Rural life continued in northern Westchester in the 1920s much as it had before World War I. There were many farms still shipping milk, fruit, and vegetables to New York and Connecticut. Small hamlets and villages remained isolated along unpaved roads, and children continued to attend one-room schoolhouses just as their fathers and grandfathers had done.
The Depression drove many farmers out of business altogether, and the dairy farms began to break up as competition from other areas lowered the demand for Westchester farm products. Rising land taxes and falling profits led most of the remaining farmers to sell out to real estate developers after World War II. In 1964, 18,500 acres were farmed in Westchester. Ten years later only 9,000 acres were farmed.
South of White Plains, the few remaining farms disappeared rapidly after 1920 as suburbanization began in earnest. Republican party leader William L. Ward influenced the County Board of Supervisors to create the Westchester County Planning Commission and gathered a team of outstanding county citizens to carry out his dream of developing Westchester into a suburban paradise. An overall plan for golf courses, parkways, and recreational areas created a network of beautiful open areas throughout the county.
The Bronx River Parkway was the highway that opened up Westchester. It had been begun in 1906 as part of the project to clean up the Bronx River, which had become a badly contaminated eyesore by the turn of the century. In the process of building the parkway, the Bronx River bed was cleaned and dredged, 30,000 trees and 140,000 shrubs were planted, and paths and benches for the public were set among the trees and lakes. When it opened in 1925 the Bronx River Parkway immediately. drew worldwide attention to Westchester County.
The Bronx River Parkway was followed by the Saw Mill River Parkway, the Hutchinson River Parkway, the Taconic Parkway, and the Cross County Parkway, all completed by the 1930s. The scenic beauty of Westchester's parkways is still fresh fifty years later. The next major road construction did not take place until the 1950s and 1960s, when the interstate expressways and thruways were built.
The parkways brought many young, middle-class executives and professionals to Westchester to buy new homes being erected on old estates. The prosperity of the post-war period put cash in the pockets of many young families. They invested in real estate, which rapidly increased in value. Buying a home became the goal of everyone who could afford it.
Transportation was developed to accommodate the growing population. Local roads were paved, traffic regulations developed, and traffic lights installed. As the roadways improved, buses replaced the old trolley system. The Toonerville Trolley of Pelham made its last run in 1937; the Westchester bus system had replaced it.
As suburban towns grew, men and women organized a variety of social, cultural, and educational organizations within them. The combination of companionship and worthwhile volunteer service appealed to women like those who had been active in the suffragette movement and World War I relief organizations. Women also nurtured the arts and other cultural activities. Membership in women's clubs and service organizations became an integral part of the suburban life that emerged in Westchester during the 1920s and continues into the 1980s.
People enjoyed many leisure activities in Westchester during the period between the world wars. Among the achievements of William Ward and the parks commission was the creation of an overall plan for recreational areas in the county. Rye, Playland amusement area opened to acclaim in 1928. Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Croton Point Park, Glen Island Park, and Kingsland Point Park were also developed by the county for the public. In 1930 the County Center was opened in White Plains as an all-purpose convention space for exhibits and events.
Armonk Airport was a great recreational attraction in the late 1920s and 1930s. People came from miles around to watch the planes and barnstormers. Roadside stands and the Log Cabin Restaurant catered to the crowds. Residents still recall the phenomenal traffic jams along Bedford Road.
The entertainment industry had a brief moment of glory in Westchester when D. W. Griffith operated his movie studio complex on Orienta Point in Mamaroneck. The Gish sisters, Mary Pickford, and many other famous movie stars of the day were filmed in the Griffith studios and also on location around the county. Legitimate theater also took precarious hold in Westchester soil. The Lawrence family opened the Lawrence Farms Theatre, the first summer-stock theater in Westchester, in a barn on the former Moses Taylor estate in Mount Kisco. Day Tuttle and Richard Skinner leased the barn in 1932, and throughout the 1930s great actors and actresses like Tallulah Bankhead, Henry Fonda, and Margaret Sullavan appeared there.
