THE NEW YORK, WESTCHESTER & BOSTON
A Millionaire’s Mistake?
DAY IN AND DAY OUT, the modern electric commuter trains of Metro-North’s New Haven Line pound the four-track main line connecting Grand Central Termi- nal with the tony suburbs of New York and Connecticut. Running through part of the densest population corridor in the nation, the railroad strains to maintain service and meet the de- mands of a growing ridership. The clos- er you get to New York City, the more it seems like every available bit of land already has a house or a highway squeezed into it. It’s difficult to imagine adding another transit line to this over- developed region, but more than a hun- dred years ago, plans were in place to do just that.
40 JULY 2012 •
RAILFAN.COM
BY OTTO M. VONDRAK/PHOTOS AS NOTED As New York City continued to grow
and prosper through the 19th century, it was the railroads that encouraged growth of the first “suburbs.” The New York & Harlem was the first railroad to make the leap across the Harlem River north into the Bronx and Westchester counties as early as the 1840s. Follow- ing the Civil War, there were a number of new railroad proposals to connect the city and the country, most of them con- nected to real estate development. The idea then, as now, was the railroad would help open up undeveloped areas if there was a convenient way to reach New York City. Just as Cornelius Vanderbilt recog- nized that the city would grow north-
ward and eventually meet and envelop his Grand Central Depot on 42nd Street, real estate speculators proposed that growth would continue all the way up to the Bronx and beyond. Because of its strategic location, Westchester County was the subject of many com- peting trunk line proposals connecting New York with Montreal and Boston.
Boom and bust It was during this time that the New
York, Westchester & Boston Railroad was incorporated in March 1872 to con- struct a new rail line from a terminal on the Harlem River in The Bronx to White Plains, along with a branch to Port Chester on the border with Con-
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