The Quarries of History: November 22, 1776, 1913, 1963, and 1965

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. [1]

Unheard of. Absurd. Unthinkable. New York State, where multiple layers of government traditionally regulate most everything, home to some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, had no rules governing shooting ranges. Incredibly, they could be placed anywhere. Such was the case with the former Westchester County Police Revolver & Rifle League shooting range (the “Shooting Range”) at 693 Ardsley Road within the boundary of the Ardsley School District and near its Middle School. Despite the name, the not-for-profit Shooting Range had no official connection to law enforcement. However, the improbable was true. As reported in a newspaper article in the Examiner News from 2014: 

“There are no state regulations of shooting ranges, including the one in Greenburgh, which first opened during the 1940s. The range also is not required to provide security at the site.”

Equally unbelievable, no safety inspections of shooting ranges were required. As Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner incredulously observed in the same Examiner News piece: “There are no state regulations prohibiting them from operating within shooting distance from a parkway or highway or within range of school bus stops, playgrounds (or) schools.” [2]

As explained in the below article appearing in The Daily Argus, the Shooting Range was established four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor in an abandoned quarry on a former estate: [3]

The granite from the quarry was believed to have been used for mile markers for the county parkways (e.g., Bronx River and later the Saw Mill River) envisioned, built, and promoted under the aegis of Ardsleyan and Westchester County engineer, James Owen. Seemingly, the old quarry was an “attractive nuisance” for exploration by young Ardsleyans, as indicated in the following “school news” article in the Dobbs Ferry Register: [4]

* * * *

In 2014, allegations were made that a shell casing was found in the new Ardsley Chase luxury residential development built by Toll Brothers on Ardsley Road, which abutted the Shooting Range, and that a resident of Ardsley Chase was struck in the leg by a circular object believed to be a bullet fragment (although never confirmed as coming from the Shooting Range). Because of these charges, coupled with complaints by residents in the nearby Greenville section of Edgemont to the east that because of tree deforestation by Con Edison to safeguard its electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure, the noise levels of ricocheting bullets at the Shooting Range had become unbearable, the facility was targeted to be shut. [5]

Facing public pressure, Con Edison refused to extend the Shooting Range’s then monthly lease term.  The facility was quickly closed, the entranceway was padlocked, and the Shooting Range passed away without even a twenty-one gun salute.  Left unaddressed was the environmental issue of tens of thousands of lead bullets remaining on the property. [6]

693 Ardsley Road (former entrance of the now-closed Westchester County Police Revolver and Rifle Range)

Strangely, but true, this was not the first time objections had been made about the Shooting Range. Half a century earlier, the Shooting Range’s neighbors were up in arms (no pun intended) over its existence. As reported in The New York Times, “They contended that Westchester County had become too populous for the noise, the traffic, and the hazards of outdoor target practice. A petition of neighbors asks the Greenburgh Town Board to close the range because of new $30,000 to $65,000 houses near it. The petition says that in addition to the “booming volleys” and barrages of what sounds like a Civil War battle or gang war there is the added insult of a resounding loudspeaker.” [7]

As the Times article explains, by 1962, the Shooting Range had been used for 26 years by all of Westchester's police departments and members of sportsmen’s organizations and high school rifle clubs. Infamously, the grounds of the Shooting Range, a woodland known as Thirty Deer Ridge (leased to the Rifle League by Consolidated Edison for $1 per year) which was known to the Native Americans who once lived in Greenburgh and as discussed below, was occupied by the French allies of the Americans during the  Revolutionary War, was where the 1929 torch-murder of Dolly Peacox occurred. [8]

Despite the homeowners’ protest, the Shooting Range remained open for another 52 years. 

* * * *

After an eight-year effort costing nearly half a million dollars, in 2014, the Town of Greenburgh (excluding the incorporated villages) released a Comprehensive Plan to guide land-use decisions in the Town for the next twenty years.  Although in Greenburgh for almost three-quarters of a century, the Town’s “Comprehensive” Plan inexplicably did not mention the Shooting Range site, which is not only sizable (containing over 64 acres) but provides a panorama of the Sprain River Valley.  As shown in the image below, Manhattan’s skyline is visible in the distance due to the site's elevation. Nor was the Town unaware of this large parcel’s historical importance. 

