Mt. Vernon extremely run-down

[ABQConvict]

Pros:

Fleetwood (northside) is nice and safe. Has nice-to-great housing stock, leafy, green, quiet streets, good neighbors, a nice small restaurant scene that draws people from around the county in a compact and cute, but unpretentious Westchester style shopping district (Gramatan/Broad/Grand), and is very convenient to the city and points north via train and road.

Most of Fleetwood is within a 15-20 minute walk of virtually the entirety of Bronxville which is one of the wealthiest and toniest suburbs of NYC and has great shops and boutiques itself, so it can't be all bad. Fleetwood itself is more like the Bronville lifestyle extending south than the sketchy part of Mt. Vernon extending north.


Cons:

Taxes are too high in my opinion. Schools are not good except Pennington for elementary. The politics have been awful for the couple mayoral administrations, but the new mayor may turn things around in terms of ethics. The nearest supermarket is in Bronxville, a 5 minute drive, and is even walkable if you live around the northern end of Gramatan Ave (and like to walk).

~~
I would take the opinions of people from up-county with a grain of salt. They are almost guaranteed to be alarmist and prejudiced as Mt. Vernon is absolutely the red-headed step child of one of the wealthiest and snobbiest counties in the country, and the fact that the local county newspaper likes to write salacious articles about the recent political BS and crime on the south side of the city. There are definitely parts of Mt. Vernon you wouldn't want to live in, but it is not worth writing off entirely as you can be very comfortable there if the cons are not big cons for you.

It is very possible to live in a fancy, safe Tudor/Dutch Colonial neighborhood and only shop/walk/recreate in Bronxville and Fleetwood's shopping districts, and you would never know the negative side of the city that gives it its reputation.

[ckhthankgod]

Hey, it can’t be completely bad, this woman lives there: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.loh...amp/4006743002

I’m sure she could move to Bronxville or anywhere else in the county, but decided to live in a very nice part of the city.

[dazzleman]

Mount Vernon has a lot of beautiful homes, both in parts of the north side and in parts of the south side too.

But some neighborhoods have a rundown feel, even when you can see that the houses are or once were beautiful. This has been the case for a long time. This is true of my grandparents' old neighborhood, right near North Columbus and East Lincoln Ave.

I think that despite a great location, Mount Vernon has not revived due to bad schools and bad governance. Most of the housing stock was built for families, but families with good financial options often rule it out because of the poor quality of the schools.

[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Hey, it can’t be completely bad, this woman lives there: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.loh...amp/4006743002

I’m sure she could move to Bronxville or anywhere else in the county, but decided to live in a very nice part of the city.

I hate "bumping" threads, but someone rep'd me for a comment I made in this thread 9 years ago and I was curious to see where the thread went.

Without giving the wrong idea, she lives in a part of Mt. Vernon that is affluent and heavily African-American. She probably feels a little more "comfortable" there and I am guessing her children are grown (having lived in her neighborhood for a long time I can tell you that the attitude towards schools and the more rundown part of the city goes across successful people of all colors).



While there are some wealthy people of color (and I mean beyond Asian) in places like Scarsdale and Pelham, Bronxville may have been a bad example. It's rep is as Westchester's last true bastion of "WASPy old money". Unlike Scarsdale and other wealthy areas of Westchester, there are virutally no Jews or Asians living in Bronxville (I mean the actual village, not the part of Yonkers that uses their zip code) and it has a rep as being relatively hostile to both groups (by 21st century standards) to this day.

Originally Posted by dazzleman

Mount Vernon has a lot of beautiful homes, both in parts of the north side and in parts of the south side too.

But some neighborhoods have a rundown feel, even when you can see that the houses are or once were beautiful. This has been the case for a long time. This is true of my grandparents' old neighborhood, right near North Columbus and East Lincoln Ave.

I think that despite a great location, Mount Vernon has not revived due to bad schools and bad governance. Most of the housing stock was built for families, but families with good financial options often rule it out because of the poor quality of the schools.

Hi, I see you all the time in the CT forums, I didn't know your grandparents were from my hometown, small world.

Having both grown up in that neighborhood and actually lived there for awhile as an adult (from about 20 years ago until about a few years ago) I know what you mean. On the surface the area looks quite elegant but somehow it still feels a little "rundown" (but nothing like the neighborhoods a mile or so south of it).

Some of it is the schools. When I was a kid, the elementary school there (Traphagen) had a premier reputation (I didn't go there as I was one block into the border of Lincoln School but since the kids across the street from me did I did have neighbors who went there), and while it is still considered good relative to most elementary schools in Mt. Vernon it has lost a little of it's luster (lots of 5th and 6th grade incidents I hear).

[dazzleman]

Originally Posted by 7 Wishes

I hate "bumping" threads, but someone rep'd me for a comment I made in this thread 9 years ago and I was curious to see where the thread went.

