If there is one thing that Westchester people have taught me, it is how to spend money (there are many times in which I feel that I am a strange observer here, really). Though instead of purchasing those two-hundred-dollar-a-pair pants from the Westchester Mall, I’ve decided to “invest” the precious little income I make in collection of postcards (uhh, and other things. I am an eBay addict).

Westchester people are funny to me, really they are. If you get a whole bunch of them into a single elevator and each person pushes a different floor button, somebody inevitably makes a comment about the elevator being a “local”, or not an “express”. The railroad is so deeply ingrained in their psyches, they don’t even realize it! We are approaching 180 years of the New York and Harlem Railroad, and 171 of those years the railroad has had a presence in Westchester… long enough for most people to not give it a second thought.

I do, however, think my collection of postcards is far more interesting than any pair of pants, as together we can look back at little glimpses of what the area was like, back when the railroad was only beginning to mold the landscape in where we now live, and driving the migration of people to these very suburbs. So here is part three of our series Sending Postcards from the Harlem Line. If you missed the previous posts, you can view them here: Part 1, Part 2.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And really now, did you have any doubt there would be a part four? You can most certainly bet on it.

1 Response

  1. Jerry C. says:

    Hi Emily,
    I love your blog, just read about it in the NYT. Your post cards are wonderful and you have amassed quite a collection in a short time!

    Just one minor item in Part 3 of the postcards, I beleive the card identified as Mt. Pleasant is actually a station on the Ulster & Delaware RR which ran from Kingston, NY through the Catskills to Oneonta. The line later was purchased by the NY Central in 1932 and became the Catskill Mountain branch.

    Portions of the line are operated for tourist trains by the Delaware and Ulster RR and the Catskill Mountain RR.
    Keep up the good work!

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