The city is serviced by the Metro-North and Amtrak railroads and Westchester County's Bee-Line bus service. For more information about the Hartsdale Metro-North Station. please click here to visit their website.
Hartsdale, a CDP/hamlet/post-office in the town of Greenburgh, NY, lies on the Bronx River just 20 miles north of New York City. It is served by the Metro North Harlem River commuter rail line into Grand Central Station. Hartsdale is the home of America's first Canine/Pet Cemetery (started by veterinarian Samuel Johnson in 1896), and the world's first Carvel Ice Cream store (1934). Hartsdale was also the home of Gilette Mansion which is now a convent.
Hartsdale's earliest settlers were the Weekquaeskeeks (sometimes spelled Weekquasgeeks), a sub-tribe of the Algonquin Indians. Weekquaeskeek is an Algonquin term believed to mean "place of the bark kettle", and this kettle appears in the Greenburgh town seal today.
There is evidence to show that Hartsdale played quite a significant role during the Revolutionary War, some of which still stands today. On October 28th, 1776, a Revolutionary War battle was fought alongside the Bronx River, near the site of the current Hartsdale train station. The Odell House (on Ridge Road, built in 1732) served as the headquarters for the French General the Comte de Rochambeau, and is where the Comte and George Washington are supposed to have formed an alliance in the Battle of Yorktown. The house was later named after John Odell, Washington's guide who bought the house in 1785. In 1965, his descendants deeded the house to the Sons of the American Revolution, and today the house is a museum.
After the Continental Army and American colonialists won the Revolutionary War, Frederick Philipse III (third Lord of the manor and great-grandson to Frederick Philipse I) fled, his land was confiscated and sold to the remaining farming tenants, many of whom were descendants of the Hart family. The intersection of Central Park Avenue and Hartsdale Avenue was named "Hart's Corners" after Robert Hart, one of these farmers who successfully bid for the land, and in the mid 1800s the entire area became known as "Hartsdale".
The area remained largely agrarian until 1865, when Eleazar Hart deeded land for the development of the New York and Harlem Railroad line into Manhattan, setting the stage for Hartsdale's change into a more cosmopolitan commuter village. Between 1880-1940, large tracts of farmland and estates were subdivided and converted into private houses and apartments at a furious pace. By the 1960s, almost no remaining farmland was left for sale.
On February 9th, 1928, Hartsdale became the birthplace of the American "Couch Potato" when the Scottish inventor John Logie Baird (1888-1946) transmitted the world's first inter-continental short-wave television signal from a transmitter (call sign 2KZ) in Coulsdon, Surrey (a suburb of London, England) to his colleague O.G. Hutchinson in the cellar of Robert M. Hart, an Amateur Radio Operator (call sign 2CVJ) in Hartsdale, New York.
On a hot Memorial Day weekend in 1934, Greek immigrant and ice-cream salesman Tom Carvelas was selling ice-cream from his truck around roads in Westchester, when he broke down with a flat tire along Central Avenue in Hartsdale. With his ice cream melting rapidly, he decided to simply sell it along the side of Central Avenue where his truck broke down. Successful at selling his stock at this location, he decided to buy the plot of land where he was stuck, and in 1934 he opened up the world's first Carvel ice-cream store. The store still stands on the southbound side of Central Avenue (just south of the "Four Corners" section of Hartsdale), however, recently the land has been sold to developers and planning is underway to demolish the original store in the near future.
Hartsdale is one of the few communities immediately surrounding New York City that still has two working farms, both on Secor Road. It also has several parks including the 25-acre Secor Woods park, the 170-acre Ridge Road park, and 86-acre Rumbrook park.
The town can generally be subdivided into several different areas including the "Village" or downtown part (East Hartsdale Avenue), Manor Park, Windsor Park, Poet's Corners, Ridge Road, Orchard Hill, College Corners, or more specifically one of the several condominium developments built since the 1970s. Over the years, the town has attracted many different ethnic groups, and the downtown village has a significant Japanese population with Japanese shops, restaurants, real-estate brokers, and even a supermarket all within walking distance of East Hartsdale Avenue.