A 2008 memorandum written by distinguished author and scholar Robert A. Selig, Ph.D., a specialist on the role of the French forces under the comte de Rochambeau during the American Revolutionary War, in support of an effort by the late Greenburgh Town Historian Frank Jazzo to protect the portion of Thirty Deer Ridge where Toll Brothers planned to build Ardsley Chase, persuasively argued that the proposed development was likely the location of a French redoubt (i.e., a system of forts) highlighted on the 1851 map reproduced below during the 1781 Franco-American encampment in present-day Ardsley and Edgemont due to its birds-eye view. As Selig stated:

On a clear day one can easily see the skyline of New York City with the naked eye and discern the Grassy Sprain Reservoir and beyond that even St. Joseph's Seminary on the hill that was historically known as Valentine's Hill, where Washington often stayed and where Washington and Rochambeau met Andrew Corsa, their guide during the Grand Reconnaissance of 21-23 July 1781. [9]

The 1851 map identifies the Nelson farm, which later became Irene Beasley’s fifty-acre estate off Heatherdell Road and is now the location of Agnes Circle (Agnes Connors was Beasley’s  sister) and Windsong Road in Ardsley, as well as Capt. John King’s residence (the site of his pickle factory, which supplied the Union Army during the Civil War), for which King Street off Ashford Avenue in Ardsley is named.  Also depicted is Washington Hill, where George Washington had his headquarters at Joseph Appleby’s house during the 1781 encampment of the Continental Army. Washington’s troops, including the New York light artillery battalion commanded by Alexander Hamilton, were quartered in the vicinity of Concord Road Elementary School in Ardsley. Washington Hill is also in the general area of the present-day Ardsley High School on Farm Road which, as documented by Selig, was the road for traveling between the headquarters of Washington and Rochambeau (Rochambeau's headquarters being shown on the map as the site of the Heirs of J. Odell, which is undergoing historic restoration).

In the early 1960s, the Village of Ardsley created its first Comprehensive Master Plan. In a 1968 article by Joan Intrator, who, despite having no journalistic experience or training, beginning in the mid-1960s, became a superb reporter for the local newspaper, inquired and explained: “What is the mysterious document called Ardsley’s “master plan?” Most residents have never heard of it; others have the impression that it is a sort of Holy Scripture trotted out on those occasions when the Ardsley Planning Board recommends against a zoning change or the Village Board of Trustees disapproves one. Prepared in 1964 by Raymond & May, Planning and Urban Renewal Consultants, the master plan was a report on the total environment of Ardsley. It was intended to be used as a comprehensive guide to the future development of the village.” [10]

Ardsley Comprehensive Master Plan Cover Page (March 1964)

In another example of municipal “Rip Van Winkledom,” Intrator wrote that the 1964 plan was never adopted by the Village of Ardsley and largely ignored. [11] ("Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor, and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution). [12]

Rip Van Winkle sculpture on Main Street in Irvington (debuted in 2002). His eyes are half-open, as if he has just awoken. 

In 2021, nearly six decades after Ardsley’s first effort to craft a Comprehensive Plan for the Village, the current Ardsley Village Board acknowledged the lackluster appearance of the Village’s downtown was more than an eyesore.; it was a source of constant griping on today’s public square, social media. After decades of inaction, the Village committed itself to an all-out effort to reinvigorate the business district by adopting Ardsley’s first Comprehensive Plan which aimed to undo what is now understood as an unsound land use practice: restrictive zoning that negated the ability to develop residential units within the Village’s commercial districts. [13]  Permitting such “mixed-use” buildings is essential to attracting and sustaining mercantile activity and upgrading, repurposing, and demolishing obsolete commercial building stock plaguing older suburbs like Ardsley. Business management theorist Peter Drucker astutely observed: “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.” Increasing residential density in commercially zoned areas is a necessary tool to foster a lively and attractive downtown and to counter the last century's misguided orthodoxy that commercial and residential land uses should be segregated, especially in the suburbs. [14]

Consistent with the environmental awareness that came into full bloom with Earth Day in 1970, Ardsley’s new Comprehensive Plan is focused on preserving Ardsley’s natural resources and sensitive areas from degradation and pollution. The new Comprehensive Plan also endeavors to link “future” Ardsley to the possibilities that may be provided by recreation or other uses of its most significant natural resource, the Saw Mill River. This goal aligns with the ongoing regional and national efforts since 1964 to not view their waterways as foreign territories or afterthoughts, as seen in the extraordinary Hudson River Park along the west side of Manhattan. [15]

This world-famous riverside park came about chiefly through the successful eleven-year battle by Marcy Benstock’s one person Clean Air Campaign to stop the building of Westway, a superhighway proposed for the West Side of Manhattan along the Hudson River waterfront from the Battery to 42nd Street, which was promoted by two Presidents, two Governors, New York City’s Mayors, The New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post, the Army Corps of Engineers, the New York State Department of Transportation, and other business leaders and union officials. After detailing numerous violations of the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act by agencies of the federal government such as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Army Corps of Engineers, United States Southern District Judge Thomas P. Griesa ended the multi-billion dollar Westway project in 1985 with this concluding paragraph in his decision, which was upheld on appeal: [16]

* * * *

The Shooting Range, like downtown Ardsley, is not the only example of something that falls into a black hole of  governmental indifference until a crisis occurs. At the top of a hill, at the gateways to the incorporated Villages of Tuckahoe and Bronxville on White Plains Road in the Town of Eastchester, stands a building (“The Ward House”) built in the 1790s by Jonathan Ward. [17] The present building is a near replica of the original structure, believed to have been built in the early to mid portion of the 18th century by Jonathan’s father, Stephen Ward (the Supervisor of the Town of Eastchester during the colonial period and a supporter of independence from British rule), which was burned by the British in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War after they stripped its lumber to build huts to stave off winter.  

