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>> 15 1 From City of Hills to City of Vision The History of Yonkers, New York No place feels quite like Yonkers, rough-hewn and jagged, a working-class bridge between the towers of Manhattan to the south, and the pampered hills of Westchester County to the north. . . . In sum, there is a defiant nostalgia here, the hallmark of a place that used to be something else, and that, too, is apt. During an era that no one still living actually remembers, but everyone seems to yearn for, Yonkers was a great city. Lisa Belkin, New York Times reporter, 1991 In 1969, after two weeks of public hearings, a New York State Commission of Investigation discovered a private carting deal with Mafia leaders that cost the city of Yonkers approximately $1 million a year. When asked for his reaction, the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce president shrugged off the charges by stating, “All cities have their scandals.” In his report, Paul J. Curran, the commission’s chairman, admonished the city for being plagued with “intimidation, servility, favoritism, mismanagement , inefficiency and waste.”1 This incident might very well be the basis for the familiar Yonkers epithet, “a city of hills where nothing is on the level.” Though this characterization clearly is meant to disparage Yonkers, the city’s hilly geography is a suitable metaphor for understanding its complicated history. Advancements in steamboat and railroad technology and the subsequent growth in business and population marked Yonkers’s ascent from small agricultural community to the “City of Gracious Living” by the end of the nineteenth century. Despite an influx of new residents and housing spurts in suburban tracts of north and east Yonkers during the 1920s and 1950s, the staggering loss of industry and jobs in the decades after World War II deeply wounded the city. These trends, coupled with a 16 > 17 Rechgawawanck Indians. The area was called “Nappeckamack,” or “trap fishing place,” because of the plentiful fishing offered by the nearby Nepperhan (later Saw Mill) River. The bay provided fresh water and a safe dock for canoes, and the village itself was located on high ground, making the vicinity safe from attacks launched from the nearby Hudson River.4 After receiving a grant from the Dutch West India Company, a young lawyer named Adriaen Van Der Donck purchased the land from Chief Tacharew in 1646. Shortly thereafter, he built a plantation and sawmill on the banks of the Nepperhan. Despite an untimely death in 1655, the area still bears his name. Called “de jonkheer,” or young gentleman , “De Jonkheer’s Landt” evolved into what we now call Yonkers.5 Frederick Philipse, who purchased much of Van Der Donck’s land in 1672, is thought to be the real founder of Yonkers. His sprawling estate, which became the Manor of Philipsborough by royal charter in 1693, remained in his family for more than a hundred years. Philipse’s home, Manor Hall, was built in 1682 and still stands. The U.S. government later confiscated surrounding property because his descendants had been loyal to the British during the American Revolution. Much of the land was sold to former tenants, who made a livelihood from the local farming of apples, peaches, and cucumbers, the latter earning Yonkers the nickname of “pickle port.”6 In addition, abundant waterpower offered by the confluence of the Hudson and Saw Mill Rivers made possible the cultivation of rye, wheat, corn, and oats. At the same time that fresh produce was being shipped out of Yonkers, many people passed through the small community by way of the stagecoach that began to travel between New York City and Albany in 1785. Here letters and mail were dropped off, horses were changed, and weary travelers found refreshment at the Indian Queen, where vegetables from the keeper’s garden supplied the food for simple, wholesome meals. Despite being an important rest stop, this village of little more than 1,100 remained primarily a community of small shops, mills, taverns, and farms into the early decades of the nineteenth century.7 Steamboats and railroads changed Yonkers in the years that followed as reliable transportation facilitated the growth of New York City’s periphery. One contemporary noted in 1855 that suburban enclaves were “springing up like mushrooms . . . in Yonkers and other places on the Hudson River.”8 Five steamboat liners were stopping daily in Yonkers en 18 > 19 watering hole, the Port of Missing Men. That Yonkers residents liked to drink was much to the...

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