The WPA Guide to New York

Railroad Station: Plaza between North and Union Aves. for New York, New Haven & Hartford R.R.

Bus Station: 244 Huguenot St. for Greyhound, New England, Blue Way, and Grey Bus Lines and local busses.

Streetcars: 5¢ within city; 10¢ to New York City subway in Mount Vernon.

Piers: Hudson Park, off Pelham Rd., for excursion and fishing boats; foot of Fort Slocum Rd. for Port Washington, L.I., ferry (cars $1.50 up) and Fort Slocum ferry (passes to visit Fort Slocum available at dock).

Taxis: 25¢–75¢.

Accommodations: 1 hotel; rooming and boarding houses.

Information Service: Chamber of Commerce, 272 North Ave.; American Automobile Association, 524 North Ave.; New Rochelle Standard Star, 253 North Ave.

Swimming: Glen Island, Weyman Ave. off Pelham Rd., general adm. 10¢; bathhouse: adults 35¢–40¢, children 15¢–25¢; parking 25¢–50¢. Hudson Park, Hudson Park Rd. off Pelham Rd.: residents of New Rochelle, with identification card (25¢), obtainable in park office, adm. free, bathhouse 10¢ (children under 14 yrs. free), season parking $1; visitors $1, parking 25¢.

Fishing: Hudson Park Dock for saltwater fishing (no license required, no restrictions on catch); boats leave 9 a.m. weekdays, 8 a.m. Sun.; equipment available; estimated day’s cost $5; private boats also available.

Golf: Glen Rock Golf Course, Boston Post Rd. (US 1) between Stonelea Pl. and Palmer Ave., 9 holes; greens fee, 50¢ weekdays, $1 Sat., Sun., and holidays.

Tennis: Morgan St. courts, residents $1 a month, visitors 50¢ a game; tickets from Park Dept., City Hall.

Annual Events: Numerous regattas by yacht clubs on Long Island Sound each summer.

NEW ROCHELLE (72 alt., 57,415 pop.) is rich in historical landmarks and monuments scattered among its modern apartment houses, cottages, and estates. Main Street, the principal business thoroughfare, follows the route of the historic Boston Post Road, along which patriot messengers carried the news of Lexington and Bunker Hill to New York. From it branch tree-shaded avenues lined with two-story villa residences, each with its lawn and flower garden facing the road. Other residential sections, especially in the northern part of the city, are built up in a series of parks. New Rochelle was reputedly the scene of George M. Cohan’s Forty-five Minutes from Broadway; the modern New Haven trains make the Grand Central Terminal in half an hour.

In the heart of the Westchester country club district (the Wykagyl Country Club and several others are in the city and the Winged Foot Golf Club and Travers Island are close by), and with nine miles of sheltered water front on Long Island Sound, the city prides itself on its sporting activities: golf, tennis, boating, yachting, and swimming throughout the summer months, and salt-water fishing in all weathers.

The fact that New Rochelle has one of the highest ratings of per capita wealth among the communities of the country is reflected in the rich architecture of its homes, its schools, and its churches. The city’s diversified industrial products include powder puffs, surgical instruments, chemicals, and metal novelties.

In the poorer sections of the city live many Negroes, most of whom earn a living as servants in apartment houses and private homes, and 5,000 descendants of the Italian laborers imported in the eighties to lay railroad lines.

The city occupies the site of the villages of the Siwanoy, principal nation of the Wappinger Indian confederacy. In 1688 a small group of Huguenot refugees landed at what is now Bonnefoi Point. In 1689 they purchased from John Pell, second lord of the manor of Pelham, through the agency of Jacob Leisler, a tract of 6,000 acres and named the settlement for their old home in France, La Rochelle. In 1692 they built the first church in New Rochelle. With the passing of the years, they became communicants of the Anglican church. In 1698 a census showed a total population of 232, consisting of 188 whites and 44 Negro slaves.

Highlights of the Revolutionary period were the arrival of Paul Revere and other messengers from Boston to New York and the overnight stay of George Washington in 1775 on his way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take command of the Continental Army. General Philip Schuyler rode into town with him and left the next morning to take command of the defenses on the northern New York frontier. Schuyler was familiar with New Rochelle: as a boy of 15 he had attended the school of the Reverend Pierre Stouppe here, and his shore estate was near Pell’s Point, five miles southeast.