As explained in an article entitled “Stephen Ward - A local Revolutionary leader who guided the town’s transition from colonial times to the early republic,” penned by David Osborn, Site Manager, St. Paul’s Church National Historic Site:

Unfortunately, the position of the residence and the owner’s prominence in Patriot circles made it a target for retribution. In November 1778, British forces acting under orders of General William Tryon, Royal Governor of New York, destroyed the large, two story house as punishment for American unwillingness to negotiate with the Carlyle (sic) Commission, [18] which had been dispatched from England to try to negotiate a settlement with the political leaders of the Revolution. [19]

The first vein of high-grade white marble (which became the world-famous Tuckahoe Marble), was discovered on the grounds of the Ward House in 1822. Tuckahoe Marble was used in grand early nineteenth-century New York City Greek Revival buildings such as Federal Hall (1830), Brooklyn Borough Hall (1840), the Italianate Stewart's "Marble Palace" (1846), New York's first department store, the Washington Memorial Arch in Washington Square in Greenwich Village and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. (construction began in 1848). At its completion in 1884, it was the tallest structure in the world. [20]

Over the next two centuries, the Ward House was also known as “Ward’s Tavern” (when, during the stagecoach era, it served as a post office on the Road to White Plains or the White Plains Post Road) and “The Marble House” because of its close connection to the neighborhood’s marble industry. When Benjamin Franklin served as the postmaster for the American colonies, he placed a 23-mile marker at the Ward House, indicating its distance from the border of New York City. As the recently taken image at the Ward House property shows, a landing for the horse-drawn carriages that arrived at the rear of the building still exists. In 1839, while visiting the various Tuckahoe marble quarries, then-President Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) stayed at the Ward House. [21]

Stagecoach landing at the Ward House (adjacent to a marble walkway)

Beginning in 1944, the Ward House initially served as a women’s residence for Concordia College which was located in Bronxville. In 2021, amid the longstanding bleak economic realties challenging small institutions of higher education which were accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Concordia abruptly closed its doors and sold its campus to New Rochelle-based Iona College. Ironically, Iona, a private Catholic college, did not purchase the Ward House, where, in 1850, the first Catholic Mass for famine Irish immigrants working in Tuckahoe’s  quarries was conducted by the Reverend Eugene Maguire. [22] The site’s historical legacy was largely overlooked during the last two decaes of Concordia’s ownership outside of fleeting interest in 1976 during America’s Bicentennial and in 2002, the centennial anniversary of the 1902 incorporation of Tuckahoe as a village in the Town of Eastchester. [23]

Concordia’s prolonged use of the Ward House as a dormitory and later for staff housing without much attention to its historical significance (primarily caused by Concordia’s fiscal distress) diminished the Ward House’s previous architectural grandeur as a noteworthy example of a fine 18th-century colonial home on a storied road at the threshold of two thriving villages. Its interior now stands between the Scylla of an extreme fixer-upper and the Charybdis of having miles to go before it can sleep. Nevertheless, the exterior retains its stateliness. 

The rich history of the Ward House and its environs is being unearthed daily by the residents of a dramatically revitalized Village of Tuckahoe through the Friends of the Ward House, a grassroots organization of historians, preservationists, and civic leaders seeking to ensure the history of the Ward House is known to future generations. They are in good company. National leaders of the early American Republic, including George Washington, whose artillery scouts wrote about the Ward House in their reports, Alexander Hamilton, who, albeit unsuccessfully, represented Phebe Fowler Ward, the widow of Stephen’s brother Edmund, in litigation over its title after the War of Independence, John Jay, [24] the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who worked with Stephen Ward to ferret out conspiracies undermining the Patriot cause and who also served with him in the Provincial Congress, [25] and Aaron Burr (1756-1836), America’s third Vice-President, who according to a December 22, 1895, article appearing in The New York Times captioned "THE OLD WARD MANSION: A Rare Relic of the Revolutionary Period. HISTORIC HOUSE IN EAST CHESTER Built by a Royalist Two Centuries Ago -The Scene of a Bloody Conflict in Which Aaron Burr Was a Participant,” provided a statement (shown below) in support of a request filed in the U.S. House of Representatives by Jonathan Ward seeking restitution for the destruction of the original Ward House by the British, were familiar with and recognized its strategic importance. [26]

