Long before the Battle for Playland, now being waged between the County Executive and the County Board of Legislators, there were the Trolley Wars.
By Paul Hicks
Long before the Battle for Playland, now being waged between the County Executive and the County Board of Legislators, there were the Trolley Wars.
For almost two hundred years, communities in Westchester County relied mainly on horsepower for public transportation, with stagecoaches and carriages carrying passengers and wagons hauling freight.
Then, in 1849, the newly formed New York and New Haven Railroad (NYNH) reached Rye, and soon thereafter its steam-powered trains were running frequently between New Haven and the Bronx. There they connected with the New York and Harlem Railroad, leasing its tracks into New York City.
In 1872, the NYNH was merged into the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. The New Haven, as the larger company was generally known, grew rapidly, largely through mergers and acquisitions. By the turn of the century, it had absorbed more than 25 other lines.
Despite the New Haven’s successful expansion, in 1901 a company, named the New York and Port Chester Railroad (NY&P), was formed which planned to run an electrified railway from the Bronx to Port Chester. The NY&P tracks were to be laid close to the shoreline, but at Rye they would cross the New Haven’s mainline and run west of it to Port Chester.
A year later, another group of investors revived a long-defunct company, the New York, Westchester & Boston Railroad (NYW&B). Its proposed route was almost identical to that of the NY&P, which had already begun to acquire property rights and start construction. The competition between the rival groups led to numerous costly suits and protracted delays.
In the Town of Rye, there was strong support for building the NY&P from New York to Port Chester because of dissatisfaction with the service being provided by the New Haven. Among the supporters was a prominent resident of Rye Village, J. Mayhew Wainwright, who was then a member of the State Assembly and chairman of its committee on railroads.
His backing was probably a political necessity, even though the Wainwright family, which owned a number of houses on Milton Point overlooking Milton Harbor, might have been disturbed by the sights and sounds of the NY&P trains if the proposed route along the shore had been completed.
Across Milton Harbor, descendants of John Jay, who then owned the historic Jay mansion, agreed in 1905 to allow the NY& P to begin construction on part of their property that later became part of the Marshlands Conservancy. According to the Marshlands website, you can still see the embankment they built and the culvert over a stream.
The construction, however, came to a halt when the Jays’ next-door neighbor, John E. Parsons refused to have the tracks run through his land. Both of the rival railroad companies pursued their goals in the courts and legislature until they eventually decided to merge. The surviving railroad was subsequently taken over by the New Haven, which some historians believe had successfully thwarted their plans behind the scenes.
Even though Messrs. Wainwright and Parsons were on opposite sides in the train battles, they had been allies earlier during the equally contentious trolley battles. They were both leading lawyers and served jointly as legal counsel for the Rye Protective Association to oppose a proposed route for a trolley line from Port Chester to Mamaroneck that included a branch to Rye Beach.
The pro- and anti-trolleyites, as the two sides were called, battled through many hearings over nearly four years between 1897 and 1900. In summing up at one stage of the proceedings, Parsons emphasized the residential nature of the Village of Rye and argued that the proposed route down the Post Road and along Purchase Street would “destroy the character of the place.”
Eventually, the trolley battles ended with a grand compromise. Within the Village of Rye the line was allowed to run down Purdy Avenue and along Purchase Street. One branch went onto Milton Road and then down Palisade Avenue, turning right onto Meadow (now Midland Avenue) and heading to the beach on Apawamis Avenue.
The other branch went down Elm Place and turned left on Railroad (now Theodore Fremd) Avenue, heading to Harrison and on to Mamaroneck. This route kept the trolley off the Post Road, whose gravel surface had recently been replaced with macadam through Rye thanks to a gift by Joseph Park. Not surprisingly, the Park home (now Rye Golf Club) on the Post Road was next door to the home of John E. Parsons, so their participation in the trolley battles was due both to their love of Rye and enlightened self-interest.
The railroad and trolley battles rallied many residents behind the efforts of the Rye Protective Association to protect the interests of the Village of Rye within the Town of Rye. An article in the Port Chester Journal in 1898 reported that, “The Rye Protective Association, after settlement of the trolley question, is to make an examination into the town affairs of Rye.” That led to the incorporation of Rye Village as a self-governing municipality, which will be the subject of another article.
