Written by John A. Corry

Feb. 11, 2015: In 1965, not wishing to raise a family in New York City, Emily and I moved to Bronxville from our Manhattan rental apartment. 

Why did we choose Bronxville? As an associate lawyer in a large Wall Street firm, I had no idea where in New York my career would take me. Although the New Jersey suburbs were easy commutes to lower Manhattan, to offices in the Grand Central area they were anything but convenient, as was the case with the Upper East Side museums and art galleries that Emily and I liked to visit. I had friends at the office who lived in Bronxville and praised its easy commute to Grand Central. With a real estate agent recommended by one of them, on our second visit we bought a house with a nice backyard on Dusenberry Road, where we lived for 38 years. (We paid $70,000 for it and in 2003 sold it for 25 times that amount.)

Just as important, Bronxville was well known for its excellent public school, which a Department of Education survey had recently ranked as one of the five best in the state. In 1965, enrollment hit a record 1,361, but the school board renewed its commitment that class size would not exceed 24. From this peak, attendance moved down to 989 in 1991, when it again changed course to today's 1,698. The school's principal, Louis Braun, had come to Bronxville from Denver and was in the middle of what was to be a twenty-year term. He was described in a school history as "a moderate voice in a time of increased tension between students and authority" and as "the school's great diplomat." Students jokingly complained that since he could always get to the school from his townhouse across the street, he never called a snow day.

Many students were delivered to and picked up at the school, but others used "Sal's Bus," which wended its way up Pondfield Road and then around the major village streets. It also stopped at the station, where it dropped off commuters and picked them up in the evening. Because on some of its morning trips the bus carried noisy students, some of us called it the "screamer." On one occasion, Sal ordered an overly boisterous second-grade boy to leave the bus and take the long walk home.

On most days I avoided all this and got exercise by walking more than a mile downhill to the station. The railroad at that time was the New York Central, and the platform had not yet been raised to permit same-level access to the cars, all of which permitted smoking except for those designated as "non-smoking." Several of us who worked in the Wall Street area and took the 7:00 am train avoided the subway by sharing a taxi, which would take us down Park Avenue and Broadway.

Perched high above downtown Bronxville on Sunset Hill was the elegant Hotel Gramatan. Once popular, by 1965 it had become largely a residence for senior citizens. It was the home of the still popular Hereford House restaurant but otherwise had fallen on hard times. In 1972, it was demolished. It took eight years of legal and political battling before its current townhouse residences were completed on its former site. That controversy would help lead to the election in 1973 of the village's first Democratic trustee, Robert Agee. (The scope of this accomplishment can be measured by the fact that not until 2008 did a Democratic presidential nominee carry the village. It also evidences the maxim that "all politics is local.")

It was also not until the 1970s, apart from the school board, that women attained leadership positions in the village. In 1969, 1971, and 1974, Democratic candidates Phyllis Sharp (twice) and Susan O'Toole ran unsuccessfully for village trustee, but the next year Republican Marcia Lee was elected and went on in 1977 to become the first of four woman village mayors. In 1969, Frances Petersmeyer became the first woman to serve on Christ Church's vestry, and in 1973, Lucy Andrus and Barbara Yeager joined the Reformed Church consistory. 

When we moved to Bronxville, Lawrence Hospital cleaners, dietary workers, and nurse's aides were ending an unsuccessful strike to unionize. In a community-wide effort to keep the hospital open, local residents were cooking meals for the patients, and their commuting husbands were spending their evenings cleaning halls and bathrooms.

Soon after we moved to Bronxville, we joined The Reformed Church. To enter its ushering corps, I had to acquire and wear a cutaway, a practice that continued until 1993. Our senior minister was Dr. Charles Copenhaver, who had come to us in 1963 from a Pasadena church and remained until he retired eighteen years later. He was renowned for his sermons, many of which the church printed and distributed. Befitting his senior status, he was always addressed as "Charles." His outstanding preaching, together with his strong support for outreach--evidenced by the following year's initiation of a remedial reading program at Harlem's Elmendorf Reformed Church--ecumenism, and sympathy for opposition to the Vietnam War, enabled him to lead the church through the days of national upheaval during which he served.

Ray Ferris, Christ Church's rector, was not so fortunate, and he was not helped by the fact that his sympathy for Lawrence Hospital strikers put him in disagreement with William McRitchie, who headed both Lawrence's board and the church's vestry. St. Joseph's Francis S. Scott was nearing the end of a highly successful pastorate that saw the establishment of the parish school. The Village Lutheran Church also offered elementary education through its Chapel School. And for more than ten years, The Reformed Church had sponsored a nursery school, jokingly referred to by at least one local taxi driver as "the reformed school." (Christ Church's nursery school opened in 1973.) Older residents could sample a wide variety of offerings at the Bronxville Adult School. 

On the northeast corner of Pondfield Road and Midland Avenue was the village library, completed in 1942 to plans prepared by architect Harry Leslie Walker, who also had designed the school and The Reformed Church. Over the years, the library had been given a collection of American paintings, one of which, in a 1947 bequest, was Childe Hassam's Central Park. (In 2001, needing funds for expansion and making itself handicapped-accessible, the library sold it at an auction that I attended for more than $4 million.)

Across Pondfield Road was the two-story village hall, rounding out a truly impressive village center. In 1965, Elbert Hugill, senior vice president and general counsel of Shell Oil Company, was finishing six years as unpaid village mayor. He epitomized the practice of unpaid community service that continues today. In 1999, in the first Bronxville Historical Conservancy Brendan Gill lecture, architectural critic Paul Goldberger wrote that "one cannot look at . . . the way in which the symbols of community--school, library, village government and church--are placed together . . . and not come away with a sense of public order and authority." 