In October 1776, the Ward House also served as the headquarters for William Howe, Commander in Chief of the British forces at the Battle of White Plains. While The Battle of White Plains was arguably a military success for Howe’s British and Hessian troops, Washington was the ultimate victor by engineering a strategic retreat that thwarted British plans to vanquish the Continental Army at the war’s outset. However (again, no pun intended), the aftermath of the Battle of White Plains would, during the years of the Revolutionary War, turn southern Westchester County, including Ardsley, into what has been described as the “Neutral Ground,” a bloody and violent battleground between two opposing armies and gangs of local militias known as “Cowboys” (who rode for the Americans) and “Skinners” (who rode for the British)” [27] As related in the January 26, 1976, article in the Bronxville Review Press and Reporter in quoting a colonial-era newspaper report from two centuries earlier: 

In November [1776], the British and American armies withdrew from the area, leaving a desolate no-man’s land behind them.  The Virginia Gazette of November 22 reported: “... (Howe’s) army have marked their retreat with every act of rapine and defoliation, not confining their depredations to Whigs, for Tories have equally suffered with them. It is alleged that it is not in General Howe’s power to restrain the Hessians or other foreigners in his army, it being of too much consequence to offend them for trifles.

Despite serving as a national symbol of freedom for almost two hundred fifty years, the Ward House now faces the ignominy of the wrecking ball in an often historically incurious 21st-century America. However, due to the tireless efforts of the Friends of the Ward House, in August 2021, the Village of Tuckahoe passed a six-month moratorium on the demolition of or issuance of building permits for historic landmarks like the Ward House while it considers enacting a comprehensive historic preservation law. The moratorium expires in February 2022. Neither Eastchester nor Bronxville have any laws protecting or preserving historic structures. In 2007, Ardsley added Chapter 125 to its Village Code, protecting certain stone pillars and walls from removal or alteration.

Social critic and author James Howard Kunstler, best known for his book, “The Geography of Nowhere,” has potently argued, that local efforts to preserve historic landmarks as has been undertaken in Tuckahoe and Ardsley are connected to a pressing national cultural and psychological imperative. As Kunstler has remarked: “We have created thousands and thousands of places in America that aren't worth caring about, and when we have enough of them, we're going to have a country that's not worth defending.”

* * * *

On November 22, 1913, fifty years before the fateful day when America’s youngest President, John F. Kennedy (who had lived in his family’s Bronxville home at 294 Pondfield Road from 1929 to 1942, which was demolished in 1953), [28] was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald at 12:30 p.m. in Dallas, Texas with an Italian-made rifle having a side-mounted telescopic sight he obtained by mail order for just under thirty dollars, the Bronx Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) dedicated a monument (shown below) on White Plains Road to Captain Samuel Crawford, situated immediately across White Plains Road from the Ward House. [29] Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery is graced by an eternal flame displayed on a postage stamp paying tribute to the slain President (which was expeditiously issued by the Post Office before, had he lived, his next birthday in May, when he would have been a mere 47 years old), together with a pertinent section from his enduring 1961 inaugural address. Although rarely used or even seen today, in January 1964, the United States Mint put Kennedy’s profile (replacing Benjamin Franklin) on the obverse of its half-dollar coin. General circulation stopped in 2001 but resumed in 2021 and is primarily considered a memorial to the late 35th President. In November 1964, country music singer-songwriter Roger Miller recorded the massive chart topping crossover hit song “King of the Road,” which opened with the following lyrics: “Trailer for sale or rent, Rooms to let, fifty cents.” The single was produced by guitarist Jerry Kennedy (no relation to the President), who was one of the Nashville session musicians on Bob Dylan’s peerless 1966 double album, Blonde on Blonde. Preternaturally, Dylan (b. 1941) married his first wife, Sara Lownds (b. October 25, 1939 as Shirley Marlin Noznisky in Wilmington, Delaware), on November 22, 1965.

The only other American President buried in Arlington is William Howard Taft (1857-1930), who visited Ardsley in 1912 as a luncheon guest of Adolph Lewisohn at his Heatherdell Farms estate, and for whom an Ardsley street (Taft Lane) is named. The two other Ardsley streets named for Presidents are McKinley Place and Lincoln Avenue. These two Presidents were, like Kennedy, killed in office. Through a simple twist of fate, brother and sister sculptors David and Judith Rubin grew up on Lincoln Avenue in Ardsley and, in 2017, created a six-foot statue of William Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, holding the 1867 Treaty of Cession, which authorized the sale of the Alaska Territory to the United States from the Russian Empire. It now stands across the street from the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau. Before being cast in bronze, the clay statue was fabricated in the basement of their family home at 31 Lincoln Avenue in Ardsley.

