Joseph Frank posted:Hello Tom !
I know that area quite well --- I rode that Yonkers Ave TARS Trolley with my uncle back in 1950 and 51 on his day joyride trips with me -- up there usually for him to go to Yonkers Raceway from our Manhattan neighborhood, to bet the horses ! We also rode the TARS Maclean Avenue Trolley line. To this day I remember those trips clearly !
Sometimes my uncle (who never drove nor ever had a car) and I took the NY Central old MU Commuter train north from the then very dimly lit and dank tunnel station platforms of the NY Central RR Grand Central Terminal -- north to the Yonkers Station and took the Trolley ride eastward from there (and a stop at of course, YONKERS Raceway, heh) . Other times we took the Manhattan 3rd Ave EL train (MUDC EL Cars) from our upper East Side EL Station straight up to the Bronx and up to the lower level platforms of the double-decked Gun Hill Road EL Station, and went to the upper level on that EL Station complex to change to the White Plains Rd EL train (Low-V Subway Cars) further north to its end at E.241st St Terminal Station, and hopped on the White Plains Rd TARS Trolley to W. 1st Street into Mt Vernon and changed to the Mt. Vernon Ave-Yonkers Avenue TARS trolley westbound to the Racetrack up by Central Ave. What great memories of those times and the way things were back then ! We always hit a luncheonette or ice cream parlor for a snack !
Here BELOW is a current close photo of that one-time long ago Gas Station in the scene with the Trolley -- at corner of Ridgefield Ave.
Yonkers Avenue in the distance starts an uphill many blocks long "C" shaped right curve, and an immediate reverse "C" curve and then straight west to top of hill at Central Park Avenue which parallels the NY State Thruway which runs along both side of it in a deep open cut. I remember when that was simply called CENTRAL Avenue and was just another a wide Avenue and NO Thruway (which is called the Major Deegan Highway in the Bronx). I remember when the Deegan and Thurway were being constructed thru the early-mid 1950's -- what a mess Central Avenue was then --- my father and his dad and I drove from the Bronx way up into "Westchester County" to Central Ave into Yonkers to a Food Fair supermarket to shop at times.
I drove to NYC in August 2015 in very early morning darkness -- hitting the Bronx and driving up Broadway under the IRT EL to W.242nd St Station terminal (Van Cort Park) and headed further north into Yonkers. I turned east on Yonkers Ave to head towards Mt Vernon, and stopped at the Clairmont Diner at 6AM for breakfast, across the street from the old Yonkers Raceway -- now Empire City Casino. I then headed east down Yonkers Ave at daybreak -- past the scene in the photo, and across the Bronx River Parkway and thereby into Mt. Vernon, to check out any NYW&B Railway remains (hardly none left) and entered the Bronx by the ex-NYW&B's still existing part there now operating as the IRT Dyre Ave Line.
Here BELOW are some photos of the TARS streetcar line in my Manhattan area my 3rd Avenue of then back in the 1940's -- seen running under the old IRT 3rd Avenue "EL".
Regards - Joe F
Joe, Ha! Great stuff...Let me know the next time you are in the neighborhood and we can eat lunch at the Clairmont. My wife and I are there once a month or so...love the French Onion soup and the goulash! Since you knew the area, my first job in life, during those crucial life changing Mt. St. Michael years (!), was working at nearby Cross County Shopping Center, working at the now long gone Finast Supermarket.
On your list of options to travel to the trotters, there could have been another one, which would have probably been pretty direct, Grand Central to Mt. Vernon West station on the Harlem Division followed by riding the TARS west up Yonkers Ave.
Tom
