There are some neighborhoods in which I feel more at home than others; my original neighborhood, Bay Ridge, is one. I also feel comfortable in Calvary Cemetery, western Queens, 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’ve dwindled. One is Hell’s 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. One stronghold that persists is Woodlawn Heights; its Irishness is most pronounced on its main street, Katonah Ave.
During my last visit I drifted past the undefended border of NYC and Yonkers. It is the fourth most populous city in New York, after New York City, Buffalo and Rochester; it’s larger than Albany and Syracuse. It’s a very historic town and I mean to explore it more thoroughly. To date, all of my Yonkers forays, like the one you’re reading, have been concentrated near the Bronx line.
No matter what the NYC neighborhood’s makeup, Dutchmen are never far away. What’s 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 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.
St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church is one of a number of beautiful churches on either side of the border. Its website is 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.
There’s an unusual space at Katonah Ave. where it meets Van Cortlandt Park East and E. 242nd just before the Bronx-Westchester line where the Bx 31, Bx 34 and Bx Manhattan Express #4 buses turn around. 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 tunnel workers and sandhogs who lost their lives in the construction of Tunnel #3, a main conduit bringing potable water into NYC. Usually, union headquarters are nondescript, but there’s a handsome one at 4332 Katonah Ave. 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 tunnel workers who lost their lives can be seen on metal plaques in the pavement. According to the Historic Districts Council, “[The memorial] consists of 23 manhole covers embedded in the pavement, a drinking fountain, trees, plants and a flagpole 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.”
Another of Woodlawn Heights’ notable church buildings is Trinity Community Church, #4390 Katonah Ave. at E. 241st St. 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’s displayed inside the front gate. It’s inscribed: Clinton H. Meneely Bell Company, Troy, N.Y. A.D. 1892 and could’ve rung at an earlier version of the church. The history is muddy on when the building became Trinity Community Church.
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an Irish-themed bar on Katonah Ave., or even an Irish-themed grocery. “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. Alcoholism claimed his life at the 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. In permanent residence is 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 interred Woodlawn, and musical giants of the 20th century such as Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. Dorothy Parker recently acquired a headstone, which she’d lacked since her 1967 death.
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 E. 233rd between Webster Ave. 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’s no through ticketing system between the LIRR and Metro-North. 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.
Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)