DISCOVER Edward Hopper's Nyack

Homes spotlighted on this tour are NOT open to the public. Please respect our neighbors' privacy. Thank you!

Printed maps are available at the front desk of Edward Hopper House Museum; click here to download a Smaller PDF version. ​

1 82 N Broadway

​Edward Hopper was born and grew up in this house. The Federal south wing was built in 1858 by Edward’s maternal grandfather, John Dewint Smith. (Smith was from the family who once owned the the DeWint House in Tappan, NJ, where George Washington headquartered during the Revolutionary War.) The Victorian north wing was added for Edward’s mother, Elizabeth Griffiths Smith Hopper (her artwork is also on view in the House today). After Hopper’s death, the house fell into disrepair but was saved from demolition and restored by people in the community who were devoted to preserving Hopper’s home and legacy in Nyack.

2 Miss Dickey's School
​- 36 Marion Street

​Hopper siblings Edward and Marion received their early education inside this circa 1867 house. While both children had moved on to the local Liberty Street school by the early 1890s, Marion would still stop by and help Miss Dickey. In a letter dating from 1890, Marion’s friend Clarissa Ball writes that she “hopes everything is going well over at Miss Dickey’s.” In addition to providing childcare and education to neighborhood families, the Dickey’s were a prominent ship-building, banking, and political family in Nyack (see site 8: “Hopper’s Friends”).
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3 First Baptist Church
​- 140 N Broadway

Romanesque in style with an unusually tall spire, this church housed the first Baptist congregation organized in Nyack, founded in 1854 by Edward’s great grandfather, Rev. Joseph W. Griffiths. In 1858, the year the “Hopper House” was built, Griffiths helped raise the $3,000 needed to erect, a few blocks north, Nyack’s first church building. Edward’s father was a deacon at the church and religion was a focal point of Hopper family life in Edward’s youth.

4 Pretty Penny
​- 235 N Broadway

This 1850s Italianate style house was the home of the “First Lady of American Theatre” Helen Hays and her husband, playwright and screen-writer Charles MacArthur. They named the house Pretty Penny because, as they said, ‘that’s what it cost.’ Painted in 1939, it was the only commission Hopper accepted and he did so begrudgingly. Over the years, famous people have owned the home and more have been entertained here, among them Laurence Olivier, F Scott Fitzgerald, Katherine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Marilyn Monroe, Ed Sullivan, Rosie O’Donnell, Russel Crowe, and Madonna. 
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5 Seven A.M. 
​- 318 N Broadway

The Hopper’s family butcher once had a store here, and the empty building inspired Hopper’s oil painting Seven AM, painted in 1948 when Hopper was in his sixties. Responding to the painting’s mysterious quality, Jo quipped that the storefront may have been a “blind pig”- slang for a blue collar speakeasy. 

6 The Lee SHore
​- 1 Laveta Place

The last home on the south side of the street has a turret and veranda similar to those seen in Hopper’s 1941 oil The Lee Shore. Hopper may have studied and drawn the house while working on sketches of the nearby “Pretty Penny” house two years earlier. The title of the painting may also be a reference to a chapter from Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick,” a meaningful book to Hopper.
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7 Hook Mountain
​- as seen from 10 ACkerman Place

At the foot of this hill was the site of Smith’s Shipyard, where young Edward spent much of his free time watching boats sail across the Tappan Zee. Looking north, you see 728-ft high Hook Mountain. The Hopper family often picnicked here, and so can you. It is now a state park with walking trails, hawk-watching, and stunning views.  

8 Little Boy Looking at the Sea
- 59 Gedney St

Put yourself on Hopper’s childhood path as he skipped down the hill to the banks of the Hudson. At the Edward Hopper House, see Edward’s wooden boat models and drawings of ships. Hopper said once in an interview (Arlene Jacobowitz, Brooklyn Museum, 1966), “I thought at one time I’d like to be a naval architect because I am interested in boats, but I got to be a painter instead.” Imagine Hopper as a child, standing quietly at the water’s edge, growing into the mature artist who painted not only on the shores of the Hudson in Nyack, but also on the banks of the Seine in Paris, and on the sandy ocean beaches of Maine and Massachusetts. Little Boy Looking at the Sea was drawn on the back of a report card (dated October 23, 1891) when Hopper was nine years old. It is an early example of one of the many solitary, contemplative figures that Hopper would draw and paint for the rest of his life.​