The DAR’s Crawford monument sits in a pocket park named for prominent Republican politician and Westchester County Judge Silas Gifford (1826-1895), who not only lived in the Ward House when it was known as the Marble House but whose grandfather, Amaziah Gifford (1762-1840), served in the Continental Army for four years. [30]. The April 1927 Quarterly Bulletin of the Westchester County Historical Society (on page 11), contained an announcement, entitled “Ward House May Be Seen.” It discusses a planned May 4 visit to the Ward House by members of the Westchester County Historical Society and also refers to it as the “Crawford or Gifford House.” The posting notes that the then owners, Dr. and Mrs. J.K. Sterrett, who were hosting a benefit for the endownment fund of the Pennsylvania College of Women, for “A Masque of Old Loves,” with tableaux and music by Faith Van Valkenburgh Vilas of Scarsdale, believed “the stairs, the rail and beams now in the attic were in the original Ward House.”

Crawford, a Scarsdale resident, and American Revolutionary War hero, was killed in 1777 alongside numerous fellow patriots after being forced into a skirmish with British troops outside the Ward House. [31] The re-burial of his fallen comrades was reported under the below headline appearing in the February 17, 1923, Scarsdale Inquirer: [32]

Previously, when the Declaration of Independence was read on the steps of the White Plains courthouse on July 11, 1776,  it is believed Crawford seconded a motion made by John Thomas of Harrison that the Provincial Congress support the Declaration of Independence at “the risk of lives and property.” As explained in an unpublished manuscript by Eastchester Town Historian Richard Forliano: 

To the British and their Loyalist supporters, Crawford was a notorious rebel, a proponent of sedition, and a compatriot of Patriot [Eastchester] Town Supervisor Stephen Ward. Immediately after he gave his name to one of his British captors, the soldier ran him through with a bayonet; Crawford was thrown into a wagon to Kingsbridge and then transported to a prison in New York City. Samuel Crawford died on the way before he reached his 46th birthday.  

Forliano ruefully observes this truth about America’s inveterate historical amnesia:

Today, people who pass by this monument are unaware of Crawford, his greatness, and the meaning of his sacrifice.

Not surprisingly, when one makes a left-hand turn from White Plains Road (with the Ward House on your right) onto Winter Hill Road, drivers encounter a blind spot while passing the Crawford Monument. 

Crawford Monument facing the Ward House on White Plains Post Road

On this 58th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death [33], with the destiny of the Ward House undetermined, let us recall Kennedy’s compelling insight advanced in a speech he gave at Hyde Park in 1960, while still a Senator, on the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act, why we are obligated to preserve our American history:

“We celebrate the past to awaken the future.” [34]

Reading Copy of Kennedy’s Speech at Hyde Park

Endnotes

[1] Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar cited in Twain, Mark, Following the Equator - A Journey Around the World, (American Publishing Company, Hartford, CT,1897), Chapter 15.

[2] https://www.theexaminernews.com/greenburgh-residents-alarmed-about-firearms/

[3] August 12, 1941, p.10

[4] March 10, 1938, p. 2; An “attractive nuisance” is a dangerous condition on a landowner's property that may attract children onto the land and may involve risk or harm to their safety.

[5] Images of the quarry and the shooting range can be seen in this television report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlcMSmCeyes The loss of the outdoor Shooting Range was offset by the opening of a new indoor gun range in Elmsford. https://www.bluelinetactical.com

[6] Supporters of the Shooting Range threatened to call in advisors from the National Rifle Association when the Town began crafting legislation to regulate shooting ranges. https://www.theexaminernews.com/greenburgh-gun-range-rounds-up-support This politically tone deaf move in a deep-blue Greenburgh backfired.

[7] Neighbors Battle Two Rifle Ranges: Westchester Residents Say Shots Hit Pets and Homes (April 22, 1962). P. 45.

[8] The murder of Dolly Peacox by her estranged husband, Earle Peacox, of one year, occurred in their Mt. Vernon apartment in 1929. Earle Peacox then moved the body to the Greenburgh site, where he set it on fire. At trial, Peacox admitted to killing his wife but successfully escaped the electric chair with a “blame the victim” and a temporary insanity defense. Although sentenced to twenty years in prison for manslaughter, he was released in 1943 at age 36 from Attica State Prison after serving fourteen years in prison. (“Peacox Goes Free; Killed Wife in ‘29,:’Model Prisoner’ Won Mail Course and a Radio Job'' The New York Times (October 7, 1943, p. 2)). He subsequently remarried and died in 1982. He is buried in Webster Rural Cemetery in Monroe County in upstate New York. Lillian Dorothy “Lillie'' Heinzelman Peacox (b. 1909) is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Norwalk. Grave of Dorothy Peacox The so-called torch-murder case was widely covered in both the national tabloids. The Torch-Girl Murder but also on the front page of The New York Times (April 30, 1929). The Native American history of Thirty Deer Ridge in Ardsley is discussed in the W.R. Blackie section of the Ardsley Historical Society’s website.

