(Greenwich, Conn.)—Port Chester—New Rochelle—New York City; US 1.
Connecticut Line to New York City, 23.1 m.
New York, New Haven & Hartford and New York, Westchester & Boston R.R.s parallel route.
Four-lane concrete, macadam stretches in some towns.
This busy route, used by busses, trucks, commuters, and tourists between Boston and New York, follows the shore line of Long Island Sound across Westchester County. Since the eighties this has been an area of extensive and luxurious estates. Here are the homes of leaders of business and finance, of publishers, writers, artists, and stars of the stage and screen.
The Boston Post Road, like most other Colonial routes, followed old Indian trails. In 1704 Madam Sarah Knight wrote of her trip on horseback: ‘The Rhodes all along this way were very bad. Incumbered with Rocks and mountainous passages, which were very dissagreeable to my tired carcass.’
Stagecoaches appeared on the Post Road early in the eighteenth century. Josiah Quincy, president of Harvard, describes a trip from Boston to New York: ‘I set out from Boston in the line of stages of an enterprising Yankee, Pease by name; considered a method of transportation of wonderful expedition. The journey to New York took up a week. The carriages were old and shackling, and much of the harness of ropes. We reached our resting place for the night, if no accident intervened, at 10 o’clock, and, after a frugal supper, went to bed with a notice that we should be called at three which generally proved to be half-past two, and then, whether it snowed or rained, the traveller must rise and make ready, by the help of a horn lantern and a farthing candle, and proceed on his way over bad roads, sometimes getting out to help the coachman lift the coach out of a quagmire or rut, and arrive in New York after a week’s hard travelling, wondering at the ease, as well as the expedition, with which our journey was effected.’
The recently completed boulevards (see below) provide an alternate route for those who wish to avoid trucks, cross traffic, and billboards.
US 1 crosses the BYRAM RIVER, 0 m., here the boundary between Greenwich, Connecticut, and Port Chester, New York.
PORT CHESTER, 0.3 m. (34 alt., 23,074 pop.), first known as Saw Log Swamp and later as Saw Pit, was settled about 1650. Its factories produce candy, ammonia, nuts and bolts, furnaces, coal and gas ranges, soft drinks, and cartons.
The BUSH HOMESTEAD (open 9–4:30 Tues., Thurs., Sat.), Lyon Park overlooking King St., is a well-preserved Georgian Colonial house built shortly before the Revolution by Abraham Bush, a sea captain; it was the headquarters of General Israel Putnam, 1777–8. The original furniture has been preserved, including the bed and desk used by ‘Old Put.’
The SAMUEL BROWN HOME, Browndale Place, built in 1774 on the site of an earlier homestead, has been altered several times, notably by the addition of a wing. The interior walls, doors, and floors are unchanged.
The BROWN GRAVEYARD, at the rear of a vacant lot on Indian Road, a huddle of fallen tombstones among brambles, was the private burial ground of the Brown family from 1660 to 1900.
Right from Port Chester at the eastern end of town on Putnam Ave.; R. on King St. (State 120A) to the Hutchinson River Parkway, 2.4 m., an alternate route between Port Chester and New York City. This is a four-lane road cutting through terraced, forested countryside (speed limit, 35 m.p.h., strictly enforced).
SAXON WOODS PARK, 9 m. (riding, hiking, picnicking, golf), is a 749-acre recreational development of Westchester County.
At a traffic circle, 13.8 m., is the junction with the Cross County Parkway; R. here 2.4 m. to the intersection with the Bronx River Parkway (see Tour 40). The Cross County Parkway continues to YONKERS (see Yonkers) on US 9 (see Tour 21), which is 5.7 m. from the junction with the Hutchinson River Parkway.
On the Hutchinson River Parkway at 15.5 m. is (R) the Lincoln Ave. entrance to MOUNT VERNON (see Tour 20).
At 17.2 m. is the ramp leading to US1 (see below).
RYE, 2.9 m. (49 alt., 9,803 pop.), settled in 1660, is visible from US 1 as a series of apartment houses and mansions with landscaped grounds. The HAVILAND INN (R), Purchase St. between Liberty Lane and Locust Ave., was built in 1730 and is now the Rye village hall. The old glass is intact; the beams are wooden-pegged; hand-split shingles cover three quarters of the structure. The inn was run by Dame Tamar Haviland, after her husband’s death during the Revolution. In her time this was a notable stopping place on the old Post Road.
The GRAVE OF JOHN JAY (1740–1829), first Chief Justice of the U.S., is in a private cemetery on the Palmer Estate, Post Road and Barlow Lane, once the home of his brother, Peter Jay.
In Rye at 3.7 m. is an entrance ramp to the Cross County Parkway.
Left on ramp and R. on the parkway 1 m. to PLAYLAND (open all year; bathing beach with accommodations for 10,000, boardwalk, swimming pool, dance hall, hockey rink, picnic grove, amusement devices. Parking 25¢ weekdays, 50¢ Sun. and holidays).
