When Will It Be Over... Update

There's good news and bad news. Back on January 27, I posed the question, "When will the Popham Road Bridge construction be finished."  The good news is that it is scheduled to be finished in December, 2012.

The bad news is that construction is scheduled to begin this month on the Crane Bridge Road on the Bronx River Parkway. The project will take place for three years.

Ten months from now both the north and south bound exits in Scarsdale will be closed for two years. The really bad news is that seventeen parking spotson Depot Place by the Scarsdale Metro North station will become a staging area for the needed equipment. This will have a major impact on merchants and customers.

The project which will be funded by the County is projected to cost over 39 million dollars. The new bridge will have sidewalks and a ramp to give pedestrians access to the path along the Bronx River Parkway and the Metro North platforms.

To learn more, here's a link to the Westchester County site:

http://publicworks.westchestergov.com/crane-road-bridge

Boss Tweed Opens Up Central Avenue

William Magrear Tweed, better known as Boss Tweed, was a corrupt politician who personified the greed and corruption that existed in New York after the Civil War. 

 What did he have to do with Central Avenue ?

It was Boss Tweed who wanted to extend Central Avenue from New York City to Albany. The road was supposed to be 100 feet wide.  Tweed not only conned farmers along the path to give up part of their land, but made them pay for the privalege of having the road pass by their farms. For a company to receive contracts, it had to give kickbacks  to Tweed and his associates. Central Park Avenue was completed in 1871, but only as far as White Plains. Although the road was 100 feet wide, only 16 feet of it was a finished surface. The road eventually brought development into the Westchester area.

The Carr house, built 1910

In the early 20th Century, Henry Carr, a New York banker bought forty acres of land on the eastern side of Fort Hill Road, south of Ardsley Road.  Mr. Carr built a Victorian style house as a summer home.The original house had porches and had pine trees brought in from New England.  The house, much altered still stands today on Azalea Road.

A Thought on Earth Day -2012

The Greenburgh Town Board is planning on eliminating leaf pickup next fall.  Eliminating the unbagged leaf pickup will save the town a lot of money but residents will incur the cost of buying leaf bags and paying for the removal of the leaves from their lawn.  Homeowners in Edgemont already pay higher taxes than other residents in Greenburgh. Don't you think our taxes should cover the leaf pickup?

Let's forget about the money. What is not being discussed is the environmental impact.  What about the waste of paper in making individual homeowners bag all their leaves?  The average home will use at least twenty bags.
This makes me angry.  I decided to make a trip to Home Depot. I weighed twenty empty refuse bags and found them to weigh 12 pounds.

According to the 2010 census, Edgemont has 7,116 residents. If the town board has its way, there will be over 60,000 pounds of paper waste dumped in the landfill. Is this how much our town cares about its environmental impact?  The first Earth Day was 43 years ago.  Does the Town Board know that or care ?

All Aboard

On April 25, 1831, the New York Legislature incorporated the NY + Harlem RailRoad Company.  The people who lived here in Greenville had hoped that the line would be built along what was Washington Avenue (now known as Central Avenue). Instead it was decided to be built along the Bronx River. The growth that would have brought further development to Greenville instead took place in Scarsdale and Bronxville. The Harlem division of the New York Central was opened in 1846, providing service between New York City and White Plains.

Edgemont at the New York Historical Society

If you want to see what Edgemont looked like back in the late 1700's, pay a visit to the Library at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan on 77th Street and Central Park West and visit the Erskine Dewitt Map Collection.  Robert Erskine was the cartographer (map maker) for George Washington. In one of his drawings from 1778, Erskine drew a map of the Greenville area showing three homes. One was the home of Joshua Hunt at what is near 221 Old Army Road today, and another is that of John Underhill at the corner of what is Underhill Road and Central Park Avenue today.
The only roads (or more accurately trails) were Old Army Road, Fort Hill Road and Ardsley Road (which was most likely an old Indian Trail that linked the area to the Hudson River).

Edgemont's Castle

If you are driving on Central Avenue by Ardsley Road and look up the hill, you will notice Edgemont's castle.  The castle was built in 1928. Building it was a boyhood dream of the mural artist, Vincent Maragliotti (1888-1978). Maragliotti emigrated to America when he was 17. After studying fine arts and architecture, he went on to paint murals in the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston as well as the Waldorf-Astoria and Schubert Theater in New York City. He did extensive work painting, decorating, and repairing of the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg.