Happy TravellerWelcome to Port Chester, a charming village located in Westchester County, New York. With a population of over 29,000 residents, Port Chester is the fifth-most populous village in New York State. Its location in southeast Westchester makes it a part of the New York City metropolitan statistical area. Port Chester is nicknamed the Gateway to New England and serves as a transportation hub between New England states and New York. Its economy is primarily stimulated by small businesses, the local government, and several national chain stores, including Stop & Shop, Marshalls, Target, T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile, Verizon, Boost Mobile, Staples, and Walgreens.
History:
Port Chester has a rich history dating back to colonial times. The land on which the village was founded was originally known as Haseco by the Wappinger people, meaning marshy land or marshy hassock. Upon colonial settlement, the area became known as Saw Pit (or Sawpits) for the saw pits in use during the time. The village eventually outgrew this name and became Port Chester by incorporating as a village in 1868. Families from Rye and Greenwich began to settle the Saw Pit area just prior to the Revolution but even as late as 1800 there were only a handful of established homesteads. Early roads in the area grew from native trails. The Boston Post Road, King Street, and Grace Church streets are some of the early migration paths in the Saw Pit/Rye settlement. Water transportation was equally important. The local waterways (the Byram River and Long Island Sound) were a key part of the growth and development of Saw Pit/Port Chester. Early residents took part in farming and fishing. After the Revolution, the harbor area became a shipbuilding site, with the Lyon family operating a considerable shipyard that produced some of the best sloops and ocean-going fishing vessels of the time. By the time the village of Saw Pit was incorporated as Port Chester, it was considered a major seaport. The arrival of the rail road in 1849 turned Port Chester into a destination for manufacturing and wealthy NYC families, with hotels, theaters, and large estates. These exclusive properties included some of the grandest mansions on the East Coast, but slowly gave way to the crushing need for housing. Successive waves of immigrants from Germany, Ireland, and Italy each brought industry and prosperity as the Village grew. Steamships regularly sailed from Port Chester to New York City from 1870 until the First World War. The last two decades of the nineteenth century saw public services expand, and roads were widened and paved in the 1920s. From the first and second world wars, over 5,000 men from Port Chester served. After the Second World War, numerous corporations established headquarters or production centers in Port Chester. Examples include Life Savers, whose former factory is now a residential building, which is evidence of Port Chesters progression from an industrial center to a suburban residential municipality. On June 30, 1974 an infamous nightclub fire killed 24 young men and women. The fire at Gullivers was the deadliest dance club fire in the United States in more than a generation (the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston, on November 28, 1942, had killed 491, and the Happy Land fire in the Bronx, on March 25, 1990, was to kill 87), and it called attention to the dangers of herding young people into windowless underground rooms without smoke alarms, sprinklers, fire-resistant walls, or limits on occupancy. Despite the tragedy of Gullivers, comprehensive New York State Fire Code reform would not be seen until the 1980s. Fire code enforcement continues to be a top priority in Port Chester to this day.
Geography:
Port Chester has a total area of 2.4 square miles (6.2 km2), of which 2.33 square miles (6.0 km2) is land and 0.7 square miles (1.8 km2), is water. Port Chester has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa). Due to its location on the coast, temperatures are neither extremely cold nor warm, and precipitation is plentiful for the entire year. Winters are usually cool, and powerful noreasters can occur, sometimes dropping large amounts of rain and snow on the village. Average
