Larchmont, New York
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Larchmont is a village in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 6,485 at the 2000 census. As a village, it is located within the town of Mamaroneck. It is located on the shore of the Long Island Sound, about eighteen miles from Midtown Manhattan. Larchmont is served by the New Haven Line of the Metro-North Railroad.
The village of Larchmont contains one of the six schools in the Mamaroneck School District, Chatsworth Avenue School, which was established in 1903. Two of the other schools are in the Village of Mamaroneck, and the other three (two elementary schools and the middle school) are in the unincorporated Town of Mamaroneck.
Famous residents of Larchmont have included: Lou Gehrig, New York Yankees baseball legend; Norman Rockwell, american artist; Alfred Joyce Kilmer, poet; Tommy Armour, golfer; Maurice Barrymore, patriarch of the Barrymore family of acting, and his wife Georgiana Drew, actress, Carl Paul Jennewein, sculptor; Douglas Fairbanks, actor; Mary Pickford, actress; Matt Dillon, actor who appeared in "Crash," "The Outsiders" and "There's something about Mary"; Kevin Dillon, actor who appeared in Platoon and HBO's Entourage; Ang Lee, director of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "The Hulk", and "Brokeback Mountain"; Marcus Camby, basketball player for the Denver Nuggets; contemporary artist and musician Jasun Martz (who recorded with Frank Zappa and Michael Jackson); David O. Russell, movie director; playwright Edward Albee, playwright, best known for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"; Moss Hart award winning playwright and author of "Act One," his best selling biography; director D.W. Griffith; novelist Jean Kerr and her husband, the Pulitzer Prize winning theater critic Walter Kerr, Alton Tobey, artist; and Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996), one of the greatest Italian poets of the last century and daughter of Carlo Rosselli, one of the heroes of the Italian anti-Fascist resistance. Comedian Joan Rivers famously claimed to have grown up in Larchmont in her stand-up routines. In reality, her parents moved from Brooklyn to nearby New Rochelle when she was a teenager.
In July of 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Larchmont 11th on its list of the 100 Best Places to Live in the United States.
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[edit] History
Originally inhabited by the Siwanoy (an Algonquian tribe), Larchmont was discovered by the Dutch in 1614. By 1720, few Siwanoy remained in the Larchmont area and the land had been largely bought up by British and Dutch settlers. One of Larchmont's ealiest homes, the "Manor House" on Elm Avenue, was originally occupied by Peter Jay Munro. Munro was the nephew to John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and was later adopted by Jay. At the beginning of the 19th Century, Munro was active in the Abolitionist movement, helping to found the NY State Manumission Society, along with his uncle and Alexander Hamilton. A Quaker, Munro is also believed to have been involved in the Underground Railroad program. The basement of his house still contains tunnels connecting it to Long Island Sound, half a mile away. It is believed that the Railroad bypassed the bounty hunters in Manhattan in favor of landing points in Larchmont, Rye, and New Rochelle, where the escaped slaves could be transported overland to sympathetic Quakers in Scarsdale and, eventually, Tarrytown. From there, they could be loaded aboard Hudson River transport towards Canada.
Munro's house faced towards the Boston Post Road (the back is now used as the front), which tended to generate a lot of dust in summer months. To combat this, his gardener imported a scottish species of larch trees that were known to be fast growing. These were planted along the front of the property, eventually giving the village its name. The Village of Larchmont was incorporated in 1891.
Before the advent of the automobile, Larchmont was a resort community serving wealthy New York City residents. Many of the Victorian "cottages" and a few of the grand hotels (such as the Bevan House and Manor Inn) remain to this day, though these have been converted to other uses such as private residences. The world-renowned Larchmont Yacht Club still hosts an annual Race Week competition (2007 will mark 110th running of this event). It is adjacent to Manor Park, which was designed by Jeremiah Towle, an early summer resident of Larchmont Manor and an engineer. Although the park has been rumored to have been designed by famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the only evidence of any involvement by Olmsted in Larchmont is a c. 1845 survey map (original found in Village Hall) commissioned by Edward Knight Collins, who at the time owned what later came to be called the Manor. The Larchmont Shore Club (a club near the Larchmont Yacht Club) hosts an annual 'Swim Across America' challenge, across Long Island Sound.
[edit] Geography
Larchmont is located at (40.926201, -73.753108)GR1, about eighteen miles from midtown Manhattan.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 2.8 km² (1.1 mi²), all land.
[edit] Demographics
As of the censusGR2 of 2000, there were 6,485 people, 2,418 households, and 1,709 families residing in the village. The population density was 2,340.1/km² (6,073.6/mi²). There were 2,470 housing units at an average density of 891.3/km² (2,313.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the village was 92% White, 2% African American, 0.09% Native American, 2.82% Asian, 0.08% Pacific Islander, 0.77% from other races, and 1.33% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.97% of the population.
There were 2,418 households out of which 38.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 62.6% were married couples living together, 6.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 29.3% were non-families. 25.8% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.66 and the average family size was 3.25.
In the village the population was spread out with 29.3% under the age of 18, 3.9% from 18 to 24, 30.1% from 25 to 44, 23.7% from 45 to 64, and 12.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 90.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 85.5 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $123,238, and the median income for a family was $163,965. Males had a median income of $100,000 versus $49,545 for females. The per capita income for the village was $73,675. About 1.6% of families and 2.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 1.5% of those under age 18 and 5.1% of those age 65 or over.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Contributions by Judith Doolin Spikes, Larchmont Village Historian.
- www.villageoflarchmont.org
[edit] External links
- Sound & Town Report Newspaper Larchmont's weekly newspaper
- Larchmont official website
- Larchmont Gazette Larchmont's hometown journal
- Larchmont Historical Society
- Larchmont Mamaroneck Community Television
- Maps and aerial photos
- Street map from Google Maps, or Yahoo! Maps, or Windows Live Local
- Satellite image from Google Maps, Windows Live Local, WikiMapia
- Topographic map from TopoZone
- Aerial image or topographic map from TerraServer-USA
- Larchmont Schools Public School Website
- InTown Westchester Magazine
- The Journal News, the local newspaper
