Train blogger/photog Emily of IRideTheHarlemLine has revisited the tiny Mount Pleasant train station, which only receives/accepts passengers a few times a weekend as they visit/depart Gate of Heaven cemetery. (GoH is of course the final resting place of Babe Ruth and, about 50 feet away from Ruth, Billy Martin. George Steinbrenner is buried 1,200 miles away in Tampa.)

Emily takes terrific photos, and takes considerable delight in visiting Metro-North train stations and snapping the s*** out of them.

This is her second visit to Mount Pleasant; previously, she called it “The loneliest statin on the Harlem Line.” Oddly, it’s probably closer to my home than the Hawthorne station, though getting my bike up the hill through Gate of Heaven would make Broad Street’s Heartbreak Hill seem like a bunny slope.

She writes:

One of the first station panoramas I posted was from Mount Pleasant… though I wasn’t too happy with it, so I went back to the station, and got a few new panoramas. Enjoy! 

Remind me to speak with Emily about helping with some sort of long-overdue redesign of Trainjotting.

The local quality of life group Mount Pleasant Today sent out questionnaires last night to area commuters to see what they’d like to do with the old Hawthorne station building.

“We believe that through active community involvement, Mount Pleasant residents and businesses can work together with town officials to implement positive changes and make the hamlets of Mount Pleasant a better place to live,” reads the questionnaire’s intro. “Since the Hawthorne Train Station is the center of Hawthorne, we would like to start here in improving our Town’s appearance.”

The group will also hand out flyers with the 10-question survey at the station and at various town buildings.

If you’d like to get a copy, drop them an email at mtpleasanttoday@hotmail.com.

Commuters are asked to rank a range of possible uses for the station house, including a restaurant, a coffee shop, a dry cleaner, and a police substation.

One question pertains to refurbishing the building’s exterior–perhaps to its original state, as pictured above.

The town of Mount Pleasant is now allowing vendors to bid on the combined 1,000 square feet of space in the old Hawthorne train station building. The building is comprised of two 530 and 470 square foot rooms.

Writes the town:

The Town of Mount Pleasant is seeking proposals from qualified individuals and firms interested in leasing space at the Hawthorne Train Station Building in Hawthorne, NY  10532.

The intent of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to seek out and select a Lessee for retail space available at the Hawthorne Train Station Building.

There will be a pre-proposal meeting at the Hawthorne Train Station Building as noted in Article 2.7 of this Request for Proposal.

Needs work!

Proposals are due in Monday at 11 a.m., which obviously doesn’t give one a lot of time to get a proposal together, seeing as the request for proposals went out town late afternoon yesterday.

The civic group Mount Pleasant Today will also circulate a questionnaire asked commuters and residents what they want to see–restaurant, dry cleaner, Hot Tub Time Machine!–go into the space. They plan to circulate fliers at the station and other public places like libraries, the community center and town hall.

The winning bidder will be responsible for fixing up the interior, though clearly some work is going on inside the building these days.

The town says both parts of the building (Section A and Section B) will rent for $1000 a month apiece, but it’s negotiable.

Who’ll get the winning bid?

Big stuff going on at Hawthorne station–worker guys digging in the front lawn, a massive cleanup going on in the station house (no, the workers were not wearing HazMat suits), a dumpster being filled with Mount Pleasant Taxi detritus.

I happened by this mountain rising out of the dumpster and saw ratty furniture, old sheetrock, and loads and loads of trash.

But perhaps the most curious element in the landfill was this: A book on top called “Great Paintings of the Louvre,” with the Mona Lisa herself sort-of smiling from the cover.

She classed up the dumpster a bit.

I rolled toward the Hawthorne station this morning, and saw a sweet and shiny Lincoln Town Car-type vehicle pulling out of the lot and onto Elwood.

A moment later, I saw a town Fire Safety truck next to the station house, and a pair of town employees putting in the new bike rack!! cleaning out the old building, including scraping the MOUNT PLEASANT TAXI letters from the front window.

I was about to shoot a photo when a man approached me. He was about 30 and wore a striped, pressed shirt and khakis. His hair was brown and spiky.

