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Scarsdale

Scarsdale

The village and town of Scarsdale is perhaps the best known internationally of the Westchester villages. The community of 17,293 (2010 census) consists of 6.6 square miles. The town and village boundaries are the same. The commercial downtown hosts an assortment of shops and restaurants located near the village train stations. The commuting time to midtown Manhattan is 35 minutes.

During the reign of Charles II in England in 1666, Caleb Heathcote was born to the family of Mayor Heathcote in the Hundred of Scarsdale, Derbyshire. Twenty-six years later, when his fiancée left him for his older brother, Caleb set sail for New York. He prospered in trade and began to buy up land in Westchester. After acquiring several parcels, his holdings stretched to the town line in Eastchester. In 1701 Caleb had these lands elevated into a royal manor. He named the area Scarsdale after his ancestral home. After Caleb’s death in 1721, his two daughters inherited the land and in 1774, the manor was broken up and the tenants became the proprietors. Scarsdale became a town by the law of March 7, 1788. A generation later James Fenimore Cooper, who had married a great grand-daughter of Caleb gave the story of those turbulent days a permanent place in literature. He wrote The Spy, which became one of the first acclaimed American novels.