[9] Selig is the author of “The Franco-American Encampment in the Town of Greenburgh, 6 July – 18 August 1781: A Historical Overview and Resource Inventory,” found on the Odell House website. https://www.odellrochambeau.org   

[10] Intrator is in her mid-90s and lives in San Francisco. She lived in Ardsley for over two decades at 31 Western Drive. Her two sons graduated from Ardsley High School (her son Thomas sadly passed away at age 62 in 2014; he was a National Merit Scholar at Ardsley High School (Class of 1970) and an internationally known plasma physicist (Physics Today Obituary for Thomas Intrator). In addition to her accidental career in journalism covering Ardsley Village and School Board meetings, she was a member and secretary of the Westchester Fencers Club (Intrator having begun fencing in 1950). She later worked for Greenburgh’s Parks and Recreation Department (during which time she penned an article in 1977 for The New York Times on Westchester’s parks), was an instructor at Mercy College, and taught a course on plays sponsored by the Friends of the Ardsley Public Library. Intrator earned a Bachelor of Arts from Smith College in English Language and Literature and a Master’s from Columbia University in English education.

[11] ‘Unknown’ Ardsley Master Plan Dates back to 1964 Study. The Dobbs Ferry Sentinel (September 26, 1968). At the time of publication of Intrator’s article on Ardsley’s master plan (the first of several), the newspaper (a weekly) cost ten cents. Ardsley’s current weekly local paper, The Rivertowns Enterprise, costs seventy-five cents.

[12] Washington Irving (1793-1859) (the namesake of Ardsley’s nearby river village of Irvington-on-Hudson) is listed on an exterior tablet at the former Ashford Avenue School in Ardsley, honoring other American authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe. A photograph of the tablet appears in the Gallery link of the Ardsley Historical Society’s website. The former school building (Ardsley’s original high school) is now the Ashford Court Condominium. Irving’s Sunnyside estate (built in 1835) was originally in an area that, as of 1854, was known as Irvington, which was later incorporated into a village in 1872. However, it was not soon enough, as its northerly neighbor, Tarrytown (incorporated in 1870), lopped off the northerly portion of Irvington, including Washington Irving’s home at Sunnyside.

[13] On November 1, 2021, the Ardsley Village Board hired a firm in Manhattan, Kansas, to develop and host a Comprehensive Plan website. It remains to be seen how the Comprehensive Plan, developed by the Village Board over several years before, during, and “after” the coronavirus pandemic, dovetails with the new reality of the post-COVID-19/Amazon/UPS delivery era. Auspiciously, the front-page story in the November 4, 2021, Rivertowns Enterprise reported that in the 2020 census, Ardsley experienced the highest level of population growth (14.1%) in Westchester County.

[14] The quip that “You can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there” is widely attributed online to the preeminent 20th-century urban theorist Jane Jacobs. However, the authenticity of this quote has not been verified, and in discussions by the author with scholars of Jacobs, it is likely something she did not write. Either way, it is a reasonably accurate reflection of the current perspective on land use planning for older suburban downtowns.

[15] Similarly, the previously contaminated industrial parcels along the Hudson River in nearby Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, and Irvington are being transformed into inviting parks for active and passive recreation.

[16] The modern-day environmental movement began in 1962 after residents in the Hudson River Valley opposed Consolidated Edison’s proposal to build an enormous hydroelectric plant on the Hudson River at the base of Storm King Mountain. That successful seventeen-year legal battle was primarily won due to the ability of environmentalists to sue in the federal courts. Lifset, Robert D., Power on the Hudson, Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014)

[17] The Ward or Warde family is of English origin and traces its American roots to the early 17th-century.

[18] Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Carlisle Commission." Encyclopedia Britannica, February 5, 2016. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carlisle-Commission.

[19] Osborn’s article provides additional support for the importance of Stephen Ward and his residence:  “A recognizable Patriot official, his large home located on the well-traveled Road to White Plains developed into a point of reference. In part, this identification was complimentary, reflecting his reputation. General William Heath used Ward’s house as a landmark to locate the position of his Continental troops in a letter to General Washington in January 1777. Alexander Hamilton, a lieutenant colonel and aide de camp to the commander in chief, informed General Horatio Gates in 1778 that “the enemy being out advanced this side of Ward’s house, the troops should be put under arms, as a precaution.” https://www.nps.gov/sapa/learn/historyculture/upload/stephenwardarticleforwebsite.pdf 

[20] As explained by author Louis Torres in “Tuckahoe Marble, The Rise and Fall of an Industry in Eastchester 1822-1930” (Harbor Hill Books, 1976), the discovery became highly significant as, fortuitously, “The 1820s witnessed the beginnings of that period of American architecture known as Greek Revival.”

[21] The prized Tuckahoe marble quarries extended into the southerly part of Scarsdale. A similar white marble was quarried in Hastings and used in prominent homes such as Lyndhurst. For decades, the abandoned quarry in Hastings was a dump for household refuse. As related in Daniel Ellsberg's 2017 book, The Doomsday Machine, the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Department of Defense study of American political and military involvement in Vietnam, were briefly hidden in the quarry by his brother Harry for safekeeping. The old marble quarry in Hastings has now been transformed into a park. Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States, served one term from 1837-1841. In the fourteenth episode of the eighth season of the Seinfeld television show, entitled “The Van Buren Boys,” the show’s protagonists Kramer and George Costanza have separate run-ins with a New York street gang whose sign is holding up eight fingers because the gang is named for the eighth President of the United States, Martin Van Buren (who was also the first President from New York State) The others include Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, Millard Fillmore, and Donald Trump.