The Depression hit Westchester as badly as it did the rest of the nation. Communities rallied to provide support for the unemployed. Many of the work projects sponsored by the federal government are still enjoyed by county residents today.
The period between the wars saw a number of new businesses arriving in Westchester. When B. Altman's opened a branch in White Plains in 1934, it was the first major New York department store to come to Westchester. Best and Company, Peck and Peck, and Sloane's followed in the 1940s, and White Plains became the major shopping center in Westchester County. The man credited with this development of "Little Fifth Avenue" was Leonard H. Davidow, who set a high standard of excellence in his dealings.
The Reader's Digest developed into a major publishing concern in Pleasantville during the 1930s. When the magazine outgrew its rented office space in Pleasantville, it built a spectacular colonial-style headquarters which still dominates a hill overlooking the Saw Mill River Parkway in Chappaqua.
During World War II the county once again rallied for the war effort. General Motors manufactured airplane parts, Norden bomb sights were made in White Plains, and the Alexander Smith Carpet Mills turned out tents and uniforms for the armed forces. Westchester residents enthusiastically supported scrap-iron drives for Britain in 1940. Then after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, they sent their men and boys overseas to join the Allied forces. On the home front men and women worked in the factories, joined the Civil Defense League, watched for enemy planes, and took first aid classes to be prepared in case of an enemy attack. Many took British and French children into their homes. They bought war bonds and endured the inconveniences of food and gas rationing. Then on VJ Day, August 5, 1945, it was over, and Westchester joined the rest of the nation in parades and celebrations of joy.
One of the characteristics of suburban life in the 1950s was its focus on children and the family. A wide range of social, cultural, and sports activities was developed for young people. It seemed as if parents who had endured the Depression as children and the war as young adults wanted their own children to experience a full life. Families barbecued, camped, and played together. Country clubs, which had catered primarily to golf and tennis playing adults in earlier years, built swimming pools and offered competitive swimming, diving, and tennis programs for members' children.
Women in the 1950s and 1960s generally preferred to work before their children were born and, if necessary, after they were grown. However, many middle-class women did not need to work and hoped to marry soon after finishing their education. Women continued to spend the majority of their time caring for their homes and children. Social, cultural, and service clubs filled their leisure hours and satisfied their need for companionship during the day.
Since 1960 the arts have received increasing attention from the Westchester community. An educated population offered support and volunteer time to help promote historical and art museums and the performing arts. The Katonah Gallery is an outstanding example of a professional and volunteer staff working closely together to create highly professional art exhibits and programs for the public and for the schools. Many communities have active arts councils as well as private schools of dance, music, and art. In 1965 the Council of the Arts of Westchester was founded to provide funds for arts groups and promote the arts in Westchester. Corporations have led the fund raising efforts of the Council of the Arts. PepsiCo, Inc., in cooperation with the State University of New York at Purchase, created the outstanding Summerfare program which brings world-famous musical, theater, and dance groups to the S. U. N. Y. Purchase campus for a month of performances in July and August.
Well-known performing artists have always found Westchester an attractive place to live because of its proximity to New York and the privacy offered by its secluded countryside. Julius LaRosa, Colleen Dewhurst, Joan Bennett, Roberta Peters, Aaron Copeland, and Robert Merrill are among the celebrities who live or have lived in Westchester. They have given generously of their time and talents at many benefits which helped worthy organizations raise funds in Westchester.
The relocation to Westchester of several corporate headquarters during the decades after World War II had a major impact on the county. General Foods was the first, in 1953, followed by Ciba-Geigy, in 1956, and Nestle, in 1958.
In the 1960s and 1970s many factors combined to influence the corporate giants to move their vast operations to Westchester. They had the opportunity to build their own facilities, an available work force, and the interstate road system; Westchester County Airport made the county easily accessible to the rest of the northeast. Also, New York City had become less attractive as rents and taxes rose and the environment decayed.
