History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. II, Part 33

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898,
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1286

USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. II > Part 33

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Harvey Green (till about 1840), David Underhill (till about 1844), Starr Rockwell and James Bashford. Mr. Bashford was its last proprietor. In 1851 the buik- ing was removed to make room for the present Getty House. It now stands, much altered and enlarged, at the corner of New Main Street and Nepperhan Avenue.

Mr. Elisha Williams and Colonel John Williams were sons of John Williams, Sr., who had been steward of the Philipsburgh Manor under Colonel Fred. Philipse. The family is supposed to be, on the Williams side, of Welsh origin. John Williams was a man of commanding presence, of upright and high character, and a vestryman of St. John's Church. Till Colonel Philipse went to England he lived on what is now called "The Valley Farm," near the South Yonkers Station, on the New York City and Northern Railroad. The colonel, upon leaving, pnt him in charge of the Manor Hall, and he lived in it. At the confiscation sales he was the pur- ehaser, as we have seen, of one hundred and seventy- seven aeres. He had several children, of whom, as stated above, Elisha and John were, in sueee-sion, proprietors of the old tavern. Elisha was the father of Dr. Abraham V. Williams, a physician of New York City, a man of exceptional mental gifts and professional ability, to whom is credited the first suggestion of the famous structure known as the High Bridge. Another of his sons is our highly respected townsman, Mr. J. Henry Williams, one of the three only remaining original trustees of the Yonkers Sav-

ings-Bank, and now for many years past its treasurer. Mr. Williams is one of the few men left who have for forty years been so identified with the development of Yonkers, that with its record their names come in at every turn. He is a man of the highest integrity, of polished and attractive manners, and holds the con- fidenee and esteem of Yonkers people, and will hold them as long as he lives.

In the later days of the old tavern it had a lively competitor for the patronage of travelers and guests in another house, which stood down at the sloop wharf, and was kept by Mr. John Bashford. Its position is indicated on our map of 1847. It was a well-kept house and gained a strong hold in Yonkers, because the post-office and a store were connected with it, and beeanse its proprietor was a man of remarkable magnetism and almost unbounded politi- eal influence. He died in 1848, at forty-seven years of age. He eontinned to be postmaster till his death, when his widow, Mrs. Esther A. Bashford, became his snceessor, and held the office till she resigned it in 1861. Mrs. Bashford and two of her seven ehil- dren, Mr. Henry W. Bashford and Mrs. Thomas C. Cornell still live in Yonkers. The local estimate of Mr. Bashford's family may be inferred from the fact that when the Bank of Yonkers was organized, in 1854, the portrait of his eldest daughter- Miss Joanna C. Bashford (now Mrs. William Hindhaugh, -- was

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adopted by the directors as an adornment for their bank- notes. It remained on those notes until 1865, when the bank became national. The portrait is here repro- duced from one of the notes still preserved in the bank.

Mr. Bashiford's house was so popular that it was adopted as the stage-house for some years, the drivers willingly turning out of the way from the post-road for the advantages of this house. It is said that while our above description of the average old post- road taverns is "to the life," it is no description of this house. The following account of it is furnished by one who remembers it well, and has in mind the appearance of the Nepperhan at its side and the high bluff opposite, just as they were forty years ago:

" It was a long, two-story house, of a reddish-brown color, but with no accompanying sign-post or sign or proprietor's name in sight, and with no external in- timation that it was an inn. It stood near the Hudson, at the mouth of the Nepperhan, whose water then ran clear as the water of a mountain brook. Broad verandas, also two stories high, cov- ered its whole front. The building was handsomely shaded by several large willows, and the high wooded bluff, towards which the house almost faced, looked down on it from the oppo- site side of the creek, while the gardens and the open ground and the fields behind hind the house all MISS JOANNA C. BASHFORD. combined to give the place the air of an ample, quiet rural home by the water side. I wish a picture of the place had been preserved, but such is not the case."

Mr. Bashford was captain of the Yonkers Militia, and his son Henry was his color-bearer from the time he was old enough to carry a flag.