9 Hopper's Friends
​- on 1st Avenue

House #16 was built circa 1850 by William Dickey (see site 1: “Miss Dickey’s School”). #8, #12, and #16 appear much as they did when teenage Hopper visited friends at #16 and #24. Hopper and his friends Harry MacArthur and Louis Blauvelt made up a “secret association” (1896-1898) called the “Three Commodores” which revolved around sailing and other boat related activities complete with official insignia flags, meetings, minutes and club rules. See the notebooks, and more, in the The Riley Family Archive at Edward Hopper House.  

10 "G. H. Hopper Dry Goods"
​- 10 S Broadway

From 1892-1901, Edward’s father, Garret Henry Hopper, owned a store in the “Commercial Building” which is now Grace’s Thrift Shop. While he was a teen-ager attending Nyack High School (and building his own wooden boat), Edward also worked at the store selling flannel, muslin, blankets, men’s shirts, ladies’ vests, corsets, and socks.  
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11 Oak Hill Cemetery
​- 140 N Highland Avenue

The Rev. Arthayer Sanborn, minister of the local Baptist church, who cared for parishioner Marion and for the Hoppers in their waning years, presided at Edward Hopper’s funeral at Jo’s request. The funeral was invitation only and Jo chose the few who attended. Marion (d. 1965), Edward (d. 1967), and Josephine (d. 1968), are buried in a family plot overlooking the Tappan Zee. Local luminaries Helen Hayes and Charles Prevost MacArthur, assemblage artist Joseph Cornell (whose sister fondly remembers the Nyack art classes Edward taught) and Carson McCullers (author of “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter” 1940) are also buried here. 

THANKS To our map sponsors

This walking Tour has been brought to you by the generous Support of R2M Realty. 

HOPPER NEAR & FAR

In addition to living in Nyack and New York, Hopper traveled in New England: Cape Cod and Gloucester in Massachusetts, South Royalton in Vermont; Ogunquit, Rockland and Portland in Maine - even Wyoming, and Mexico - painting scenes both documentary and imaginary everywhere he went. ​

Apartment & Studio ​- 3 Washington Square N, New YorK, New York

Hopper lived and worked here from 1913 until his death. Jo moved in after their marriage in 1924. At the time Jo was established as an artist in New York and she helped launch his career; she was also the sole model for many of his paintings. (See caricatures Edward drew of their relationship at Edward Hopper House.) NYU Silver School of Social Work now owns the studio; it is open by appointment. 

House by the Railroad
​- 357 Conger Avenue, Haverstraw, New York

Shadowed by the highest peak in the Hudson Palisades (High Tor State Park) and standing watch over the once bustling brickmaking hub of Haverstraw, this house inspired Hopper’s 1930 painting. Alfred Hitchcock once stated that the house which appeared in his 1960 film “Psycho” was based on the one in Hopper’s painting. The imposing structure’s legacy also influenced British artist Cornelia Parker’s roof-top sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) in 2016.
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WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
​- 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY

Just months before her death, Josephine Nivison  bequeathed the Hopper’s artistic estate to the Whitney. This painting, New York Interior, painted in 1921, may be seen at the Whitney. The fireplace depicted IN the painting can be seen at Edward Hopper House.

GLOUCESTER ​- Massachusetts

The many watercolors Hopper painted while in Gloucester (summers 1923 - 1926) were the source of his first critical and commercial success. Distilling the sunlight as it danced across this coastal town’s Victorian houses, Hopper, in 1923, at the age of forty, sold his first work in ten years for $100 to the Brooklyn Museum. The Mansard Roof, 1923, had been included in an exhibition that Hopper entered with the help of fiancée and fellow artist Josephine Nivison. 

STUDIO & HOUSE ​- (Cape Cod) South Truro, Massachusetts

Purchased with an inheritance from Jo’s uncle, Hoppers made a small cottage designed by Edward their second home, spending summers on the rolling hills and windswept moors of the Outer Cape for over 30 years since 1934. Find out more at the Truro Historical Society

Check out other Hopper sites in Maine from our friends at Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

See our exhibition - on view at the Edward Hopper House: A Photographic Journey through Hopper's World by Charles Sternaimolo