Edwin G. Michaelian, County Executive from 1956 to 1972, and William L. Butcher, Chairman of the County Trust Company, were among those who were instrumental in selling Westchester County to the corporations. Lowell M. Schulman developed the corporate parks that grace both sides of the Cross Westchester Expressway. Among the companies along the "Platinum Mile" of interstate 1-287 are A.M.F., Hitachi, Gannett Westchester Rockland Newspapers, Combe International, A.C.L.I., Texaco, and General Foods. Corporate parks were also developed on other major arteries. Robert Martin Company, founded by Martin S. Berger and Robert F. Weinberg, developed the Cross Westchester Executive Park in Elmsford in 1966 and the South Westchester Executive Park in Yonkers in the 1970s. They constructed many of the office buildings along Route 287 and in White Plains as well as houses and condominiums.
The handsome architecture and landscaping of many of the corporate buildings make a significant contribution to the beauty of the county. In several instances, major architectural talents have been engaged to design buildings for such corporations as Union Carbide, Frank B. Hall, I.B.M. World Trade Americas/Far East, and PepsiCo. Their landscaped settings have provided Westchester with acres of parkland that complement the parks and parkways built in the 1920s.
In the past ten years, many business areas in Westchester communities have undergone extensive revitalization. White Plains, for instance, has undergone vast changes even since 1970. A new courthouse, a library, and many new department stores have been built On the site of the old railroad station a new transportation center, office building, and world-class hotel are planned.
While there are many new buildings being built in Westchester today, there is a significant movement to retain fine old ones, and many landmarks have been renovated to be used as schools, colleges, and business offices. The Westchester Preservation League has worked with both individuals and municipalities to create historic districts and to save worthy buildings.
Private foundations have generously donated funds for historic preservation. None has done more than the Rockefeller family. Their creation of Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Incorporated, has preserved Van Cortlandt Manor, Philipsburgh Manor, and Sunnyside. Local efforts by non-profit historical societies and town historians continue to keep Westchester's heritage alive through historical museums, library collections, programs, and events.
Philipsburgh Manor
Government agencies have also supported the historic preservation of Lyndhurst, Philipse Manor Hall in Yonkers, and the John Jay Homestead. In October 1981 the county of Westchester was bequeathed the beautiful estate, Merestead, in Mount Kisco, by Mrs. Margaret Sloane Patterson.
In 1983, Westchester County celebrated its 300th anniversary. Residents can look with pride at the past 300 years and, with that rich heritage behind them, look with confidence to the next 300 years.
The rural way of life was still dominant in most of Westchester in the decades after the Civil War. People led quiet, hard-working lives on their farms or in their villages, their normal routine relieved only by occasional visits to the larger towns. But change was in the air, and by 1914 the lifestyles in Westchester had changed so completely that an 1865 resident would have felt completely out of place. By then railroads, trolleys, automobiles, and paved roads had ended the isolation of Westchester's rugged countryside and opened up the county.
The county shared America's economic prosperity between the Civil War and World War I. Factories and suburbs developed along the Hudson River and in the interior south of White Plains. Thousands of Italians and eastern Europeans came to Westchester in a massive wave of immigration, to build railroads, dams, and mansions and to work in factories.
A growing middle class discovered the joys of leisure time. They took "the cars" to boardinghouses and hotels for vacations in the Westchester countryside. Many liked the area and bought gracious shingle and stone homes in the communities built by developers along the railroad lines. By the end of World War I, southern Westchester was an area of towns and growing cities; farms and villages were mostly located north of White Plains. The population had grown from about 100,000 in 1865, to almost 350,000 in 1920, an increase of 150 percent.
The New York Central's Putnam and Harlem divisions brought rail service into the north central region of Westchester. No longer did farmers have to make jolting trips by wagon to reach their markets. Once perishable milk products could reach New York City in a few hours by train, dairy farming became big business.
The railroads often determined whether a town grew or declined. In North Salem, a large Methodist church was built in anticipation of the growth expected when the railroad came through. But instead, the station was built at Purdys, a few miles to the west, and the church sat half-empty on Sundays. Three unsuccessful attempts were made to bring the railroad to Pound Ridge, and, when Somers voted against having the railroad come through the town, manufacturers, other businesses, and the Farmers and Drovers Bank all moved to Mount Kisco. By 1895 Mount Kisco, which had consisted of only four buildings in 1847, was a town bustling with factories and summer hotels. In both Chappaqua and Yorktown, the town centers shifted as businesses and stores relocated to be near the train station.