New Rochelle became a village in 1857 and was incorporated as a city in 1899. As early as the 1890’s it began to attract theatrical people, artists, and writers. Agnes Booth and Cora Tanner, famous in their day as stars of the melodrama The Sporting Dutchess, from time to time made the city their home, as did Eddie Foy, vaudeville actor and hero of the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago. Francis Wilson, of Erminie fame, lived here; and Frederic Remington, sculptor and painter of western scenes, and Augustus Thomas, playwright, were commuters. Here, too, lived George Randolph Chester, who invented that delectable character of the old school, Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford. Faith Baldwin, novelist, was born in New Rochelle in 1893. A contemporary resident is Norman Rockwell, artist and illustrator.

The observance in the summer of 1938 of the 250th anniversary of the settlement of New Rochelle included a pilgrimage of children to New York City to commemorate the long trips to church taken by the first settlers. While the Huguenots, according to tradition, went barefoot all the way, the children put on their shoes and stockings after one block.

POINTS OF INTEREST

The JACOB LEISLER MONUMENT, North and Broadview Aves., erected in 1913 by the Huguenot Chapter D.A.R. and the Huguenot and Historical Association of New Rochelle, is the only American memorial to Jacob Leisler (1640–91). Following the abdication of James II and the overthrow of Edmund Andros in Boston, Leisler, a German immigrant, seized control and ruled the Province of New York from 1689 until the arrival of Governor Henry Sloughter, appointed by William and Mary. After laying down his power Leisler was tried for treason, found guilty, and executed, but his name was later cleared in England. Since no portrait of Leisler exists, the statue is largely imaginary, presenting a heroic figure dressed in a long cloak and a Dutch beaver hat and carrying a large staff. The sculptor was Solon H. Borglum.

The THOMAS PAINE MONUMENT, Paine and North Aves., enclosed by an iron fence, consists of a bronze bust on a square granite column, the cap of which has been chipped in several places. The monument was originally erected in 1839 and was restored in 1881; the bronze, dedicated on May 30, 1899, was modeled by Wilson MacDonald. The monument stands close to the site of the grave in which Paine was originally buried.

The PAINE COTTAGE (open 2–5 Tues.–Sun.), SE. corner of North and Paine Aves., a two-story post-Colonial frame house with shingle exterior, rough stone foundation, and solid blinds, has been moved from its original site (120 Paine Avenue) on a near-by hilltop, where it was occupied by Paine. It houses the Huguenot and Historical Association of New Rochelle; the collection includes a Franklin stove given Paine by Benjamin Franklin and the chair that Paine always used when writing.

Crossing the brook just south of the cottage is the HUGUENOT MEMORIAL BRIDGE, dedicated on June 27, 1917, and constructed of stones from the Huguenot Reformed Church that was built in 1710.

The PAINE MEMORIAL HOUSE (open 2–5 Tues.–Sun.), 989 North Ave., a two-story structure of natural stone, was erected in 1925 by the Thomas Paine National Historical Association. Ground for the building was broken by Thomas A. Edison, an ardent admirer of Paine’s writings. The house contains a number of Paine’s personal effects, including the trunk in which he carried the State papers of the Second Continental Congress, of which he was secretary, from Philadelphia after Howe’s capture of the city in 1777. Across a wall of the main room is a painted replica of Paine’s Rainbow Flag, which he proposed as an international symbol to be used by neutral ships in time of war. Photostatic copies of extant letters, first editions of Paine’s works, his death mask, and a fragment of the mutilated gravestone complete the collection.

Thomas Paine (1737–1809), author of Rights of Man and The Age of Reason, was a participant in both the American and French Revolutions. His first great work, Common Sense, published anonymously in January 1776, crystallized Colonial opposition to the Mother Country into a demand for independence and strongly influenced the subsequent action of the Continental Congress. The installments of The Crisis, his other great American work of propaganda, which appeared during 1777, were read to the Continental Army.

After the war Pennsylvania presented him with £500 and New York with 300 acres of confiscated land in New Rochelle. After 15 stormy years in England and France he returned to the United States in 1802, and in 1804 made the New Rochelle farm his home. Denied the right to vote in 1806, he moved to New York City, where he died; the body was returned to the farm for burial. In 1819 William Cobbett, English political economist, removed the remains and shipped them to England, where they later disappeared, although some parts are said to have been returned and buried under the present monument.