Without giving the wrong idea, she lives in a part of Mt. Vernon that is affluent and heavily African-American. She probably feels a little more "comfortable" there and I am guessing her children are grown (having lived in her neighborhood for a long time I can tell you that the attitude towards schools and the more rundown part of the city goes across successful people of all colors).



While there are some wealthy people of color (and I mean beyond Asian) in places like Scarsdale and Pelham, Bronxville may have been a bad example. It's rep is as Westchester's last true bastion of "WASPy old money". Unlike Scarsdale and other wealthy areas of Westchester, there are virutally no Jews or Asians living in Bronxville (I mean the actual village, not the part of Yonkers that uses their zip code) and it has a rep as being relatively hostile to both groups (by 21st century standards) to this day.



Hi, I see you all the time in the CT forums, I didn't know your grandparents were from my hometown, small world.

Having both grown up in that neighborhood and actually lived there for awhile as an adult (from about 20 years ago until about a few years ago) I know what you mean. On the surface the area looks quite elegant but somehow it still feels a little "rundown" (but nothing like the neighborhoods a mile or so south of it).

Some of it is the schools. When I was a kid, the elementary school there (Traphagen) had a premier reputation (I didn't go there as I was one block into the border of Lincoln School but since the kids across the street from me did I did have neighbors who went there), and while it is still considered good relative to most elementary schools in Mt. Vernon it has lost a little of it's luster (lots of 5th and 6th grade incidents I hear).

It really is a small world. My mom grew up in Mount Vernon and I grew up mostly in Eastchester. We lived in the Chester Heights section for part of my childhood, only about a 5 minute drive from my grandparents' house on Winfield Avenue in Mount Vernon.

I think that neighborhood is called Chester Hill. There are lots of beautiful houses there, especially as you get up toward Grand Street. One thing I don't like is that they made virtually every street one way. North of the Cross County Parkway, all the streets are two way. My grandparents' street is now one way and I don't understand why. It's wide and has almost no traffic. My brother thinks it's a crime control measure, to make it less convenient for people committing crimes to get in and out easily.

Did you live in Chester Hill? Do you know what section Phylicia Rashad lives in?

[wordlife]

I think that it's so interesting to add to these threads that we posted on years ago. Now that I'm older and have some perspective, I'd say MV just needs leadership. I don't live in the local area anymore but when I'm driving up the parkway for good memories, I can't believe how big that building is they built on Mt. Vernon Ave over the train station. I knew that development would be coming one day but I didn't want to wait around for it.

[ckhthankgod]

This HS Arts program/school named after the famous actor from there seems to be a solid school district option: https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000060408
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?...d=800000060408
https://www.mtvernoncsd.org/Domain/1672

This is a small Catholic school in the Fleetwood section of the city: https://www.themontfortacademy.org/
https://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/sc...te&ID=A0502578
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Montfort_Academy

I’m surprised that more charter options haven’t popped up in the city so far.

[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

This HS Arts program/school named after the famous actor from there seems to be a solid school district option: https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000060408
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?...d=800000060408
https://www.mtvernoncsd.org/Domain/1672

This is a small Catholic school in the Fleetwood section of the city: https://www.themontfortacademy.org/
https://nces.ed.gov/globallocator/sc...te&ID=A0502578
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Montfort_Academy

I’m surprised that more charter options haven’t popped up in the city so far.

There's actually a controversy about the renaming. It was originally named for the first African American principal in Mount Vernon (who was principal of that school) and then suddenly renamed for Denzel Washington with her name "hidden" in the title only a few years later.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by 7 Wishes

There's actually a controversy about the renaming. It was originally named for the first African American principal in Mount Vernon (who was principal of that school) and then suddenly renamed for Denzel Washington with her name "hidden" in the title only a few years later.

Really? Has there been an explanation for the change?

[7 Wishes]

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Really? Has there been an explanation for the change?

Way back when (like 1960s and earlier) it was Washington Jr. High school (what we call "middle school" today). Then it was an elementary school for about 3 or 4 decades after that ("Washington Elementary") and sometime during that period was renamed for Nellie Thornton ("Thornton Elementary"), the former principal I mention in the last post. Then it was turned into a special performing arts HS I want to say about 10 or so years ago and the name remained ("Thornton High School"). Finally, Denzel Washington gave a lot of money a couple of years ago to the school to improve it and thus the name change.

It's technically now called "Denzel Washington School of the Arts at the Nellie Thornton Campus" in the hope of less backlash and so that Thornton's family would accept it but most locals simply call it "Denzel Washington arts school" now (I just realized ironically that the Washington name is back, LOL!) and there is no other "campus" this school belongs to.

Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

I’m surprised that more charter options haven’t popped up in the city so far.

Only charter so far is Amani which is grades 5-8. There was another one that was going to start last year that was eventually going to be K-6 or K-8 but I think COVID interrupted it from happening. One reason more haven't popped up is there's a lot more and stronger teacher union resistance to them in Mt. Vernon than in Yonkers or NYC.