THE GETTY HOUSE was built, in 1851-52, by Mr. Robert P. Getty, at the corner of South Broadway and Mechanic (now New Main) Street. Mr. Getty, an enterprising and prosperous merchant of New York City, bought property on South Broadway in 1848, and settled here in 1849. A man of intensely active nature, thoroughly experienced in business and politics, an old member of the New York Com- mon Council and of the New York Board of Educa- tion, and of vigorous public spirit and practical mind, he began, from the very first moment of his life in Yonkers, to impress himself on every Yonkers interest.

The records we have given of our village and city, of our governmental departments, of our public im- provements, our banks and other prominent institu- tions bring out his name inevitably at alniost every

point, as they do the names of several other men, who have been identified with the active life of the place, and out of whose brains and substance the Yonkers of to-day has been almost literally evolved. Mr. Getty is still living, and to his clear memory and the files of Yonkers papers he has preserved we are indebted for many early facts which others seem to have wholly forgotten. In 1851 he bought the old tavern property, removed the house and pro- eeeded to build his fine hotel, which was finished by the summer of 1852. Before the old house was re- moved Mr. J. Henry Williams was careful to have it and its surroundings daguerreotyped. The Hudson River Chronicle of June 8, 1852, contained a full description of a flag presentation at the newly- erected Getty House of Yonkers on the 2d of June, then just passed. One hundred and sixteen ladies of the place, in admiration of Mr. Getty's enterprise in projecting and erecting such a splendid hotel, and in- cluding within it a concert-room for public lectures and concerts, had determined to present him with a flag to wave above the building. The ceremony of presentation took place in the concert-room, in the presence of a large concourse of citizens, when Colo- nel (afterwards Judge) William W. Scrugham, on be- half of the ladies, presented their beautiful gift. The address of Colonel Scrugham, and also the response of Mr. Getty, are given in full in the paper. During the ceremonies a salute of five guns was fired, and at their close a series of verses, composed for the occasion, was sung by a choir.

In addition to these statements we add a few other inatters of interest. Mr. Getty meant to name his hotel "The Havemeyer," in honor of his early and firm friend, ex-Mayor William F. Havemeyer, of New York City. But a number of his friends, during a night, took the liberty to express their own feeling and the general sense of Yonkers people by placing upon the front of the building the letters which are seen upon it to-day, and which fixed the name of the hotel, beyond recall, as "The Getty House." The concert-room referred to was at first one of the ad- junets of the hotel, but when, in later years, its concert use interfered with the quiet of the guests, a change was minde. It ceased to be used for public purposes about 1866 or 1867.

The hotel walls are of brick and stone, having a frontage of one hundred and eight feet on Broadway and one hundred and sixty feet on New Main Street. The building is of the form of an L and is four stories high. It contains a hundred rooms. Its cost was between forty and fifty thousand dollars. Its lower story on Broadway and Main Streets is used for busi- ness purposes. During the past year it has been sup- plied with steam-heating npparatns. It is now owned by Mr. Charles E. Wnring. The managing proprie- tors of it before May 1, 1860, were Henry Durell, Ed- ward Dusenberry and Robert L. Buckland. On the 1st of May, 1860, Mr. Oliver W. Doty, an experienced

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hotel-keeper of Poughkeepsie, assumed its manage- ment, but dying in a few months, was succeeded, in December of the same year, by his son, Mr. William H. Doty, who has now been its proprietor for more than twenty-five years. Under his management the housc has maintained a continuous popularity, and it still enjoys au excellent success.

THE MANSION HOUSE, on the corner of South Broadway, between Guion and Kellinger Streets, was built about 1835 by Dr. De Witt C Kellinger, who had been one of the proprietors of the old tavern. Dr. Kellinger kept his new house as a hotel for a number of years and gaincd for it a fine reputation. Previous to his death, in November, 1859, however, it took on more the character of a boarding-house, and this it has now been for many years. It belongs at present to Dr. Kellinger's daughters, Mrs. Judge Scrugham and Miss Joanna Kellinger. It has been conducted successively by Mrs. Sarah C. Brewster, Miss Mary Bigelow, Mr. Platt, Messrs. Johnson & Evans, Mrs. Norman K. Shears, Miss Josephinc Rus- sell, and its present proprietor, Mr. Samuel C. Down- ing. It was at first two stories and a half in height, but was afterwards raised another story. It has forty- two rooms and is a very popular resort.

