Prospect Hill and Pelhamville Depicted on the 1868 Beers Atlas Map of Pelham: Part II

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Yesterday I published to the Historic Pelham Blog a posting entitled "Prospect Hill and Pelhamville Depicted on the 1868 Beers Atlas Map of Pelham: Part I". In it I discussed a few of the insights that may be drawn about the development of the area known as "Prospect Hill" within the Village of Pelham Manor by comparing detail of that area from Plate 35 of the 1868 Beers Map (image below) with current satellite photographs of the same area. Today's Blog Posting will do the same thing for the area once know as "Pelhamville" within the Village of Pelham.

Plate 35 from the 1868 Beers Atlas.
Top Arrow Points to Portion of Map Showing "Pelhamville"

Pelhamville

According to Lockwood Barr, at some point prior to 1850-51, two real estate promoters named Lewis C. Platt and Henry Marsden created an association named the Pelhamville Village Association "to develop certain tracts of unincorporated property in the Town of Pelham lying north of the Railroad and east of the Hutchinson River. This Association purchased Wolf Farm and laid out streets, residential plots and a business district." See Barr, Lockwood, A Brief, But Most Complete & True Account of the Settlement of the Ancient Town of Pelham Westchester County, State of New York Known One Time Well & Favourably as The Lordshipp & Mannour of Pelham Also the Story of the Three Modern Villages Called The Pelhams, p. 135 (Richmond, VA: The Dietz Press, Inc. 1946). Evidence seems to suggest, however, that the association involved with the purchase and development of Pelhamville was not named the Pelhamville Village Association but, instead, the United Brothers' Land Society.  In any event, the development was planned to cover approximately 110 acres. According to the Index of Maps, Office of the Register, Westchester County in White Plains, on June 21, 1851 the subdivision map of Pelhamville was filed. To learn more about the hamlet once known as Pelhamville, see Bell, Blake A., Early History of the Village of Pelham Part 4: The Railroad Comes To Town (Sept. 2003).

Below is an image that shows a detail from Plate 35 of the Beers Atlas showing "Pelhamville" on the left and a recent satellite photograph showing the same area as it exists today.



One of the first things that you may notice is that by comparing the very top of the map with the very top of the satellite photograph, one street no longer exists. Construction of the Hutchinson River Parkway destroyed the street. Apart from this one difference, the original layout of Pelhamville can easily be seen incorporated into today's Village of Pelham north of the New Haven Line tracks.

Pelhamville was much closer to the Pelhamville Depot and the railroad tracks of the New Haven Line than Prospect Hill was to the Pelham Manor Depot and the railroad tracks of the New Haven Branch Line. Perhaps that explains why Pelhamville developed more quickly than Prospect Hill during roughly the same period of the early 1850s until 1868. As the map detail on the left indicates above, by 1868 there were about 50 residential structions as well as the train station located in that portion of Pelhamville that sat north of the New Haven Line railroad tracks.

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Home Page of the Historic Pelham Blog.

Order a Copy of "Thomas Pell and the Legend of the Pell Treaty Oak."