Mt Vernon

For much of its modern life, the story of Mount Vernon, New York was a tale of two cities, the North Side and the South Side, or Mt Vernon. The separateness of these two sides of the town was due to the Metro-North Railroad track, which runs through a trench, or Cut as locals call it, spanning the entire middle of the city. For the last half-century, the North Side prospered while Mt Vernon struggled. But in 2021, the City of Mount Vernon commissioned a Manhattan-based artist to turn the ubiquitous bridge fences into public art pieces.

Mark Fox used the opportunity to create words out of metal that speak to commuters and passersby, inviting them to engage with each other and the long history of the land on which they stand. Thanks to this welcoming atmosphere and a city effort to repair and open more bridges across the tracks, the southern Mt Vernon neighborhood is more integrated with its North Side neighbor than it has been since the Cut divided this city of 75,000. “Mt Vernon is definitely on the up and up,” says Thinley Yangkyi, local real estate agent with Keller Williams. “Slowly but surely.”

“The neighborhood feels like a fusion of the Bronx and Yonkers,” says Yankgki. When the leaves turn red, brown, maroon and rust in October and the wind bites, some streets in Mount Vernon can feel like ramshackle outposts of history, their old-growth maples and oaks the same ones that shaded the early 19th-century millworkers who lived here in the early 19th century when it was a center for manufacturing plants powered by Sconondoa Creek. Today, construction, service and sales provide the bulk of employment for residents.

Home prices range from condos in flashy new buildings for as little as $150,000 to grand old colonial revivals and Victorians with several bedrooms for $1 million. Lovely Victorians from the 1920s lean on medium-sized grassy lots shaded by tall poplars. There’s a certain charm to the cracked sidewalks and rusting chain-link fences. Some Italianate detached row houses have been renovated with repaired siding and new paint around bay window frames. The presence of such stylishly rickety prewar homes with six bedrooms selling for $750,000 seems like a harbinger of revitalization. And sure enough, says Yangkyi, “prices are increasing, like everywhere else in Greater New York City.” In 2022, the State of New York partnered with the City of Mount Vernon in a $150 million project to upgrade the city’s water infrastructure.

Local entrepreneurs, sensing the winds of change, are moving in. Restaurants like Ripe Kitchen and Bar, a reggae-themed jerked chicken restaurant and bar run by a former student of Bobby Flay’s, are taking their places next to classic neighborhood institutions like Royal Caribbean Bakery, which has operated its headquarters in Mount Vernon since 1987. Jamaican eateries are plentiful, but traditional American fare at places like Columbus Diner or Dunkin’ Donuts is also easy to find. A Food Bazaar serves as the local supermarket. Brush Park occupies 9 acres in the center of Mt Vernon and is under renovation. Plans for the future include three renovated baseball fields with seating areas and scoreboards and a horticulture study area for the two public schools next door. In 2022, the city unveiled a rebuilt Memorial Field it called the Jewel of Mount Vernon. Located on the eastern edge of this neighborhood, this large park features a multi-sport turf field surrounded by a running track and a large concrete skate park next door.

The Mount Vernon School District received an overall C from the school rankings website Niche, with its teachers earning a B. Rebecca Turner Elementary School, however, is a cut above, receiving an overall B grade and an A-minus for its teachers from the site. Its small student-teacher ratio of 11 to 1 makes it a desirable public school option for local parents. Denzel Washington School of the Arts is a local sixth through twelfth-grade institution that received a C-plus on Niche and an A-minus for its teachers. Its focus on performing arts prepares students to attend art schools and conservatories of higher education. Mt Vernon is considered an inner ring suburb with two train stations only a 40-minute ride from Grand Central Station in Midtown Manhattan. Mt Vernon may have yet to catch up to its northern counterpart, but prices are right, and all signs point to a renaissance for this revitalizing neighborhood on the border of the Bronx.

Written By

Abbot Street

Photography Contributed By

Leon Cato

Video By

Matt Pangman