It was not long after the old Croton Dam was completed in 1842 that New York City made plans to build more dams and reservoirs in Westchester. Between the 1880s and the 1920s the Kensico, Croton, and Catskill water systems were constructed. The flooding of thousands of acres for these reservoirs created considerable dislocations in many towns north of White Plains. The building of the New Croton Dam and its reservoirs, for instance, forced the complete relocation of the village of Katonah to higher ground and the construction of thirty-two miles of new roads and nineteen new bridges. Legal proceedings on 600 land condemnations for the New Croton Dam dragged on for thirteen years. Many factories and mills, which lost their waterpower when streams were diverted for the water system, had to relocate or went out of business. In North Salem, the hamlet of Purdys was moved, and 5 percent of the town was inundated, including hundreds of prime acres of dairy land.
The Kensico Water System was constructed in the 1880s. It included the Kensico Dam and the Byram Lake Dam; and it drew water from Little and Big Rye ponds and Wampus Lake. More water was brought to New York through the Croton Water System, developed between 1892 and 1907, which included the Titicus Dam, Muscoot Dam, Amawalk Reservoir, and a larger Croton Dam.
The Kensico Dam
After New York incorporated the boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island in 1898, the water supply had to be increased again. Plans for the Catskill Water System were approved by the state of New York, and between 1906 and 1915 more dams and reservoirs were built to bring an additional 500 million gallons of water a day to New York City. Water from the new reservoirs west of the Hudson had to be carried through Westchester by way of a new aqueduct which led to the new reservoir created behind a larger Kensico Dam, completed in 1915. By 1924 New York City owned 18,320 acres of land in fourteen Westchester towns. And still New York thirsted. The Delaware Water System, completed in 1944, increased New York's water supply by 800 million gallons a day from four reservoirs on the south slope of the Catskill Mountains.
In the last half of the nineteenth century, Westchester's proximity to New York City, its transportation systems, and its available labor force attracted many manufacturing concerns, particularly along the Hudson River. Peekskill and Croton continued to be centers for the iron industry. Some factories established at this time were Standard Oilcloth (later Standard Textile Products) in Buchanan; Mobile Company of America (later the General Motors Assembly Plant) in North Tarrytown; Lord and Burnham Greenhouse Manufacturing Company in Irvington; Hudson River Brewing Company in Dobbs Ferry; Zinsser Chemical, Hastings Pavement, and National Conduit (later Anaconda) Manufacturing Company in Hastings; and Otis Elevator and Alexander Smith Carpet Company in Yonkers.
In this period, more and more people were anxious to move out of New York City to the suburbs. Communities were laid out in southern Westchester where farms had stood a generation earlier. As the population grew, villages and towns became incorporated, and taxes were collected to provide necessary public services, such as paved roads, sewers, fire companies, and police forces. Horse-drawn trolley lines were established throughout the county in the 1880s and were electrified by 1890. Steamboats continued to do a brisk freight and passenger business on the Hudson River and Long Island Sound right up to World War I. For twenty-five cents one could take a day trip on a Starin steamboat from New York to the internationally-famous Starin's Glen Island Resort in New Rochelle.
People who were freed from the seven-day-a-week commitment to farmwork began to participate in all kinds of sports and recreational activities. Tennis, golf, baseball, canoeing, and bicycling grew in popularity. Wintertime activities included sleigh rides and tobogganing. In the days before ice-cutters, the Hudson River often froze from bank to bank, and hundreds enjoyed skating and ice boating on its surface. In the summer, vacationers flocked to the beaches of New Rochelle and Rye or to the lakes and hills of northern Westchester. The wealthy joined exclusive clubs such as the Larchmont and American Yacht clubs to participate in the new sport of ocean sailboat racing. Automobile clubs were formed for family outings, and it was not long before the first automobile races were run. In 1908 Walter Law staged the American International Race for Stock Cars. Thousands of spectators lined the thirty-five-mile course to watch twenty-two drivers careen along unpaved roads for a $10,000 prize.
