It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately 20 miles (32 km) north of midtown Manhattan, and is served by a stop on the Metro-North Hudson Line.

To the north of Hastings-on-Hudson is the village of Dobbs Ferry, to the south, the city of Yonkers, and to the east unincorporated parts of Greenburgh.

The area that is now Hastings-on-Hudson and Dobbs Ferry was the primary settlement[3] of the Weckquaesgeek Algonquian people, who called the community Wysquaqua.

After dividing the area into four nearly equal-sized farms, the Philipses leased them to Dutch, English and French Huguenot settlers.

During the American Revolution, what is now Hastings-on-Hudson, lay between the lines of the warring forces and was declared neutral territory.

Following the Revolution, the Philipses, who had been loyal to George III, saw their vast lands confiscated and sold by the newly established American state.

In 1785, the four farms comprising today's Hastings-on-Hudson were bought by James DeClark, Jacobus Dyckman, George Fisher, and tavern keeper Peter Post.

An inclined railroad carried the marble down to the quarry wharf where it was dressed by skilled stonecutters and loaded onto ships bound for cities like New York and Charleston, South Carolina.

Between 1895 and 1900, Hastings Pavement produced 10 million such blocks and shipped them throughout the United States and to cities in Canada, Brazil and England.

[6] The plant was important because in 1915 it took orders from the UK to produce .303 ammunition[7] but they could not pump up the production, so the contract were cancelled in late 1916.

[11] Billie Burke, actress (the "Good Witch" in The Wizard of Oz), lived in Hastings-on-Hudson and left her property to the school district, which still owns it, and uses it for various sports.

Benjamin Franklin Goodrich, from Ripley, in western New York, used real estate profits to purchase the Hudson River Rubber Company, a small business in Hastings-on-Hudson.

The developer was planning to build close to 100 homes that would result in traffic on the roads adjoining Hillside Elementary School.

The John William Draper House is listed as a National Historic Landmark[12] Hastings-on-Hudson is located at 40°59′28″N 73°52′27″W / 40.99111°N 73.87417°W / 40.99111; -73.87417 (40.991102, -73.874114)[13] in an area of hills on the Hudson River opposite the Palisades cliffs, north of the city of Yonkers.

The areas facing the Hudson River have views of the Palisades to the west, Manhattan to the south and the Mario Cuomo Bridge to the north.

Several small tributaries and headwaters of the Hudson River are located in the village, including Scheckler's Brook which originates in Hillside Woods[5] and Factory Brook which begins in a spring in the southern end of the Burke Estate,[5][14] these merge behind the Cropsey Studio west of the Aqueduct Trail.

Commuter rail service is available via the Hastings-on-Hudson railway station, served by the Metro-North Railroad's Hudson Line to Grand Central Terminal, Croton-on-Hudson and Poughkeepsie; transfers to Amtrak's Empire Corridor are available three stops south, at the Yonkers railway station.