Rochelle Park Association

Rochelle Park-Rochelle Heights
This information was adapted from an article by Barbara Davis and was originally published in the Standard Star on October 24, 1996.

You can’t help but feel as though you have stepped back in time when you stroll the tree-lined streets of the Rochelle Park neighborhood. Many rambling homes with resplendent Victorian detail, public lawns that compose refreshing, eye-catching views, wide boulevards with expansive front lawns,and venerable plantings tucked into rock outcroppings render a quiet atmosphere reminiscent of a bygone era. That’s just what was planned for this community – when it was conceived over 100 years ago.

Accruing of Land
Backing up onto North Street (now North Avenue), and just to the east of the stone wall that divided the Town of New Rochelle from the village, a parcel of land stretched to the tracks of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. The 70 acres, which had been farmed by J. Carpenter until the 1870s, also included orchards and a marsh. Through foreclosure proceedings, the Manhattan Life Insurance Company took title of the property in 1881.

Charting a brave and bold course, the company chose to transform the somewhat rugged territory into a residential development – unlike any other in New Rochelle. In fact, the kind of neighborhood the administrators envisioned had been preceded by only two – Tuxedo Park in New York and Llewellyn Park in Pennsylvania.

Beginning of Rochelle Park
America’s third planned community, Rochelle Park, was started in 1885. “To give the place a character wholly its own, to make it a park, a community, a neighborhood restricted to houses of an established standard, built on plots large enough to avoid crowding,” as Samuel Swift wrote in the May 1904 issue of “House and Garden,” the insurance company employed the services of a leading landscape architect, Nathan E. Barrett. With Horace Crosby, a civil engineer and long-time New Rochellean, Barrett laid out the ground-breaking site plan. 

Local Historic District
In 1986, in response to a request by a majority of homeowners in the Rochelle Park and Rochelle Heights neighborhoods, the City Council designated these two distinct neighborhoods as one local historic district. This prestigious designation highlights the historical and architectural significance of the neighborhoods and ensures protection against inappropriate exterior renovation, new construction, and demolition.

National Register Historic District
In 2004, the neighborhoods again came to the city seeking assistance to nominate the neighborhoods as a National Register historic district.  The neighborhoods were listed on the National Register in 2005 as one unified district.

Residents are welcome to highlight the historical significance of their property by erecting a prestigious bronze National Register plaque on their homes.

Many residents who purchase homes in the district remark that they specifically sought out and were attracted to this neighborhood because of its unique historical and architectural qualities that have been retained over the years.

There is no doubt that the tremendous increase in the district’s property values over the last 25 years can be attributed in part to its designation as a historic district.

Unchanged Subdivisions
When the Rochelle Park and Rochelle Heights subdivisions were planned in 1885 and 1906 with carefully delineated boundaries, the designers had no ideas that their layouts would remain virtually unchanged for over 100 years. Now the historic district designation ensures that the layouts remain intact as outstanding examples of the earliest planned subdivisions in the United States.

Today the boundaries of the two neighborhoods are indiscernible and together they form the city’s first local historic district and first National Register historic district.