The period after 1865 brought vast fortunes to a new class of entrepreneurs in the New York area. Many built large estates in Westchester County. Colonial, Chateauesque, and Renaissance Revival houses were built on the hills overlooking the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. Perhaps the most fantastic of all were the homes built to resemble castles, such as Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, Ophir Hall in Purchase, Leland Castle in New Rochelle, and Carroll-cliff (now Axe Castle) in Tarrytown. In northern Westchester, magnificent mansions were built on the hilltops of New Castle, Bedford, and North Castle.
Lyndhurst in Tarrytown
None of the estates, however, matched the grandeur and scope of the Rockefeller estates. The largest mansion in the county was the 204-room Rockwood Hall, built by William Rockefeller in 1887 on 1,000 acres overlooking the Hudson River in North Tarrytown and Mount Pleasant. William's brother, John D. Rockefeller, completed his mansion and gardens on 3,500 acres in Pocantico Hills in 1913. His son raised his family of six children there and built a million-dollar recreation hall that included a bowling alley, squash court, tennis court, and swimming pool. John D., Sr., enjoyed playing golf daily on his own course built on the grounds, and when the Putnam railroad disturbed his peace, he persuaded the railroad to move its tracks five miles away.
In the years around World War I, Westchester joined the suffragette movement with vigor. By 1915 Westchester Life of To-Day reported that 20,000 women were enrolled in the suffrage cause, which had 102 clubs organized by assembly and election districts. In 1917 the New York legislature voted to give women the right to vote in state affairs, and in August 1920, Westchester's suffragettes celebrated the successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
In 1914 Westchester residents anxiously watched the beginning of World War I, and when the United States joined the conflict, many Westchester men stepped forward to take part. Within a month, for example, twenty-eight Dobbs Ferry men had enlisted in the armed services. Home Defense leagues and Liberty Loan committees were formed in every town; women joined the Red Cross, farmed community gardens, and operated canteens. The village of Scarsdale prepared for civilian unrest by purchasing twenty riot guns and surveyed homes for guns and aliens. Thursdays and Sundays were designated as "lightless nights," to save coal for the war emergency.
For army units assigned to guard the dams and aqueducts, however, duty was not always arduous. "We're living like millionaires up here," stated Corporal Gerard of Company L's Tenth Regiment, which had been assigned to Shaft Nine of the aqueduct on the Rockefeller estate. John D. Rockefeller supplied the soldiers daily with eggs, sandwiches, coffee, and a cooking stove.
As the war drew to a close, Westchester celebrated Armistice Day with parades and church services. In Dobbs Ferry, Miss Masters marched the girls of the Masters School to the Presbyterian Church, where, after a brief service, they paraded through the village singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."
Residents can learn about the history of Westchester and the county government through a number of sources.
Westchester County Archives is available for historical as well as personal genealogical research. Apects of Westchester County’s history through the display of primary documents, bringing together government and private records tell the county’s story. Stories about the people and events that have shaped Westchester’s rich history come alive at the Westchester Historical Society. The society’s website also contains links to local historical societies as well as genealogical resources.
You can take a digital stroll on the African American Heritage Trail, a collection of historic sites which preserves and interprets the contributions that people of African descent have made to the development of our unique American identity.
You may read about the history of the Westchester County Board of Legislators. Plus, you can learn about county services relating to historic preservation as well as download the list of registered historic places and properties.
The account below of the first 300 years of recorded history of Westchester County was prepared by Susan Cochran Swanson and Elizabeth Green Fuller in 1982.
The Revolution devastated Westchester County. Seven years of raids and plundering left much of the countryside a waste. Many homes had been burned.
The population of the county was reduced by more than 1,000 through war casualties and the emigration of Loyalists to Canada and England.
The former Loyalists who remained were often the objects of bitter resentment.
In 1784 Bedford citizens voted at a town meeting that "no persons that have been over to the Enemy shall come to the town to reside. And if any have already come in, they are to be immediately Drove out" (Griffin, Westchester County and Its People).
