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Yonkers, just north of New York City in Westchester County, is the fourth largest city in the U.S. state of New York, with a population of 196,086 (according to the 2000 census). A July 1, 2002 estimate showed the city's population to be 197,234. It is by far the largest city in Westchester County.
Its best-known attraction is Yonkers Raceway, a harness racing track, which has contemplated adding legalized video slot gambling. There is also a large shopping area along Central Park Avenue (New York Route 100), which attracts many shoppers from the surrounding areas, including New York City. Central Park Avenue is informally referred to as "Central Avenue" by area residents. In fact, a few miles north in White Plains, New York, the street is officially designated as "Central Avenue."
Geography
The city is spread out over many hills rising from sea-level at the eastern bank of the Hudson River to as high as 415 feet at Sacred Heart Church (the spire of which can be viewed from as far away as Long Island, New York City, and New Jersey). The landscape of the city has been compared to that of San Francisco and Rome.
Yonkers is located at 40°56'29" North, 73°51'52" West (40.941478, -73.864365)1.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 52.6 km² (20.3 mi²). 46.8 km² (18.1 mi²) of it is land and 5.8 km² (2.2 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 11.02% water.
Neighborhoods
Though the Yonkers Chamber of Commerce claims Yonkers has 38 neighborhoods, in reality there are only a handful of local names commonly used by residents, as shown on the map below. Yonkers has four major regions; the map shows Northeast Yonkers as various shades of green, Southeast as blue, Northwest as yellow, and Southwest as red. Areas not covered by any common neighborhood name are either referred to by proximity to major streets or by region of Yonkers.
Yonkers_Neighborhood_Map.JPG
Image:Yonkers_Neighborhood_Map.JPG
When in doubt, street names usually prevail over neighborhood names, though dozens of small enclaves exist in Yonkers. For example, more people will say "I live on Bronx River Road" than "I live in Sherwood Park" or "I live over by Lake Avenue" rather than "I live in Glenwood".
Other enclaves in Yonkers include Amackassin Heights, Armour Villa, Beech Hill, Boulder Ridge, Bronx Halls, Bronxville Heights, Caryl, Cecil Crest, Cecil Park, Centuck, Cottage Gardens, Crestwood Gardens, Crestwood Lake, Dunwoodie Heights, Edgemont, Empire Park, Fleetwood, Garrett Park, Glenwood, Gramatan Hills, Grandview Park, Grassy Sprain Heights, Grey Oaks, Greystone, Gunther Park, Hearthstone, The Hollows, Homecrest, Homefield, Homewood, Kimball, Kinross Heights, Lincoln Heights, Lockwood, Locust Hill, Longvale, Lowerre, McLean Heights, Mile Square, Mohegan Heights, Mohegan Park, Moquette Park, Morsemere, Nepera Park, Nepperhan, Nepperhan Heights, Nepperhan Valley, Old 7th Ward, Runyon Heights, Seminary Heights, Sherwood Park, Sprain Lake Knolls, St. John's, St. Joseph's, Strathmore, Tanglewood, Wakefield Park, Westchester Hills, Woodstock Park, and Woodworth. Many of these are synonyms and many are located within one of the major neighborhoods listed above.
Demographics
As of the census2 of 2000, there are 196,086 people, 74,351 households, and 49,294 families residing in the city. The population density is 4,187.5/km² (10,847.5/mi²). There are 77,589 housing units at an average density of 1,656.9/km² (4,292.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the city is 60.18% White, 16.61% African American, 0.44% Native American, 4.86% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 13.44% from other races, and 4.42% from two or more races. 25.93% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There are 74,351 households out of which 30.9% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.2% are married couples living together, 17.2% have a female householder with no husband present, and 33.7% are non-families. 29.2% of all households are made up of individuals and 11.9% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.61 and the average family size is 3.23.
In the city the population is spread out with 24.3% under the age of 18, 8.8% from 18 to 24, 30.6% from 25 to 44, 21.2% from 45 to 64, and 15.0% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 36 years. For every 100 females there are 88.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 84.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $44,663, and the median income for a family is $53,233. Males have a median income of $41,598 versus $34,756 for females. The per capita income for the city is $22,793. 15.5% of the population and 13.0% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 24.8% of those under the age of 18 and 9.9% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line.
History
The land on which the city is built was once part of a land grant given in the 1640 to the Dutch settler Adrien van der Donck, called De Jonk Heer ("The Young Gentleman," a mild pun on his name). van der Donck built a saw mill where the Nepperhan River entered the Hudson; the Nepperhan is now known as the Saw Mill River.
The saw mill site is now occupied by Phillipse Manor Hall, a renovated Colonial-era manor house which serves as a museum and archive, offering many glimpses into life before the American Revolution. It was built by the Phillipse (or Phillipsberg) family, prominent Tories, that is, loyalists to Britain during the Revolution.
