Getty Square is the name for downtown Yonkers, New York, centered on the public square. Getty Square is the civic center, central business district, and transit hub of the City of Yonkers. A dense and growing residential area, it is located in southern Westchester County, New York. The square is named after prominent 19th-century merchant Robert Getty.
The square is named for Robert Parkhill Getty, a prominent merchant and civic leader in the 1800s. The area was the heart of a Dutch patroonship granted to the first lawyer in the New World, Adriaen van der Donck, who built both saw and grist mills on the Saeck Kill, later to become the Nepperhan River and today’s Saw Mill.
Getty Square’s two oldest, still-standing buildings, Philipse Manor Hall (circa 1682) and St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church (built 1752 by Frederick Philipse III), were built near the river. The Hudson River, bordering the western waterfront of Getty Square, provided a transportation route to markets beginning in the 1600s. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 increased water-borne traffic from upstate New York down the Hudson to Manhattan.
In 1853, Elisha Graves Otis, inventor of the safety elevator, established the Otis Elevator Company on the Hudson River and Vark Street, along the new railroad tracks that ran along Hudson’s banks. As the company grew, a larger facility was built just north of the Saw Mill River, Van der Donck Park. Vast Otis factory buildings covering blocks of land extended north to Ashburton Avenue.
Later, three separate railroad companies established lines through Getty Square. The New York and Putnam Railroad built the terminal for its Yonkers Branch line in Getty Square, with the original 1880s headhouse and train shed station in the square later upgraded to an office building and railway platform at 20 South Broadway. (The office building remains, but a parking garage has replaced the railway platform.) The New York Central Railroad operated out of the still-in-use Yonkers train station. The Third Avenue Railway trolley company ran multiple streetcar lines through Getty Square and stored its streetcars (also called trams) in the still-standing Yonkers Trolley Barn on Main Street in Getty Square Yonkers, NY.
Shopping Center
Getty Square is a bustling, multi-ethnic shopping district with very high numbers of shoppers compared with other Westchester downtowns. With significant cohorts and many ethnic groups, businesses benefit from an international customer base, including African-American and Latino customers. EZ Yonkers Junk Removal
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