Community Life at Rochelle Park 
THE LAWN AT ROCHELLE PARK 
ugliness ot a suburban settlement claimed 
the district for its own, reaching a crescendo 
of unsightliness in the main line and freight 
yards of the railway. 
The chance of turning these conditions 
into revenue appeared remote. To grade 
the tract for division into small city lots, 
threatened to be expensive, and there was 
no certainty of a demand for residence prop¬ 
erty of the ordinary sort in that district. 
After a brief period of laisser aller policy, 
rapidly mounting interest charges urged a 
speedy solution of the problem, and it was 
determined to investigate the cost of making 
the region desirable enough and distinctive 
enough to attract a special class of buyers. 
To give the place a character wholly its own, 
to make of it a park, a community, a neigh¬ 
borhood restricted to houses of an established 
standard, built on plots large enough to avoid 
crowding—this was obviously the only alter¬ 
native, since the location of the tract made 
it unavailable, either for a single large private 
residential estate, or for business or manu¬ 
facturing purposes. 
To this end, a landscape architect was 
consulted, whose watchword was “ the com¬ 
mercial value of sentiment.” “Will it pay,” 
was asked of this expert, “to do aught beyond 
the ordinary checkerboard town lot plotting?” 
The answer was emphatic. The landscape 
architect declared that if the company were 
ready to spend a large additional sum in 
laying out a residence park, the ultimate re¬ 
sult would never be doubtful. It was a bold 
committal of trust, and the insurance com¬ 
pany stood up to its 
task with a courage 
that disproved the old 
saying that corpora¬ 
tions have no souls. 
The outcome is the 
present community 
named Rochelle Park. 
The landscape archi¬ 
tect was Nathan F. 
Barrett; associated 
with him as civil engi¬ 
neer was Horace F. 
Crosby. 
Within certain lim¬ 
its, these two men had 
a free hand. The 
transformation is said to have cost about 
$75,000, though much was saved in not 
being obliged to remove rocks that fit well 
into a park scheme but would have had 
no place in ordinary suburban streets or 
dooryards. Nearly one-third of the prop¬ 
erty was turned into public roadways and 
lawns, leaving some 115 building plots of 
various shapes, averaging a scant half acre 
apiece. With far-sighted liberality, a total 
of nearly six acres was set apart for open 
grass spaces, to provide not only a handsome 
appearance, but also ground suitable for out¬ 
door gatherings,sports and celebrations. The 
additional space used for roads, sidewalks and 
pathway strips of grass, reached fifteen or six¬ 
teen acres more. 
Ingenuity, as the map testifies, marks the 
park’s layout. The railway station and town 
center of New Rochelle lying about ten min¬ 
utes’ walk to the southwest, the principal en¬ 
trance was placed at that corner of the prop¬ 
erty, instead of in the center of the North 
Street frontage, where a less practical designer 
would have put it. There is a subordinate 
gate at the latter point, where Winyah Ave¬ 
nue enters the park, but the tract is marked 
out on the basis of a principal gateway at 
the corner. Its main axis is a diagonal in¬ 
stead of a diameter. The inevitable trend 
of traffic toward that southwest corner was 
thus recognized and utilized in advance. The 
designers knew that business men among the 
park’s future residents would want the most 
direct route to and from New York trains, 
for driving or walking, and that if the corner 
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