“Hello, sir,” he said. “I’m from Hawthorne Taxi. We just moved in here. Now you don’t have to go clunking around in those beat-up old taxis anymore.”

He gave me a business card. He told me Mount Pleasant Taxi moved, not across the tracks to Broadway as they said they’d do, but over onto Marble Avenue.

The man’s name was Val.

Not everyone was thrilled to make his acquaintance this morning at Hawthorne station. Writes “James”:

I hope this situation of the taxi companies assaulting commuters on their way to the platform is resolved quickly. That was obnoxious this morning. I hate the old company but, at least I could walk to the train with out being bothered.

Val certainly didn’t seem to be assaulting anyone, at least in my interaction with him. Can’t fault a guy for trying to drum up business for a new venture.

I’ll call later to see if they plan to move into the old station house, which would certainly cause problems with some of the ideas (coffee shop, restaurant, dry cleaners) the town–and Mount Pleasant Today–is kicking around for the vacated space.

UPDATE: Val Balidemaj says Hawthorne Taxi & Car Service will indeed bid on the station house digs once the town completes its renovation. “That’s our goal, to end up in the house,” he said.

Val says he’s from the Bronx but has been working in the mid-Westchester region for years.

Hawthorne Taxi is a division of Pleasantville Taxi & Car Service.

According to the biz card, it’s only six bucks for a ride within two miles of the station. A ride a mile from the station used to cost me like $8 with Mount Pleasant Taxi–in a beat-up old clunker, no less.

The always-entertaining I Ride the Harlem Line blog pays a special visit to “The Loneliest Station on the Harlem Line”–the Mount Pleasant stop between Hawthorne and Valhalla.

The MP stop is located at the nexus of several boneyards, including Gate of Heaven (final resting place of George Herman Babe Ruth, known to teammates and opponents as “Gidge”), Kensico Cemetery (resting place for Lou Gehrig and Harry Frazee, the man who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees), and Sharon Garden s(home of various deceased members of New York’s Jewish community).

The train only stops there once during weekdays and thrice on weekends, and the platform is about the size of a surfboard.

Emily writes:

Nestled in between the stations of Valhalla and Hawthorne on the Harlem Line is an active station that you might not be aware of. Most trains pass by without stopping. On weekdays, only one train in each direction makes a stop there. On weekends there are three. The station is Mount Pleasant, and it just might be the loneliest station on the Harlem Line.

Harlem Line-r Emily is an excellent photog, and her curiousity would probably make her a good reporter too. She’s got lots of good pics of the Mount Pleasant station.

I’ve actually been on a few trains that have stopped at MP of late, thanks to weekend trips to the city to check out the Gotham skyscrapers with Little G.

Funny thing is, the Mount Pleasant stop may actually be closer to my house than the Hawthorne one is.

I’m one of the few (living) people who can claim that.

Mount Pleasant took a big step toward cleaning up the Hawthorne train station area, and using the old building for something that might actually be a positive for area commuters. A sign on the Mount Pleasant Taxi outfit’s window in the station building announced that the cab company is moving to the other side of the tracks May 1. You’ll be able to find them next month on the Broadway side of the station, by the huge parking lot, the ballfields, and that sagging auto parts shop.

It’s not ideal for those seeking a taxi–if you didn’t know your way around, you’d probably never think to cross the tracks to find a cab–but it’s a big boost for those who come in and out of the station each day. Among the cab company’s contributions to local Hawthorne culture: Exxon Valez-worthy oil spills in the parking lot, butchered rabbits, and driving home drunken louts all the way to Thornwood instead of well-mannered, tux-clad men staying in Hawthorne.

We were actually the first to report the cab company’s pending departure in an interview with new Town Supervisor Joan Maybury last month. She told us:

“There’ll be a rejuvenated look to the area. We’ll certainly clean up the building.”

That may include getting the cab company’s storage junk out of the main room and opening it up to the public; Maybury hinted that the town would push Mount Pleasant Taxi to be better, cleaner neighbors or set up shop elsewhere. The town may entertain suggestions from the community as to how to best use that space; a coffee shop or book club were two off-the-top-of-her-head potential uses from Maybury.   

Definitely curious to see what the town does with the building once they get the cab office–and all their junk in storage–out of the building.

