Lawrence Park Historic District is a national historic district located in Bronxville, Westchester County, New York. The district contains 94 contributing buildings, most of which are architecturally or historically significant. Developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century on twenty acres of land closely associated with the historical evolution of the surrounding community, the area attracted as residents many prominent artists and writers of the period. The Park structures were built on a wooded hillside, along winding roads. While near one another, they feel seclusion and privacy. Few houses have had major alterations, and today Lawrence Park retains much of its original character.
Lawrence Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The district is primarily residential and representative of early suburban growth outside Westchester, New York City. Bordering Lawrence Park to the south and west is the commercial section of the Village of Bronxville, or village center, with Pondfield Road running down the center. Newer residential areas lie north and east of the district, sharply delineated by changes in terrain.
The twenty acres now included in the boundaries of Lawrence Park, which is within the Village of Bronxville, Town of Eastchester, are a part of a large parcel of land deeded to Thomas Pell. Pell received it from four chiefs of the Mohican tribe — Gramatan, Annale, Wariatipus, and Rampage — and he, in turn, deeded it, in 1664, to ten families from Fairfield, Connecticut. Laws for the area were established in 1665 under an agreement called the Eastchester Covenant. This document, unusual for its time, made provisions for the education of children, the disposition and upkeep of the property, the support of a minister, and the regulation of all public affairs.
Significance
Lawrence Park Historic District in Westchester is architecturally, historically, and culturally significant. William Van Duzer Lawrence, Lawrence Park’s developer, personally oversaw the design and construction of the first homes in Lawrence Park and encouraged well-known artists and writers to make Lawrence Park their home, including artists Otto Henry Bacher, Hobart Nichols, and William Thomas Smedley, and writers Tudor Jenks, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and Alice Wellington Rollins. Many of these residents were also prominent in the Village of Bronxville’s cultural, social, and political realm. Despite intrusions and alterations to buildings within the district over time, the ambiance of Lawrence Park has not changed. Lawrence Park still retains the coherence and character of an architecturally distinctive turn-of-the-century suburban development. EZ Westchester Junk Removal
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