[22] Thomas A. Brennan, Church of the Immaculate Conception: The Sesquicentennial History of a Eucharistic People. 2003. Page 9; V.E. Macy Park in Ardsley features the critically praised “Great Hunger Memorial” monument, which commemorates the suffering of millions of Irish peasants who died from the potato famine or were forced to emigrate. https://parks.westchestergov.com/v-e-macy-park/great-hunger-memorial

[23] Mount Vernon became Eastchester’s first village in 1853 and later a separate city in 1892. Bronxville was incorporated as a village in the Town of Eastchester in 1898. Ardsley was incorporated in 1896. In 1967, a vote on Edgemont incorporation was defeated by a three-to-one margin. Two recent incorporation petitions seeking the right to vote on Edgemont becoming the seventh village in the Town of Greenburgh have been defeated in the courts, proving the old New York adage, that just as you cannot fight gravity, “You cannot fight “Town” Hall.”

[24] John Jay’s 23-acre historic homestead in Rye has an 1838 Greek Revival home. https://www.hudsonrivervalley.com/sites/Jay-Heritage-Center-/details

[25] The New York Provincial Congress (1775–1777) was a revolutionary provisional government formed by colonists during the American Revolution.

[26] Stephen Ward is buried in the cemetery of St. Paul’s Church (now in  the City of Mt. Vernon but once part of Eastchester). It was designated a National Landmark in 1980. https://www.nps.gov/sapa/index.htm Ward’s request for compensation was denied. Bronxville Review Press and Reporter (January 29, 1976). His epitaph (as noted in Bolton’s The History of the Several Towns, Manors, and Patents of Westchester County, from its First Settlement to Present Times, Chas, F. Roper, 1881, 255) (available on Google Books), begins as follows:

Sons of America

Mourn for your country, she has lost a friend

Who did her rights and liberties defend.

May rising patriots keep those rights secure,

And hand them down to latest ages pure.

[27] Edna Gabler, Caught Between The Lines: Eastchester During the American Revolution (originally published in “Out Of The Wilderness: The Emergence of Eastchester, Tuckahoe & Bronxville, NY (1664-2014) (Eastchester 350th Anniversary, Inc. 2014), republished in the Journal of the American Revolution in 2019 (https://allthingsliberty.com/2019/02/caught-between-the-lines-eastchester-new-york-during-the-american-revolution/

[28] Coincidentally, these were the same years of Earle Peacox’s incarceration. Before her ill-fated marriage in 1928, Dorothy Peacox lived in Bronxville with her mother for fifteen years and worked as a clerk for the Bronxville Press Company in Tuckahoe. Tuckahoe Record (May 2, 1929).

[29] The Bronx DAR Chapter was based in Mount Vernon, NY. The tablet was unveiled by Crawford’s great-great-great-grandson, Morell T. Crawford. Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, Vol. XLVI, No. 1, January 1915, p. 232-233

[30] History of the Bar and Bench of New York, Vol II (1897), p. 174-5

[31] The November 18, 1777, date listed on the tablet is wrong. Subsequent historical research of original sources by Otto Hufeland established that Crawford’s altercation with the British outside  the Ward House took place on the evening of March 16, 1777. Westchester County during the American Revolution 1775-1783 White Plains, New York: Westchester County Historical Society, 1926, 62.  Forliano’s unreleased manuscript further provides that:  “According to an account by an American private in 1844, Joseph Dibble, the Americans inside the [Ward] house attempted to surrender. Campbell’s [who commanded the British troops] reply was, “Fire away boys. Kill all the d…d rebels.” In the ensuing battle, Campbell was killed and a number of patriot militia inside the Ward House escaped.  The exact number of those who died in this brief but bloody fight will most likely never be known. Those who did perish were buried nearby in unmarked graves. What both accounts agreed upon was that 27 American militia were taken captive.”  Caleb Tompkins, “Recollections of the Revolution,''  The MacDonald Papers: Part 2. White Plains, New York: Westchester County Historical Society, 1927. 

[32] Of course, February 22nd is George Washington’s birthday. Subsequent accounts indicate nearly 3,000 people paid tribute at the memorial event held for the two unknown soldiers, including, about 1,000 schoolchildren. The Scarsdale Inquirer article relates that the fallen Continental Army soldiers “were hastily buried by their comrades near the old Ward House.” In making a case for the need to save the Ward House, Forliano asserts: “Few, if any, Westchester homes, preserve the story of the creation of the American nation as does the Ward House. The site encapsulates the armed struggles, suffering, and political divisions during the American Revolution. Six founding fathers are connected with the Ward House. Westchester’s most important revolutionary leader to die in the service of our country [Crawford] was assassinated here. In unmarked graves, scores of Patriot militia lie buried.”