As Westchester began the task of rebuilding, there was one big change that benefited local farmers. Many of the landholdings in the county had belonged to Loyalists and were confiscated by the state and sold by the Commissioners of Forfeiture. In all, the Westchester holdings of fifty-four Loyalists were thus sold off; the largest of these was Philipsburgh Manor. As a result of such sales, many farmers were able to buy the lands they had previously farmed as tenants.
In 1788 the county was formally divided into twenty towns. The first federal census, taken in 1790, showed a Westchester population of 24,000, mostly concentrated in the northern part. The chief occupation was farming, and during the early part of the nineteenth century, subsistence farming was the rule. Crops included potatoes and other vegetables, fruit, corn, and wheat. Every farm had dairy cows and poultry, and sheep were grazed on land too rough for cultivation.
As New York City recovered from British occupation, Westchester farmers began to sell their cattle and produce there. Sing Sing (now Ossining), on the Hudson, and Sawpit (now Port Chester), on the Sound, were the main ports to which farmers delivered their crops for shipment to New York. Cattle were driven directly to city markets on the hoof.
Improved roads were a necessity for getting both cattle and crops to market. In 1800 the first commercial toll road, the Westchester Turnpike, was chartered, running through Pelham and New Rochelle. Toll gates were erected at intervals, and the charge was four cents for a horse and rider, ten cents for a one-horse passenger vehicle, and twenty cents for a stagecoach. In the northern part of the county, the Croton Turnpike (also called the Somerstown Turnpike) linked Somers to the Hudson River at Sing Sing. The turnpikes were made free public roads by the middle of the nineteenth century.
In addition to the turnpikes, the Albany, Danbury and Boston post roads were used to convey produce to market, as well as to carry the mail. These roads were also the main routes for stagecoach travel. Taverns and inns did a brisk business along these main roads. Taverns also often served as post offices. For example, the Ward house in Eastchester was both tavern and post office after the Revolution.
Despite the gradual improvement of the roads, travel by water remained the most practical and convenient way to get both passengers and freight to New York. Sloops made regular stops at the docks of the towns along the Hudson. Steamboats began to ply the river after Robert Fulton's Clermont made its first Hudson trip in 1807. The steamboats, however, landed on the west side of the Hudson; Westchester passengers had to be rowed out to board them. Sloops and steamboats shared the water transport business for many years on both the Hudson and the Sound.
As the economy of the new nation began to expand, small industries developed in Westchester. Cottage industries, chiefly shoemaking, had been prevalent before the Revolution, providing farming families with a small but welcome cash income. After the war these occupations began to be carried on in "factories." The work was still largely done by hand, but in buildings, often barns, specifically devoted to that purpose.
Only gradually were larger industries established. Iron foundries in Port Chester, Peekskill, and Morrisania (now part of the Bronx) made stoves and plowshares. Brickyards grew up in Croton and Verplanck. Marble quarries in Tuckahoe, Sing Sing, Hastings, and Thornwood supplied the nation with the building material necessary for the neoclassic architecture so popular in the nation's public buildings. For instance, many federal buildings destroyed by the British during the War of 1812 were rebuilt with Westchester marble. The local marble quarries were the main reason that New York State chose Sing Sing as the site of a new prison, begun in 1825.
The Croton Dam
Two developments in the 1830s and 1840s had an enormous effect on Westchester's growth. The first was the construction of the Croton Dam and Aqueduct, and the second was the building of the railroads. New York City's importance in the history of Westchester County is nowhere more apparent than in the watershed construction that began in the 1830s. The Croton River was determined to be the best source of water for the rapidly growing metropolis, and despite the misgivings of many local residents, the first Croton Dam was begun in 1837 and completed in 1842.
The railroads came in the 1840s. By the summer of 1842, the New York and Harlem Railroad was running trains as far as Williamsbridge, and by 1844 the railroad had reached White Plains. The New York and Hudson River Railroad was being constructed in the same period and reached Peekskill in 1849. On the east side of the county, the New York, New Haven and Hartford opened its line in 1849. Both the railroads and the New York City water system were constructed chiefly by Irish laborers, who were emigrating in large numbers during this period to escape the famine in their native land.