A ten-minute walk down Dusenberry Road from our home was Siwanoy Country Club and its eighteen-hole golf course. For many years after I joined it in 1969 it was strictly a golf club, with no tennis courts or swimming pool. As a result, its membership was older than that of those with full sporting facilities. A member whose son took him to visit a nearby retirement community noted that many of its residents seemed to be younger than the Siwanoy golfers who teed off on Saturday mornings. Daily golf was organized under the watchful eye of caddiemaster Johnnie DeSimone, who would "try to get a game" for members who weren't part of a foursome. Once, when Johnnie initially frowned when a new member asked if he could start establishing a handicap with only a nine-hole score, he relented when he learned that the score was 70. Siwanoy was also the home of the Snowbirds, a group of members who used sand greens and red balls to play golf in late fall and early winter, even in snowy weather. Founded in 1908, it was purportedly the oldest such group in the United States.

Until Siwanoy built its swimming pool in 1982, the Field Club was Bronxville's only true family club. When Emily and I joined in 1970, its general manager was the widely loved Dominick Accocella, who served in that position from 1953 until 1991. The clubhouse ground floor included a popular bowling alley, which was replaced in 2007/2008 during a major renovation that included the present grill room.

Bronxville was home to several leading business executives, including IBM president A. L. Williams (at the Louis Bowman masterpiece at 31 Masterton Road) and vice presidents Orland Scott and Dean McKay. (Both Williams and Scott were active members of the Reformed Church consistory, and Scott served as a village trustee.) Others included Stauffer Chemical president Hans Stauffer, General Foods chairman Clarence Francis, and legendry McKinsey managing director Marvin Bower. Baseball commissioner Ford Frick, who also served as a library trustee, lived at 31 Edgewood Lane. Nearby lived ATT president Frederick Kappel and former Eisenhower press secretary James Hagerty, who had often played golf with the President and was noted at Siwanoy for his short game. Author and New Yorker critic Brendan Gill had lived for many years in the "Owl House" (26 Prescott), so named because of the large statue of an owl perched on its roof.

Perhaps Bronxville's best known resident was TV host Jack Paar, who lived in the house that he had had built for him at 32 Studio Lane. For several months in the late 1960s, he owned as a pet a lion cub named Amani, who was often seen in the village. Several times he accompanied Mrs. Paar to appointments at the Continental Hair Salon, where on a leash he quietly sat next to her as she was having her hair done.  

Village-wide charitable giving was conducted through the United Fund of Bronxville Eastchester Tuckahoe. In 1965, it affiliated with the Westchester United Fund. (Fifteen years later, out of concern that contributions it received from residents of those communities were being spent elsewhere, the affiliation was terminated and the organization has operated as The Community Fund of Bronxville Eastchester Tuckahoe.)

Downtown Bronxville looked generally the same as it does today, but most of the businesses have changed. Womrath, where Mr. Gross always seemed to find the most hard-to-get book, and the Continental Hair Salon remain at their Pondfield Road locations. Underhills Crossing restaurant was just opening, and a well-stocked liquor store, where the better wines could be found in the rear, was operating at 98 Pondfield under a different name and ownership. Other shops that I especially recall were Helenette for its delicious pastries and Sportscraft for informal men's clothing.

Our prescriptions were filled at Bellis Pharmacy on the corner of Cedar and Pondfield. Its speedy lunchtime counter service and proximity to the school turned it into what a 2010 MyHometownBronxville article headlined as "Insanity on a Poppy-Seeded Hard Roll." The movie theater has not changed its Kraft Avenue location, but it only had one auditorium instead of today's three. It often showed feature films. On one very warm late spring evening when we were watching Lawrence of Arabia, the air-conditioning stopped functioning, and we felt as though we were crossing the desert with Lawrence on his way to take Aqaba from the Turks.

For more than 45 years, at 20 Cedar Street, the McGrath family had been providing funeral assistance to Bronxville-area families. For more than 25 of those years, and continuing today, the McGrath family hosted an annual dinner honoring Bronxville High School's football team and program. The dinner's emphasis was on teamwork and sportsmanship; in 1943, the dinner's first year, the team lost every game. Dinner speakers have included Jackie Robinson and Ford Frick. The dinner reflects the sense of ownership that the community has had for the school and its athletic teams, whose players are also our neighbors.  

With the exception of the Avalon apartments on the west side of Parkway Road and the Sunset Hill development, since 1965 there have been no major changes in the makeup of the village's residential properties. The construction of many houses that followed the end of World War II had largely ended, in part because nearly all the remaining lots had been developed. (A notable exception is today's complete replacement of the residence on the corner of Masterton and Pondfield Roads.) Renovation and expansion of existing properties have been a different matter and have led to the tightening of the permitted spaces between houses and their lot boundaries. And, as Paul Goldberger observed, the relatively small sizes of Bronxville's residential plots--many only an acre or less and no houses on more than 3.8 acres--"force a kind of intimacy, they force things to be jumbled together, they put everyone into close proximity to everyone else, and to the center of town, which makes it, paradoxically, much more like an urban place and less like any other suburban place I know. . . . In Bronxville, I sense that every man's house is not his castle--that the whole village is his castle, and that everyone shares a sense of proprietorship over it."

That analysis is just as perceptive today as it was fifty years ago.

Pictured here: John A. Corry.

Photo by N. Bower