Tied up at the Playland dock is the clipper ship, Benjamin F. Packard (adm. 10¢), built at Bath, Maine, by Cross, Sawyer & Packard in 1883. With a tonnage of 2,026 gross and a mainmast rising 147 feet from her deck, the Packard was one of the larger ships of her period. Her logs cover many voyages around Cape Horn.
MAMARONECK (Ind., he assembles the people), 6 m. (47 alt., 13,012 pop.), was settled by English farmers about 1650. Factories producing woolen cloth, perfume oils, and motor oils provide local employment for some of the residents, but the majority commute to work in New York City. Seven yacht clubs have private basins along the jagged shore line of the village.
The DE LANCEY MANOR HOUSE, 404 W. Post Road, known in its heyday as Heathcote Hill, is now a gas station and restaurant; this was the ancestral home of the De Lanceys and in it James Fenimore Cooper married Susan A. De Lancey in 1811. The couple lived here for a time after the wedding. The building, which has been altered and enlarged, was bought at auction for $11 and moved to this place from its original position overlooking the Sound.
Colonel Caleb Heathcote, lord of the Manor of Scarsdale, wrote in 1704: ‘Westchester—the most rude and heathenish country I ever saw in my life, which call themselves Christian; there being not so much as the least marks or footsteps of religion of any sort; Sundays being the only time set apart by them for all manner of vain sports and lewd diversion . . .’
Left on Orienta Ave. to beach and yacht clubs along the Sound, 1.3 m. On this street stood the early movie studios of D.W. Griffith, screen pioneer. Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm, and Valley Forge were filmed with Mamaroneck backgrounds.
Southwest of Mamaroneck the Post Road passes large estates. Ethel Barrymore, James Montgomery Flagg, and Robert ‘Believe It or Not’ Ripley live near by. Approaching Long Island Sound (L) US 1 presents a view of dismal marshland, fishing huts, and small wharves. Chromium-trimmed taverns and elaborate filling stations follow in close succession.
LARCHMONT, 8.2 m. (100 alt., 5,955 pop.), is a residential community; more than half the total population commutes daily to New York City. Beach Ave. leads (L) to private shore and yacht clubs on the Sound. From the LARCHMONT YACHT CLUB the regattas on Labor Day are major events in eastern yachting circles.
NEW ROCHELLE, 10.5 m. (72 alt., 57,415 pop.) (see New Rochelle).
Left from New Rochelle on Echo Ave. to the junction with Pelham Road; R. on Pelham Road to State 1B (the Shore Road), which closely follows the shore of Long Island Sound to New York City. BOLTON PRIORY (R), 2.1 m., was built in 1838 by the Reverend Robert Bolton, whose friend, Washington Irving, gave yellow bricks from the old Dutch church at Sleepy Hollow to outline the construction date on the wall above the door. A bloody battle between the Matinecocks and the Siwanoys took place on CEDAR KNOLL (L). The Siwanoys were routed and prisoners were decapitated. Legend has it that when the moon is full, the spirits of the headless Indians perform a war dance, holding their heads in their hands.
The NEW YORK ATHLETIC CLUB (L), 2.4 m., Italian Renaissance in style, stands on deep, landscaped lawns at Travers Island.
At the New York City line, 2.5 m., State 1B becomes Pelham Parkway.
PELHAM MANOR, 12 m. (100 alt., 5,270 pop.), a residential community, is on land purchased by Thomas Pell in 1664 from the Siwanoy Indians; the tract included what is now New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, the Pelhams, and Eastchester. In 1680 John Pell sold 6,000 acres for ‘Sixteen hundred twenty and five currant silver money of the Province,’ also ‘to John Pell . . . every four and twentieth day of June yearly, and every year frowever if demanded, one fat calf.’ Anne Hutchinson, rebel against Puritan conformity in Massachusetts, settled in this section in 1642 and was murdered in 1643 by Indians at Throgg’s Neck, now Pelham Bay Shore.
Pelhamdale Ave., to the railroad station on Washington Ave., was the route of the tiny trolley said to have provided the inspiration for the Toonerville Trolley series of Fontaine Fox, the cartoonist.
At 12.5 m. is the junction with Split Rock Road.
Left on Split Rock Road to the New York City line, 0.5 m., then through Pelham Bay Park to Pelham Parkway. Split Rock Road was once the private driveway from the manor house of Thomas Pell to the Boston Post Road. Washington’s army retreated along this road after the Battle of Long Island. Some of the heaviest fighting in the Battle of Pell’s Point, October 18, 1776, took place in the vicinity of the cleft 10-foot boulder, which is (R) near the New York City line.
At 12.6 m. is (R) the southern junction with the Hutchinson River Parkway, alternate route from the Connecticut State line (see above).
The New York City line, 12.8 m., (see New York City), is crossed in a marshy area with rows of brick houses and many filling stations.
US 1 continues westward across the northern part of the city (follow signs), and crosses on the GEORGE WASHINGTON MEMORIAL BRIDGE, 21.2 m., to New Jersey, 23.1 m., at a point 12 miles north of Jersey City, New Jersey.