Bronx Savings Bank, Westchester Square, February 3, 1942. The Westchester Square neighborhood dates to a the 17th century Dutch settlement of Oostdorp, and was later part of the 19th century Town of Westchester before being incorporated into the New York City in 1895.

View north along Lane Avenue, from Westchester Avenue, under the IRT Pelham Bay Park subway line, August 25, 1935. Today, the both the building with the dark cornice in the middle of the frame and the large apartment house in the distance remain standing. The edge of a structure can be seen at extreme left. It is the 1883-completed Huntington Free Library, which also remains extant.

Ferris Family Burial Plot, July 25, 1928. The Ferris family settled in the area now known as Westchester Square in 1667. The family maintained this small burial plot for generations. A tiny piece of land, it was long overgrown (as seen in this 1928 photograph) and littered with garbage (as visitors to the family cemetery noted in the late 1990s). Through the recent efforts of the Kiwanis Club of Parkchester, the small cemetery has been cleaned up and now sits behind sturdy and protective fence.

Lane Avenue (Westchester Square), from Owen F. Dolen Park, July 25, 1928. From this view, only the brick hardware store remains. The two free-standing houses at left were demolished in the early 1940s to make way for a Bronx Savings Bank branch. The improbably-named Thomas Bible Funeral Chapel at right is now a McDonald’s.

Although Westchester Square may now be subsumed within the sprawl of The Bronx’s residential and industrial neighborhoods, the community’s roots as the nucleus of a rural village can still be seen today in its layout. Westchester Square’s initial European settlement dates to the Dutch period, when the area was known as Oostdorp, or “East Village,” to denote its geographic relationship to New Amsterdam at the tip of Manhattan. By 1653, before the English formally seized the Dutch territory, settlers from the New Haven Colony had settled in New Netherland and named their community “Westchester.” In 1683, a few decades after the English takeover, the Province of New York created Westchester, one of the twelve original counties in the state, and identified the Village of Westchester as its seat. The center of regional government, Westchester Square soon became the home of the Parish of Saint Peter’s, one of the city’s oldest. Surrounding the village green, now Owen F. Dolen Park, Westchester grew into a small center of activity within the otherwise bucolic setting of The Bronx in the 18th Century. Located near the boat landing at the head of Westchester Creek and along a long- established road, now known as Westchester Avenue, the village gained economic prominence as commercial activity grew. The geographically advantageous setting of the village took on tactical importance during the Revolutionary War. During the war, the community saw a skirmish at the bridging of the creek, rebel encampments on the village green, and the burial of soldiers in Saint Peter’s cemetery. In the following century, this district of The Bronx retained its rural character even as Westchester Square saw slow, but steady, growth. Estates and farmlands were slowly subdivided and sold off for development, such as the construction of the Van Schaick Free Reading Room in 1883, while the street grid that was platted out on maps began to take shape. This nascent residential neighborhood was characterized by relatively large single-family houses, many of which still survive today. Westchester Village served as the center of government for the Town of Westchester until 1895, when the town was annexed into New York City. Like other communities in the expanded New York City, Westchester Square was dramatically transformed with the introduction of subway service in 1920. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company’s Pelham Line began in the South Bronx and ran above Westchester Avenue as an elevated line. Now the 6 Train, it included a stop on East Tremont Avenue which left the old village green and Saint Peter’s Church in its shadow. The accompanying speculative development turned Westchester Square into a dense neighborhood of one- and two-family homes complemented by corridors of shopping and commercial activity. The demographic character of the neighborhood changed as well, with upwardly mobile Irish and Italian immigrants following the newly constructed housing. Westchester Square still hosts an immigrant community, now largely comprised of Latin Americans and South Asians, and boasts a built environment with remarkable reminders of the community’s varying stages of development.

Westchester Square Library, 1938. The New York Public Library’s Westchester Square Branch opened to the public in 1937, operating out of a refurbished comfort station in Owen F. Dolen Park. The library moved to a new location on nearby Glebe Avenue in 1956. In 1925, local resident Owen F. Dolen gave a speech dedicating a new World War I memorial in the park, then known as Westchester Square. Dolen, who had been a leading advocate for the monument, collapsed from heart attack shortly after concluding his remarks. The park was renamed in his memory the following year.

2847 Dudley Avenue, The Bronx (ca. 1923, Jorgensen Realty and Construction Co.) Christine Jorgensen (1926-89) was a transgender woman who famously underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1951-53, becoming the first person in the United States to be widely known for doing so. Upon returning home from Denmark, where the surgery was performed, she was mobbed by reporters both at Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) Airport and at her childhood home in The Bronx, and became a household name. Jorgensen used her fame to advocate for transgender rights and saw herself as being at the forefront of the sexual revolution. Her story encouraged others to question gender as a set binary and was largely responsible for bringing the word “transsexual” into the American vocabulary. After her surgery, she became a well-known actress and singer into the 1960s and published an autobiography entitled “Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography” in 1967. Jorgensen’s childhood home was built by her father’s construction company and still stands today as a reminder of Jorgensen’s legacy and contribution to trans history. Photo by Christopher D. Brazee/NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project.

Shops on the eastern side of Westchester Square, ca. 1913. At left is the James Butler grocery store. Butler, an Irish immigrant, founded a successful chain of grocery stores in the 1880s. Forgotten today, Butler’s chain was once the sixth-largest in the country, with over 1,100 locations.