FOURTH IN WOODLAWN HEIGHTS, PART 2

Continued from Part 1

I feel varying amounts of home in whatever neighborhood I find myself in in New York City. But there are some in which I feel more at home than others; my original neighborhood, Bay Ridge, is one. I also feel comfortable in Calvary Cemetery and Woodlawn Heights in the northern Bronx because of the Irishness of it all. There are Irish enclaves of various size in NYC but they have been dwindling. One is Hells Kitchen, which has lost much of it; Woodside in Queens spent time as a center of Irish immigration that has since tapered off, as it has in Bay Ridge itself. One stronghold that persists is Woodlawn Heights; its Irishness is most pronounced on its main street, Katonah Avenue, as seen below.

When I left off in Part One I had drifted past the undefended border of NYC and Yonkers. It is the 4th most populous city in NY State, after New York City, Buffalo and Rochester; yes, it is larger than Albany and Syracuse. It’s a very historic town and I mean to explore it more thoroughly some day. To date, all of my Yonkers forays, like the one you’re reading, have been concentrated near the Bronx line.

What is now Yonkers was part of a land grant in the Dutch colonial era purchased in July 1645 by Adriaen van der Donck, a scholar, author and local political leader. He was known by a Dutch term of respect, “Jonkheer,” or “young gentleman.” After the British took over beginning in 1664, they bowdlerized it into the English spelling and pronunciation-friendly “Yonkers.” Over the decades, Yonkers was the place where Elisha Otis built his elevators and Bakelite plasticware was produced. Yonkers was one of NYS’s premier manufacturing towns until the years following WWII.

It can be hard to tell if you’re in Woodlawn Heights or Yonkers because the street signs both follow the same Highway Gothic font and green and white color scheme. In fact they are 95-99% identical, as the white stripes at the top and bottom are a bit thicker in Yonkers. (I can tell where I am definitively because the street lighting changes.) Kimball Avenue is the northern extension of Van Cortlandt Park East (the park ends at the Bronx line) and plunges deep into the city of Yonkers. I, though, was headed south, back into NYC.

St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church is one of a number of beautiful churches on either side of the undefended border. True to form as with many chucrhes, its website is totally silent about the history of the building or congregation; many want you to concentrate on prayer rather than history. The cornerstone, though, reveals that the building was dedicated as recently as 1940, so my suspicion is that there had been an original church that’s now gone.

The undefended border can be ascertained by Bishop Crook lampposts. There’s an unusual space at Katonah Avenue where it meets Van Cortlandt Park East and East 242nd just before the Bronx-Westchester line where the Bx 31, Bx 34 and Bx Manhattan Express #4 buses turn around. Like vampires who cannot cross running water, MTA bus lines don’t enter Westchester County (though the Bee Line in Westchester enters Yonkers with no trouble.)

Here we also find an unusual memorial installed by the Department of Environmental Protection in honor of the tunnelworkers and sandhogs who lost their lives in the construction of Tunnel #3, a main conduit bringing potable water into NYC. There is also a callout to Monsignor Considine of St. Barnabas Church (see Part 1).

Usually, union headquarters are nondescript affairs, but this is actually a quite handsome one at 4332 Katonah for Local 147 Tunnelworkers. The union has many Irish immigrant workers who are building NYC Water Tunnel #3. Construction began in 1970 and will be finished around 2035. Names of tunnelworkers who lost their lives can be seen on metal plaques in the pavement:

[The memorial] consists of 23 manhole covers embedded in the pavement, a drinking fountain, trees, plants and a flag pole whose base is made of gray stones from the tunnel. Each manhole cover is engraved with the name of the person and the year of his death. The memorial’s location was selected due to its proximity to the underground chamber that directs flows from upstate water supply systems to all of the boroughs. [6 to Celebrate]

Katonah Avenue takes its name Native American term meaning “great mountain.” Woodlawn Heights and southern Yonkers are located in a hilly region. Apparently, the avenue and the mid-Westchester County town were named independently. I visited Katonah for the first time in years in August 2022 and photos may yet make their way to FNY’s Out of Town section.