THE DUNWELLYN at No. 35, 37 and 39 Ravine Avenue, was opened in 1881 by Mrs. Normau K. Shears, who had been proprietress of the Mansion House. The building first occupied was No. 39, a two-story double mansion with a mansard roof. To this were soon added two new three-story buildings, Nos. 35 and 37. These are connected with the first house by a covered passage-way. Four cottages on the opposite side of the street have now also been added to the establishment. The whole property is owned by Mr. Henry A. Dingee and managed by Mrs. Shears as a boarding-house. It accommodates eighty persons.

The only boarding-house of real celebrity besides those mentioned here, has been the " Peabody House," spoken of in another part of our work, and now de- molished. There are, however, many private board- ing-houses. Several houses are opened for boarders in the summer, which are otherwise employed during the rest of the year.

When speaking of once promineut hotels, we did not mention one which stood during Major Baldwin's days, on the site of the preseut No. 5 North Broadway, now Meller & Welsh's store. Its shed extended northward to the Saw-Mill River bridge. At onc time it was called the " Broadway House." Its great- est reputation was obtained during Major Baldwin's proprietorship of it. Then it was a very superior and popular house. It had, however, later proprie- tors. There have been many smaller hotels, some of which are still kept, and others of which are tradi- tions of the past. Probably the most prominent of the smaller hotels of the present is the " Yonkers Ho- tel," opposite the Hudson River Railroad Station. It ii .-- 15

is a new building, upon the site of an old one of the same name, formerly popular under the management of Colonel Oliver C. Denslow. Many places in the city now are called hotels by their keepers, merely to cover certain conditions under the present laws that regulate excise and license. We have at least a doz- en such places, cach of which takes on the name of " Hotel." But Yonkers has no prominent and noted hotels and boarding-houses, so far as we know, except those we have named and described.

SECTION XXI. Public Halls.

The first apartments in Youkers, which were used for public assemblies, other than the churches, were on the first floor of an unoccupied dwelling-house which, allowing for the widening of Main Street, since made, must have stood exactly on the present south- east corner of that street and South Broadway, where Russell & Co.'s book-store now is. They were spacious parlors separated by folding-doors. The length of the two, when the doors were opened gave to the whole the popular name of " The Long Room." This apartment has been mentioned before in our history as that in which the first Reformed Church services, and, in fact, all its services, were held from 1841 till its house of worship was completed, in 1845. The building, as already stated, was afterwards moved iuto Riverdale Avenue, near Washington Street, where it may still be seen.

The first building erected in Yonkers with an ex- press intention to supply a necdcd public hall was erccted in 1845 by Mr. Ethau Flagg. It stood and still stands at the corner of New Main Street and Palisade Avenue (once Mechanic and Factory Streets). The hall occupied the second floor and was known as Flagg's Hall. It had seating capacity for two hundred and fifty persons, and was used for a long time for all kinds of public meetings. A room on the third floor of the same building has been the meeting-place for several different lodges aud socie- ties, and is now known as Grand Army. Hall. St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church began its life in this building. The Baptist Church, too, began in it in 1849, and the Unitarian Church did the same in 1858. This hall, after the completion of Getty Lyceum in 1852, being less used for public meetings, was turned to business purposes. Of the Lyceum we have spokeu before. It was on the Main Street side of the Getty Housc, and its front wall falls about two feet back from the rest of the building.

RADFORD HALL BUILDING (recently purchased and turned into offices and dwellings by David Haw- ley, Esq.) stands on Getty Square, between North Broadway and Palisade Avenue, fronting southward. It occupies the site of an earlier building, erected by Mr. Thomas O. Farrington about 1857, known as the Farrington Building, and containing a hall known as Farrington Hall. This earlier structure was consumed

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

on the 3d of January, 1866, In a great conflagration which swept away sixty thousand dollars' worth of property, including, besides many less important bus- iness concerns, the Statesman newspaper office and the armory of the National Guard. Mr. William Radford, a resident of Yonkers, afterwards a member of Congress, bought the site after the fire, and erected the Radford Building, providing in the third story of it a spacious hall, known thenceforward as Radford Hall. Farrington Hall and its successor, Radford Hall, were, each in its period, prominent halls of the place.

