned to dairy farming in the mid-nineteenth century - due to the conjunction of a historical event and an invention. The event was the Civil War; the invention, the development of canned milk, in great demand by the Union army for its soldiers. But other areas soon outpaced Wassaic in dairying, and farm after farm was turned to other uses.