The NEW ROCHELLE HIGH SCHOOL, Clove Rd. and Woodrow Wilson Drive, erected in 1926, is a notable example of Westchester County schools. It is a three-story building constructed of red brick with limestone trim and stone balustrades, designed in the late French Gothic and early French Renaissance styles. It is set well back beside Huguenot Lake amid large, well-equipped playgrounds. The composition of the whole is excellent. The architects were Guilbert and Betelle.

FANEUIL PARK, Huguenot and Main Sts., a triangular lawn plot set off by shrubs and walks and containing a war memorial, is named for Peter Faneuil, native of New Rochelle and successful Boston merchant, builder and donor of Faneuil Hall in Boston, the market building that came to be known as ‘the cradle of liberty.’

SALESIAN COLLEGE (open by permission), 148 Main St., a school for training young men for the Catholic priesthood, was founded by the Salesian Fathers in 1919. The large modern gymnasium fronts the street. Driveways lead through the 30-acre campus.

HUDSON PARK, foot of Hudson Park Road, 13 acres along the city’s harbor front, includes a public beach, the city boathouse and greenhouses, the shore station of the United States Coast Guard, and several yacht and rowing clubs. During the summer months excursion boats make frequent tours up the Sound as far as Playland and Rye Beach.

The present park is traditionally accepted as the landing place of the first Huguenot settlers. A granite boulder with bronze tablets commemorates the event. The monument overlooks the boat-studded inlets of the harbor and the still waters of the Sound, with the Oyster Bay section of Long Island a blue ridge on the horizon. This is a favorite shore vantage point for watching yacht races on the Sound during the summer.

The COLLEGE OF NEW ROCHELLE (open by permission), 29 Castle Place, occupies a heavily wooded 25-acre campus with 14 buildings, most of them designed in the Tudor Gothic style. Opened in 1891 by Ursuline nuns as a boarding school for girls, it received its charter as a Roman Catholic college for women in 1904, and today, with an enrollment of more than 700, ranks among the largest of its kind in the country.

FORT SLOCUM (adm. by pass obtainable from officer in charge at dock), on David’s Island, reached by the Fort Slocum ferry, foot of Fort Slocum Road, is visible from the dock as a group of Army barracks. It is the overseas recruiting depot for foreign service enlistments of all casuals east of the Mississippi River. About 1,500 men a month are shipped, after a period of training, for service in China, the Philippines, Hawaii, and the Canal Zone. Visitors are permitted to inspect the old gun pits and military galleries of Civil War vintage.

GLEN ISLAND, foot of Weyman Ave., a 108-acre amusement park, privately owned until 1923, is now owned by the Westchester County Park Commission. The Island was visited by Aaron Burr, Daniel Webster, Washington Irving, Jenny Lind, General U.S. Grant, and James A. Garfield.

The GERMAN CASTLE, near the parking field, a garish structure built half a century ago as a beer garden and cafe, faithfully follows the pattern of medieval Rhine fortress-castles.

The CASINO, left of the entrance drive, is the park’s luxurious dinner club.

The FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 50 Pintard Ave., designed by John Russell Pope in the manner of a New England Georgian Colonial church, was built in 1928 as the successor to the building erected by the French Reformed congregation of the Huguenot pioneers. The tower and spire, forming one transept, are graceful and lofty; the opposite transept wall has a Palladian window. The principal façade has a wood Ionic portico and pediment. The interior, lighted by narrow, arched, many-paned windows, is adorned with Roman Doric columns and pilasters. The vaulted ceilings of the nave and transept have a groined intersection.

The PINTARD MANSE, E. of the church, is a story-and-a-half early Georgian Colonial dwelling, used after 1774 as a country residence by Lewis Pintard, prominent merchant and patriot of New York City. The white-shingled walls and the delicately carved cornice act as a graceful, harmonious foil to the monumental stone church adjoining. The neoclassic porch and probably the dormers are later additions.

TRINITY CHURCH, NW. corner of Huguenot and Division Sts., is a Victorian Gothic church of the Civil War period, built of granite with brownstone trim. The roof is covered with slate of variegated colors, and the cast-iron cresting on the ridge is characteristic of the period. The spire is well-proportioned, light, and graceful.

At the rear of the church is the city’s oldest cemetery, laid out by the Huguenots. Today the main line of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad cuts through, its tracks at a level with the lichen-clad gravestones.

POINTS OF INTEREST IN ENVIRONS

Saxon Woods Park, 5 m., Playland, 6.5 m. (see Tour 1). St. Paul’s (Protestant Episcopal) Church, Mount Vernon, 4.5 m. (see Tour 20).