THE WASHBURN (NOW WARBURTON) BUILDING, adjoining the City Hall ground on the north, was ereeted in 1876 by Benjamin S. Washburn & Son, hardware merehants of the city. It is a brick building, three stories high, with a mansard roof, very firmly built and fitted up with all modern improvements. It covers a lot of seventy-five feet front on Warburton Avenue and extending back two hundred feet. The ground floor is occupied with stores, and the second story with offices. The third story, on the south side, is devoted to a large hall, heated with steam and pro- vided with the best apparatus for lighting, for venti- lation and for quick egress in case of fire. The room is forty-two by eighty-five feet, exclusive of the stage. With its gallery, it has seating capacity for eight hundred and sixty-six persons. It has a commodions stage, fitted up with the usual conveniences for dra- matic performances. This public hall was opened June 1, 1876, in the presence of a very large assembly of people, with vocal and instrumental music and with addresses by prominent gentlemen of the city. At a later day the gentlemen whose publie spirit had projected it and brought it into being were overcome by business reverses and lost their valuable property. It passed into the hands of its builders, Messrs. James & George Stewart, and afterwards into the hands of Mr. James C. Bell. In transactions which followed it lost its original name. The building is now known as Warburton Building, and its hall is known as War- burton Hall.

THE WARBURTON HALL ASSOCIATION was incor- porated May 16, 1881. It came at once into the pos- session of the Washburn Building, which had just been purchased by some of its members on the 30th of April. The association was organized with a cap- ital of $30,000, in three hundred shares of $100 each. The incorporators were Messrs. William Allen Butler, Warren B. Smith, Walter W. Law, James Stewart and George Stewart. The building was purchased for $56,000, and improved at a cost of $4000, making its entire cost to the association, $60,000. In the hands of the new association, as under the management of the original owners, the hall was popular and its his- tory one of good success.

Still, there were objections to it, on account of its height from the ground, and, in addition to this, there were many who desired a larger, better adapted and

more attractive place for fashionable assemblies and brilliant dramatie entertainments. This led to the eon- struction, by the Warburton Hall Association, of the auditorium known as Music Hall, adjoining Warbur- ton Hall on the north. The first brick of this struc- ture was laid on the 20th of August, 1883, and the completed building was opened on Monday evening, April 14, 1884. The opening entertainment con- sisted of a vocal and instrumental concert, in which the Yonkers Glee Club, Miss Henrietta Beebe, a well- known vocalist, and the St. Cecilia's String Quartette Club took part, and an address was delivered by Wil- liam Allen Butler, Esq. The first dramatie entertain- men» given was "The Rajah," by the Madison Square Company.

This hall is said to be capable of seating one thousand people. It is located in the rear of the Warburton Build- ing, occupying the west end of the same ground, lying on Woodworth Avenue. The main entrance is from Warburton Avenue, through a spacious corridor, whose floor is level with the sidewalk. The hall also has abundant means of ingress and egress on its Woodworth Avenue side. The auditorium is fifty-five by fifty-one feet, and has parquet, balcony and gal- lery, with four proseenium and four open boxes. It is fitted up with every accessory for a first-class concert- hall. The present offieers of the association are Mr. William Allen Butler, president, and Mr. Walter W. Law, treasurer. Mr. John Bright is its agent and manager.

The only other prominent hall of the city at present is in the new building of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This a fine, spacious auditorium, capable of seating not less than two hundred and fifty people. Undoubtedly this hall will be conse- crated to the special objects of the Union, and, thus consecrated, will become a powerful educator in the city. Whatever is done with it will be worthy of the principles by which the Union has been and will be guided at all times.

Besides these prominent halls of the past and present, our history has incidentally brought out a number of smaller ones to which we cannot give further space here. Many apartments in the city are called halls, which are not for public uses, but belong to orders, clubs, lodges, etc. We have Teutonia Hall, Columbia Hall, Humboldt Hall, etc., etc. We need not speak of these again.

CASINO SKATING RINK .- This is an immense building, one of many ereeted in the country to meet the demands of roller-skating. It stood on the southeast corner of Riverdale Avenue and Hudson Street. It was a frame builling, covered with corru- gated iron, and covered an area of ninety by one hun- dred and thirty feet. It was built by W. E. Crosby & Co., and opened to the publie in December, 1884 The galleries, it is said, would seat one thousand people, and the floor often had as many as eight hundred skaters upon it at a time. The building, however.

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after standing about two years, took fire in some mys- terious way in April, 1886, and was quickly burned to the ground.

SECTION XXII. Travel and Transportation.