[33] Kennedy’s murder was a profound event in the American psyche, which for decades was remembered with the question, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” On March 27, 2020, as the pandemic raged across America, Bob Dylan announced the release on Twitter of the single “Murder Most Foul,” the longest song in his 60-year career, which addressed the Kennedy assassination in the “context of the greater American political and cultural history.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Most_Foul_(song). While researching this post, the author was parked outside Irvington’s library. Seeing my “Ardsley Historical Society” car magnet, a man (who I learned was Joseph Montaruli) asked me if I was from Ardsley. Montaruli, in his 80th year, and now a resident of Irvington, had grown up in Ardsley (albeit on Northfield Avenue, which was named for Cyrus Field, whose “Ardsley” estate in Irvington was the namesake of the Village of Ardsley) in Dobbs Ferry, which is in the Ardsley School District. The youngest of five children, and living his entire life in the Rivertowns, he s a living encyclopedia of Ardsley history, including knowing three of its most beloved residents, the Engleman family (where Irwin ran the village pharmacy and his brother Marty and his wife Francine operated the legendary “Marty’s Mug & Munch” restaurant), Ardsley family physician George Newman, whose wife Frances, was profiled in an earlier Timepiece, and Anthony Radomoski, whose remarkable art works made of leather are showcased on the second floor of Ardsley Village Hall. I asked Joe about November 22, 1963. Without hesitation, but in a sorrowful manner, he told me that he and his brother Carl were renovating a movie theater in downtown Yonkers on Riverdale Avenue. when they learned from the radio about the assassination. In 1974, while working at 127 Huntley Drive in Ardsley, Carl unearthed the bones of either a young mastodon or woolly mammoth. While the homeowners (the Grells) initially wanted the backyard work to be finished soon, later “Mrs. Grell admitted the discovery had been exciting for the Grells and their five children, as well as the many neighbors and a horde of school children who wandered in and out of the yard during the day. It was like Fifth Avenue here., she said.” (The Herald Statesman, October 10, 1974). Some music journalists have argued that Beatlemania was fueled in America in part as an antidote to the doom surrounding the country in the aftermath of the assisination (The Beatles first arrived in America on February 7, 1964, at Kennedy Airport (known as Idlewild prior to the assassination)). However, eminent and prolific Beatle historian Bruce Spizer, in his unparalleled “The Beatles are Coming! The Birthplace of Beatlemania in America” https://www.beatle.net/product/the-beatles-are-coming/, convincing refutes this myth.. https://www.beatle.net/how-beatlemania-started-in-america-interview-on-the-ray-carr-show/; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" was written by American poet Robert Frost in 1922 and published in 1923, as part of his collection New Hampshire. Frost was not only Kennedy’s favorite poet, but the first poet to speak at a Presidential inauguration. Kennedy was reportedly reticent about inviting Frost fearing he would upstage him. Although merely 1366 words, six decades later Kennedy’s inaugural address remains indelible. Sixty years later at the 2021 inauguration of Joseph Biden,, Amanda Gorman stole the event with her sparkling poem, “The Hill We Climb,” which with optimism and confidence in the future prospect of the American experiment, met the perilous moment of a United States battered and confused by the ongoing twin pandemics of COVID-19 and opioid abuse, the paroxysm following the horrific murder of George Floyd, a cluster of seemingly endless (and futile) undeclared foreign wars, the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and the persistent refusal of the outgoing President to accept the results of the November 3, 2020, election which remains ongoing a year after Fox News called Arizona for Biden, a serpent’s tooth puncturing Trump’s “red state mirage” that he was re-elected for a second term. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/20/amanda-gormans-inaugural-poem-the-hill-we-climb-full-text.html

[34] One month and one day earlier, in Los Angeles, Kennedy had accepted the nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President. Although her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) had died fifteen years earlier, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), was the nation’s most influential Democrat and woman.. Kennedy, a cold warrior, needed her support in the upcoming election, particularly with the liberal wing of the party which she led. Hence, Kennedy’s appearance at the historic Dutchess County residence of the Roosevelt family to exalt FDR’s signature domestic achievement, the Social Security Act. The sentence that appears before the sentence cited in the text is perfectly suited to the mission behind the campaign to save the Ward House: “And this is why we have gathered here at the home of enduring greatness - not merely to pay tribute - but to re-freshen our spirits and stir our hearts for the tasks which lie ahead.” Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files. Speeches and the Press. Speech Files, 1953-1960. 25th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act, Hyde Park, New York, 14 August 1960. JFKSEN-0910-018. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/social-security-25th-anniversary-hyde-park-ny-19600814