For its first two hundred years, Yonkers was a small farming town with an active waterfront around the saw mill. Yonkers's later growth rested largely on developing industry. In 1853, the Otis Elevator Company, opened the first elevator factory in the world on the banks of the Hudson. Around the same time, the Alexander Smith Carpet factory (in the Saw Mill River Valley) expanded to 45 buildings, 800 looms, and over 4,000 workers and was know as one of the premier carpet producing centers in the world. In 1892, Smith carpets were sent to Moscow for the tsar's coronation. Bakelite, the first completely synthetic plastic, was invented in Yonkers circa 1906, and manufactured there until the late 1920s. Yonkers was also the headquarters of the Waring Hat Company, at the time, the nation's largest hat manufacturer. World War II saw the city's factories manufacture everything from tents and blankets in the Alexander Smith Carpet Factory to tanks in the Otis Elevator factory.
After World War II, however, increased competition from less expensive imports and the appeal of foreign labor, Yonkers lost much of its manufacturing luster. The Alexander Smith Carpet mill fell into harder times, ceasing operation on June 24, 1954. In 1983, the prestigious Otis Elevator Factory finally closed its doors. With the loss of jobs in the city itself, Yonkers followed the trend of many suburban cities after World War II, becoming primarily a commuter city. Yonkers's excellent transportation infrastructure, including three commuter railroad lines (now two) and five parkways and freeways, as well as its 30-minute drive from Manhattan, made it a desirable city to live in. Yonkers's manufacturing sector, however, has recently shown a resurgence. With the opening of a factory for Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Yonkers now produces the new R142A cars for the New York City Subway.
Aside from being a manufacturing center, Yonkers also played a key role in the development of entertainment in the United States. In 1888, Scottish immigrant John Reid founded the first golf course in the United States, St. Andrew's Golf Club, in Yonkers. On January 4, 1940, Yonkers resident Edwin Howard Armstrong transmitted the first FM radio broadcast (on station W2XCR) from the Yonkers home of C.R. Runyon, a co-experimenter.
The Irish-American community plays a prominent role in Yonkers, and the city hosts one of the oldest St. Patrick's Day parades in the country.
The city is also home to a large Italian-American community many of whom moved to the city after originally settling in the Bronx and in Brooklyn. The city hosts a large Columbus Day festival with a Miss Italian-American pageant.
There was a years-long battle over housing integration in the 1980s and 1990s, which ended only after a court ruling nearly bankrupted the city government, by imposing geometrically increasing contempt of court penalties after the then-mayor refused to build public housing in the wealthier parts of the city.
Transportation
Yonkers has four Hudson-Line Metro-North Railroad stations providing commuter service to New York City: Ludlow, Yonkers, Glenwood and Greystone. The Yonkers station is also served by Amtrak. Several Harlem-Line stations are on or very near the city's eastern border. These include Wakefield, Mt. Vernon West, Fleetwood, Bronxville, Tuckahoe and Crestwood. Interstate 87 (the New York State Thruway), the Saw Mill River Parkway, the Bronx River Parkway, the Sprain Brook Parkway, the Cross County Parkway, U.S. Highway 9, N.Y. Highway 9A and N.Y. Highway 100 run through the city. Bus service is provided by the Westchester County Bee-Line Bus System.
Image
Yonkers deals with a famously negative image. It is believed by most citizens of Westchester, New York to have the worst crime rate of the area of Southern Westchester. Several native rappers such as DMX and Jadakiss help contribute to the criminal mystique of Yonkers. The worst neighborhood is considered Getty Square, a haven for gambling and drugs. Gangs in Yonkers range from Italian Mafia groups such as The Tanglewood Boys, which is a recruiting body for the Lucchese Family, to Puerto Rican gangs, to African-American chapters of the New York Crips and Bloods.
In fact, Yonkers has the lowest crime rate of any city of its size in the United States. This low rate is undoubtedly helped by the proximity to New York City. Much of the petty crime that one would expect to find in a large city is effectively "outsourced" to the Bronx or northern Manhattan; the high-crime neighborhoods of Washington Heights and the South Bronx are only ten minutes' drive away.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Yonkers developed a national reputation for racial tension, based on a long-term battle between the City of Yonkers and the NAACP over the building of subsidized low-rent housing. The City wanted to use federal funds to create or expand high-rise housing projects in southwest Yonkers; other groups, led by the NAACP, felt that concentrating subsidized housing in traditionally poor neighborhoods perpetuated poverty. The climax of the battle came when Federal District Court Judge Leonard Sands imposed a fine on Yonkers which started at $1 and doubled every day until the City capitulated to the federally mandated plan. A history of this battle can be found in Lisa Belkin's 1999 book Show Me a Hero.
Notable people
- Raymond Aker, naval historian (1920–2003)
- Mary J. Blige, singer
- James Cagney, actor (1899-1986)
- Sid Caesar, actor, writer (b. 1922)
- Doug DeWitt, middleweight world-champion boxer
- DMX, rapper and actor
- Jadakiss, rapper
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet (b. 1919)
- Ella Fitzgerald, singer
- Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, co-recipient, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1923)
- John Howard Northrop, co-recipient, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1891-1987)
- Steven Tyler, singer (b. 1951)
- George Wright (baseball) (1847-1937)
- Richard Yates, novelist (1926-1992)
- Edwin H. Armstrong, inventor, notably invented FM broadcasting (1890-1954)
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