Westchester is still digging out after the two-foot ass-kicking we took late last week. Much of the county lost power for a significant amount of time; some are still without power, I think,

Chappaqua resident Peter Applebome, who writes the My Town Our Towns column for the NY Times, writes about the misery of being off the grid for three days up there in Clintonville. To be fair, Applebome says it ain’t exactly the same as being an earthquake victim.

I saw stretches of outages while walking home Friday, including Broad just east of Bradhurst.

While we were able to keep Dinosaur Train airing on Sprout for Little G all weekend, we were nonetheless dismayed to find our beloved little bike rack–the one we pestered Town Hall for 2 1/2 years ago, the most publicized little bike rack in the free world–flattened from the snow.

What fond memories we have of the rack: Seeing it arrive that fateful day in July 2007. Seeing it become a popular hangout for two-wheeled vehicles when gas got freakishly expensive. Seeing it get totally full of bikes after some initial resistance.

[The curvy black bar behind the fence]

Well, perhaps it was not entirely flattened, but it’s looking for all the world like it is not something you will ever again lock your bike on, at least not in its current state.

It appears the snow plows, while clearing out the Hawthorne station lot, shoved a mountain of snow against the rack, which has been lifted off its moorings on one side and now is raised to the sky at a 45 degree angle, as opposed to the right angle more commonly seen on bike racks. The plows presumably busted the thing right out of its concrete platforms, which, frankly, didn’t look so secure from the start.

We’ll see what it looks like when the mound of snow clears. For now, there’s so much snow keeping the rack in place that it seems safe to lock your bike to–heck, I did this morning, and the long vacated Power Climber bike is still there, more neglected than Kirstie Allie’s StairMaster.

But the Town maintenance guys are going to have to do some jiggering to make it viable after the snow’s gone.

How could I forget, one of the main highlights from our Metro-North excursion to the city Sunday. We were heading home and had just arrived in Valhalla. “Get ready,” I told Little G. “The next stop is ours.”

The conductor then announced that the next stop wasn’t in fact, Hawthorne, but Mount Pleasant. The Mount Pleasant stop is that teeny tiny little platform near where Stevens hits the Taconic; it’s for those taking the train up to visit the dearly departed, such as Babe Ruth, in Gate of Heaven cemetery.

The Bambino rests eternally in Hawthorne.

The train eased into Mount Pleasant, but to say it was a “stop” flatters it a bit. The conductor said the last car was the only one that would open. No one got off and no one got on. We may have stopped for three seconds.

Nonetheless, it was my first stop ever at Mount Pleasant after almost 3 1/2 years on the rails–though I did come close three years ago. This actually qualifies for “exciting” for me these days.

[image: findagrave.com]

Diving back into the theme of the week, Philip F. Horne’s Mount Pleasant: A History of a New York Suburb and its People, we arrive in the 1890s and see that the enterprising real estate speculator Louis Smadbeck is intent on getting New Yorkers to move to Hawthorne (then Unionville) and Thornwood (then Sherman Park).

Smadbeck divvied the area into 100 by 25 foot plots and focused on Germans living on the Upper East Side. He formed a corporation called the Rapid Transit Real Estate Company; as the name indicates, he used the area’s railroad as a main lure for Manhattan folk looking for more space.

At this point in history, Grand Central Terminal, not City Hall, was where the local Westchester train entered and exited.

Horne writes:

On Sundays, Smadbeck hired excursion trains and ran them, free of charge, from Grand Central Terminal to the station at Unionville, where the passengers were transferred to stagecoaches to be driven around the tract. The railroad was the focal point of the community; a Sherman Park station was established [Editor’s Note: I believe that’s the closed down station house across from the pizza joint on Commerce Ave. in Thornwood], and Smadbeck wrote of greatly improved passenger service which was to be inaugurated:

Rapid Transit means…the establishment of a continuous four track service, which will enable residents of Sherman Park to reach the heart of New York City in 35 minutes.

Thirty five minutes! Smadbeck also offered to sell gullible New Yorkers a share of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Previous installments from the book:

A (Train) Trip Down Memory Lane

1846: The Train Arrives in Hawthorne

Redcoat Terrorism and Commuting Via Horse-and-Buggy