Another of Woodlawn Heights’ notable church buildings is Trinity Community Church, #4390 Katonah Avenue at East 241st Street. The fieldstone structure was built in 1913 as Methodist Episcopal Church of Woodlawn Heights, which later became St. Luke’s United Methodist Church; the congregation had its origins in 1875. The bell is displayed inside the front gate. It is inscribed: Clinton H. Meneely Bell Company, Troy, N.Y. A.D. 1892 and could have rung at an earlier version of the church. The history is muddy on when the building became Trinity Community Church.

So to illustrate the concentrated Hibernicity of Katonah Avenue, I’ll just upload one of my largest Galleries I’ve ever done with 20 images; as always simply click on a photo for a larger view. Virtually all of the bars have American and Irish flags, but the groceries, laundromats, butchers, and barbers proclaim they’re Irish.

“Behan’s” refers to Brendan Behan, an Irish poet, writer, novelist, playwright, and Irish Republican Army supporter. He spent time in Hollesley Bay Borstal, Suffolk, England (a youth detention center), inspiring his 1958 autobiography, Borstal Boy. He was fluent in Irish and composed several plays in that language. Unfortunately his alcoholism claimed his life at the young age of 41.

In Woodlawn Heights, the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, and in Yonkers, the Aisling Irish Community Center see to the needs of recent Irish immigrants. Surprisingly, most Irish expats now travel to Canada, New Zealand or Australia, since their immigration laws are not as arduous as the USA’s.

Arrayed along the south end of Woodlawn Heights is Woodlawn Cemetery. The cemetery’s star power is staggering. Here you will find Herman Melville, who died in humble circumstances unaware of the resonance his fiction would acquire after his death; railroad tycoon and hotelier Austin Corbin, responsible in large part for the importance of the Long Island Rail Road in the lives of NYC commuters; and investigative reporter Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane), who blew open the doors to abuses in mental hospitals and prisons. Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World and a founding father of crusading journalism; Ruth Snyder, whose execution in the electric chair for murder was secretly photographed and appeared on the cover of the New York Daily News under the headline “Dead!”; Frank Woolworth, whose stores dominated the five and dime business for decades; and Robert Moses, whose ambitious programs over five decades redrew the map of New York City, are all permanent residents of Woodlawn, and musical giants of the 20th Century such as Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

Where there are cemeteries, there are monument dealers, and here is a picturesque example on East 233rd.

I haven’t done an exploration of the cemetery in FNY but I have acquired maps, and when I can travel again I am planning one. I acquired a few dozen photos on a recent trip. Regrettably I don’t know it as thoroughly as Green-Wood in Brooklyn, but hopefully there is time.

East 233rd Street roars through the northern Bronx from the Major Deegan Expressway at Jerome Avenue all the way east to the New England Thruway in Eastchester. It was built in pieces in the early 20th Century; in Woodlawn Heights, it assumed the old route of what was called Eastchester Street, while further east in Wakefield it was called 19th Avenue. Near the Hutchinson River, it was called Eastchester Landing Road. Refer to this Hyde & Company map from 1900 for its earliest configuration.

The Woodlawn Metro-North station opened in the 1800s as part of the New York and Harlem RR and then as part of NY Central; it became part of the Metro-North commuter rail system in 1983. It’s conveniently located on East 233rd between Webster Avenue and the Bronx River Parkway and a train whisked me into Grand Central in a half hour. Since March 2023, I can get a LIRR train to Little Neck from GCT, but there is no through ticketing system between the LIRR and Metro-North, not yet, anyway. Formerly, Woodlawn boasted a station house, but it was demolished after falling into ruin.

Given its proximity to commuter rail similar to what I have in Little Neck, I’d be comfortable with Woodlawn Heights if I ever moved, but I’m pretty well entrenched in Queens.

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7/23/23