One of the effects of rail service in Westchester was the shift from subsistence farming to dairying. Many farms began producing milk commercially once the railroads were available to make daily "milk runs".
The coming of the railroads brought a shift in population from the northern part of the county to the southern. Before the railroads, the most populous town in Westchester was Bedford. Between 1845 and 1855, the population of the county increased by 33,000, with most of the people choosing to live in the towns close to the railroad lines. The area of Eastchester that became Mount Vernon was hardly settled at all before 1850. In that year John Stevens of New York organized the Industrial Home Association No. 1, bought 367 acres of farmland in Eastchester, and laid out streets and building lots for a new town. This type of development was to be repeated in other sections of Westchester. By 1860 the total population of the county was 99,000, and Yonkers was the largest city.
Social life in Westchester during the first half of the nineteenth century revolved very much around church, school, and home. While churches after the Revolution were no longer involved in politics, they remained centers of community life. New churches were built and old ones rebuilt. Evangelical meetings like the Methodist Camp Meeting, established in 1834 at Sing Sing, were enormously popular.
Public schools were first established in Westchester County through an act of the New York legislature in 1795. A later act, in 1812, established the State Superintendent of Common Schools, thus creating the first state system of education in the country. Westchester's public schools in the nineteenth century were generally small, one-room affairs, but private schools also began to flourish early in the century. Notable examples were the North Salem and Bedford academies, and the Mount Pleasant Military Academy in Ossining.
While most Westchester citizens were hard-working farmers and small businessmen, there was a scattering of wealthy and nationally known residents. John Jay and his descendants lived in Katonah. Washington Irving built Sunnyside on the Hudson River at Tarry-town. Artists such as Robert Havell, Jr., chose the Hudson River area for their homes and shared its beauty with the world through their paintings.
The Civil War had a great effect on Westchester even though fighting never touched county soil. At the outbreak of the war, many residents had mixed feelings about the strong anti-slavery stand of Lincoln and the Republicans. Lincoln did not carry the county in 1860 or 1864.
After the Southern states seceded, however, sentiment shifted toward solid support for the Union. Many young Westchester men volunteered. Once the initial enthusiasm wore off and there were fewer volunteers, towns began to offer bounties to entice men to sign up. This system was not successful, however, so in March 1863 a draft law was enacted. Draft rioters in New York moved up into Westchester but were persuaded to disband.
Throughout the war, Westchester citizens contributed what they could to the war effort. Church bells rang out in every town for each Union victory, and people gathered in the churches for public readings of the few available newspapers. Ladies' groups sewed clothing and made bandages to send to the soldiers in the field.
The end of the war brought problems created by the readjustment of returning soldiers, a greatly increased cost of living, and a slower growth in population. The more industrial southern part of Westchester grew faster than ever, however, and the county was soon ready to begin a new era of prosperity.
Located just north of New York City, Westchester occupies 450 square miles and is home to nearly one million people who live within its 45 cities, towns and villages. Westchester’s rich physical environment ranges from thriving urban centers to quiet rural landscapes, bordered by the shores of the Long Island Sound and the Hudson River.
Westchester County Geographic Information Systems (GIS) develops, maintains and distributes digital data for Westchester County. The site has a facilities locator, maps and more.
For statistical information as well as data on housing and community development, regional growth and guidance, environmental, design, and facilities planning, check out the Planning Department. They also provide Census statistics and reports, and the county’s Databook. This book features a wealth of demographic information, business statistics and information about county geography and services.
On the Department of Finance, you will find annual reports and financial facts about the county. You can also access information about purchasing policies and about projects that are seeking vendors or contractors. The site also has links to government auctions, including surplus property you can buy on eBay. The Office of Economic Development offers business resources, financial assistance and a wide range of related services and incentives to help businesses prosper in Westchester County.
The Westchester County Virtual Archives brings together the best examples of government and private records. We have estate records, minutes from government meetings from years past, Census records, newspaper articles, photos, diaries and letters.