John McKelvey Sr. Way Villa Rosa Bonheur (Bronx)
Present name:None
Location:At the intersection of Independence Avenue and Palisade Avenue
Honoree: John Jay McKelvey, Sr. (1863-1947) was an American author, attorney, and preservationist. Alarmed by the wave of high-rise “city ugly” development spreading through New York City in the early 20th Century, his answer was to build cooperative apartments resembling villas. His legacy in Spuyten Duyvil includes not just the three “Villas” (Rosa Bonheur, Charlotte Brontë and Victoria but also as the secretary and director of the Along-the-Hudson Company and the Edgehill Terrace Company, whose development footprints of each are still apparent today. He was on the Executive Committee of the Hudson–Fulton Celebration Commission of 1909; secretary of the Henry Hudson Monument Committee of 1909; and a founding trustee of the Edgehill Church. He was a key figure in the Park District Protective League (PDPL) was an organization of exclusivity, but over the years took on a preservationist role in Riverdale. Riverdale Park was created by the contributions of landowners convinced by the PDPL of the need to protect the green space from the encroaching development of the city. In the 1950s, the PDPL became the Riverdale Community Planning Association, which went on to champion the rezoning of Riverdale and the environmental protections of the Special Natural Area District regulations. Without the stewardship and influence of John McKelvey, Sr. in those early years, it is quite possible that Riverdale would be a very different place from the one we call home today. (Dinowitz)
LL:2022/54