Annette Riley Fry Collection on Letchworth Village, 1907-1976

In 1907, New York State officials cited the need for the establishment of a facility to care for the "feeble minded and epileptic." The State purchased 2,000 acres of rolling farm country in Thiells, a Rockland County hamlet, to build the facility. In 1909, the facility was renamed Letchworth Village in honor of William Pryor Letchworth, a businessman, philanthropist, and advocate for the village's creation. Letchworth sought to depart from the mission of custodial institutions built during the nineteenth century and instead follow a treatment plan that would provide education, training and vocations to children and adults with developmental disabilities and other neurodevelopmental conditions. The resident patients (or "inmates", as they are called in annual reports) worked as farmers of the Letchworth land. According to the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, the farm produced over one million dollars worth of crops during the 1930s, and it remained active until the early 1960s. Dr. Charles S. Little, who figures largely in these photographs and documents, was the first superintendent of Letchworth. Dr. George A. Jervis, a research scientist at Letchworth, achieved international acclaim for his research into the causes of Phenylketonuria (PKU), a metabolic disease which can cause intellectual disabilities and other health conditions if not treated. While farming activity ended at Letchworth Village in the early 1960s, the facility did not close until 1996.

Annette Riley Fry (1923-2017) was a writer perhaps best known for her 1974 American Heritage magazine feature article on the Children's Aid Society's orphan trains, "The Children's Migration." Governor Herbert H. Lehman appointed her head of research of the New York State Democratic Committee in 1950. She married Varian Fry the same year. They had three children. She died in Rochester, New York on November 21, 2017.