WPCNR MILESTONES. By John F. Bailey. January 6, 2005, UPDATED 6:30 P.M. E.S.T. : The chronicler of White Plains has died. Renoda Hoffman, author of Yesterday in White Plains, and It Happened in Old White Plains, the definitive histories of the County Seat's founding and its changing landscapes over its three-and-a-half centuries, died yesterday, it was confirmed by The Mayor's Office today. She was 95.

Renoda Hoffman, The Herodotus of White Plains, 1909-2005.

Photo from Jacket of It Happened in White Plains.

Mayor Joseph Delfino said of Ms. Hoffman moments ago, "Renoda Hoffman represented an irreplaceable link to the past of not only our great city, but also to that of Westchester County. Her passion to record the history of White Plains is something that we will miss dearly. She was a great woman."

Ms. Hoffman, according to a resident who knew her, loved the old atmosphere of White Plains, its buildings, old mansions and smalltown look, and wanted to preserve how the town was for future generations. Her books are exhaustive, neighborly detailed histories of the personalities and the eras of the city, filled with hundreds of photographs and maps showing how the city has changed over 200 years.

Ms. Hoffman compiled and wrote her histories of White Plains as a love and a mission, not ever being paid a penny for her work. Like historians of the past like Herodotus, the chronicler of ancient Greece, Ms. Hoffman's works tell us how the city was while the photographs she has published in those volumes provide a glimpse of how one city in America changed, grew, was affected by industrial revolution, the automobile, the highway, the skycraper over the years. Her histories of one town, one place, are unique.

Her writing is lucid, folksy, sprinkled with anecdotes decades removed from her own lifetime, but brought to life as if she were an eyewitness to the conversation and the events. Culling the records of  old White Plains newspapers (when there were newspapers), The Argus, The Gazette, The Home News, The Standard, she painstakingly brought year-to-year events, changes and milestones to life for generations.

William Bookman, writing in the introduction to It Happened in Old White Plains captures her legacy to White Plains well: "With the research Mrs. Hoffman has done and with her chatty style it is possible to recall a bygone era in all its color. Almost forgotten men, women and children live again with their foibles and challenges, victories and defeats...We see instead the simple, sturdy, dynamics of a town that grew with America and shared its life with that of our great nation."

Thank you Ms. Hoffman.