Communication with New York was one of the earliest necessities of the white settlers of this region. Of course, till within the present century, it could be carried on only by land eonveyanees and by boats on the Hudson. Road vehicles and river crafts are known to have been for a long time exceedingly rude, and traveling and transportation were, of course, corre- spondingly nncomfortable and tedious. The tardiness of the early river travel was significantly expressed in the name given by craftsmen to the land projeetion above Nyack, which, after it first came into view of those ascending the river, was always long, and often very long indeed, in being reached. They called it " Verdrietig Hoeck," or " Tedions Point." And there was no improvement in the river navigation, as to eom- fort or speed, till after 1800. The best patronized con- veyances till then continued to be the Albany and New York stages, of which we have spoken in connection with the old Yonkers tavern. The first steamboat appeared in 1807. But no way steamboat stopped at Yonkers till 1831, when Mr. Wells pnt out his Long Wharf to invite steamboats. The water was not deep enough, and, besides this, as we shall see shortly, the farmers and store-keepers hereabont managed their own freighting. No doubt most Yonkers people of to-day will be surprised to learn that the earliest way stcamers never touched points of our town, but made their landings on the other side, at Closter (now Alpine) and Lower Closter. This side did not supply passengers or freight enough to attract a steamer at first, while the other side did give a considerable patronage to the passing boats. People of the Yonkers side who wished to take one of the said boats were then rowed across to do so. From 1831, however, the steamboats began to stop at Yonkers. But in 1849 another very important development came in. The Hudson River Railroad began its op- erations in that year. This at onee brought to an end the New York and Albany Stage Line, and it also started an interferenee with the river travel, which never can cease. At different times sìnee, effort has been made to foree the steamboating into vigor again, by multiplying boats, putting down fares, etc. Abont fifteen years ago an active rivalry reigned for a time. Ten different boats touched at Yonkers daily on their round trips. But, of course, there was no profit in the arrangement to any of them, and the boats were quickly withdrawn. The only local passenger steam- boat now plying regularly between Yonkers alone and New York is the "Caroline A. Peene." Besides this one, however, a favorite Nyack boat, the " Chrys- tenah," touches here daily, having done so for many years. And the popular New York and Albany day

boats tonch here tri-weekly as they go up and down. The railroads are nearly fatal to the steamboat business now.

Ferry-boats run almost every summer between Yon- kers and Alpine. As, however, but little freight is carried, and the passenger travel is mostly for pleas- ure, there is not enough profit in the ferry to lift it into prominence or permanence. The patronage of the ferry-boats is very limited indeed.

The great pressure of travel to and from Yonkers is upon the railroads. Two lines of railroad pass through the eity, and a third passes within about one hundred yards of its eastern boundary, along its entire length. These roads are the Hudson River, the New York City and Northern, and the Harlem Division of the New York Central. Upon them scores of trains are run northward and southward every day. Large numbers of these are local trains, and all of them to- gether make opportunities of communication be- tween New York City and Yonkers from 5 A.M. and midnight almost constantly. The Hudson River road has its prominent Yonkers station at the foot of Main street, and two stations of less note, one called "Lud- low," about a half a mile to the south, and another called "Glenwood," about a mile to the north of it. The New York City and Northern has two stations within the city, one in the northern part, called "Northi Yonkers," and another in the southern called "South Yonkers." The Harlem Division of the New York Central is easily accessible to all the east side population of the city at its West Mount Vernon station, just beyond the Bronx River.

The New York City and Northern railroad owns ground for a spur of about four miles in length, spoken of as to be built from its Cortland station in New York City to Getty Square. This is much need- ed and we suppose cannot be long delayed. If it could be furnished, no doubt this road would com- mand by far the greater part of the travel between Yonkers and New York. At present the company invites Yonkers patronage to its road by furnishing free stage transportation between Getty Square and its South Yonkers station in connection with all its trains. This involves a tax of twenty minntes extra each way upon every person who uses the road. Yet so many submit to this tax through preference for this ronte that we cannot doubt what would be the result to the road, in the way of travel, if, in place of Wheat- on's stages running between South Yonkers and Getty Square, we could have the trains themselves re- eeiving and discharging their passengers at their con- templated Yonkers station, on Sonth Broadway.

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. II, Part 33

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1286

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898,
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1286