A century of building in Scarsdale

Scarsdale has been issuing building permits since before the Bronx River Parkway opened, and it has kept the paperwork. 63,243 of those records are online, 1900 to 2026. They show what was built here, what was added later, and what got knocked down and replaced.

• 63,262permits on file
• 126years covered
• 5,239parcels with a record
• 2,264pool permits

1925The Bronx River Parkway opens through Westchester

When Scarsdale was built

A parcel's oldest surviving permit is the closest thing the archive has to a build date. Two decades dominate: the 1920s (1,426 parcels) and the 1950s (1,136).

Fig. 1

The first peak is the commuter boom. The Bronx River Parkway opened through Westchester in the mid-1920s and the railway suburb filled in behind it; the archive's oldest entries are porches, dwellings and plumbing from exactly those years. The second is the postwar build-out of the remaining land. After 1960 the curve falls away and never recovers. Building did not stop; the land ran out. Almost everything after that is people rebuilding on lots that already had a house on them.

This is the oldest permit on file, not the year the house went up. Where the village's records begin, our record begins. A house from 1910 whose first surviving paperwork is a 1926 porch appears here as 1926, so the early decades are a floor rather than a census.

A century of paperwork

Fig. 2

2012Hurricane Sandy takes power out across Westchester for a week

The year everyone bought a generator

Standby generators first appear in 1997. Over the next eleven years the village issued 59 of them in total.

Fig. 3

Hurricane Sandy came ashore at the end of October 2012 and took power out across Westchester for a week or more. The following year Scarsdale issued 535 generator permits — 4.5 times the 118 issued in 2012, and more than any year before or since. The line never drops back to where it was. In the ten years before Sandy the village averaged 40 generator permits a year. In the ten after, 134.

1961The Berlin Wall goes up in August; tanks face off at Checkpoint Charlie in October

The winter everyone dug a shelter

There are 13 bomb and fallout shelter permits in the archive, and they are not spread evenly across the Cold War. 9 of them were pulled in November and December 1961.

The Berlin Wall had gone up that August. Kennedy had told Americans that summer to build shelters, and by late October Soviet and American tanks were facing each other at Checkpoint Charlie. Scarsdale issued 9 shelter permits in the last eight weeks of the year.

Show the numbers — every shelter permit on file

Date	Address	On the permit
8/26/1960	40 Graham Rd	PMT : 06523 - VOID not built BOMB SHELTER *
12/15/1961	91 Greenacres Ave	VOID-PMT : 06805 - BOMB SHELTER **VOID**
12/7/1961	15 Leatherstocking La	PMT : 06794 - BOMB SHELTER *
12/11/1961	19 Leatherstocking La	PMT : 06796 - BOMB SHELTER * Non-habitable Storage Only
12/11/1961	6 Crosby Cl	PMT : 06799 - BOMB SHELTER ( NOT BUILT )*
12/20/1961	11 Westview La	PMT : 06810 - ORIGINAL BOMB SHELTER NOW USED FOR STORAGE ROOM/WINE CELLAR *
12/7/1961	36 Herkimer Rd	PMT : 06793 - BOMB SHELTER VOID / DUPLICATE PERMIT
12/7/1961	36 Herkimer Rd	Fallout/Bomb shelter
11/2/1961	118 Penn Rd	PMT : 06775 - FALLOUT SHELTER *
11/2/1961	118 Penn Rd	fallout shelter - used as pantry
4/24/1962	15 Gorham Rd	PMT : 06867 - FALLOUT SHELTER *
3/21/1962	7 Leatherstocking La	PMT : 06845 - BOMB SHELTER *
5/7/1965	44 Ogden Rd	Bomb shelter

Leatherstocking La accounts for 3 of them — three neighbours on one street, within weeks of each other. Two of the permits record what became of the shelters: one reads “original bomb shelter now used for storage,” another “fallout shelter — used as pantry.” Several were never dug.

1957The first tennis court that actually gets built

The backyard tennis boom

Backyard tennis courts arrive later than you would guess.

Fig. 4

A court was applied for in 1928 and cancelled. The first one actually built went up in 1957 at 146 Griffen Ave. The boom is the 1970s, when 51 were permitted — roughly one a month through the decade. The count has fallen every decade since. A court takes up a large flat piece of a lot, which is why several of them show up later in demolition records.

2021Travel shuts down; pool permits double

A hundred years of swimming pools

The oldest pool permit on file is April 1926, at 13 Cooper Rd. It was cancelled — the record reads PMT : 00801 - POOL - VOID — so no pool was built that year. The first that went ahead was 1929 at 134-140 Mamaroneck Rd. There are 2,264 pool permits now, across 794 parcels.

Fig. 5

The count climbs through the postwar decades, then jumps in 2021 and 2022 while travel was shut down. It has dropped by roughly two thirds since.

2017Demolitions peak

Knocking it down and starting again

In a town that ran out of empty land decades ago, growth means replacement.

Fig. 6

This is the pattern behind the assessment jumps elsewhere on this site. A parcel carrying a small older house is assessed modestly for years, is bought, demolished and rebuilt much larger — and its assessed value moves by a multiple rather than a percentage. That is why a single address on an otherwise flat street can triple in one roll — see the biggest assessment increases.

The oldest and newest streets

The same dates grouped by street give the order the village filled in. About 63 years separate the earliest streets from the last.

Earliest on the record

Latest to fill in

Median year of earliest permit, streets with at least 15 parcels on file. Bar length shows how many homes on that street carry a record.

The most documented houses in Scarsdale

69 Haverford Ave carries 88 permits across 71 years. These are the ten single-family homes with the longest paper trail; each links to its own page and full permit history.

Single-family parcels only, ranked by number of dated permits. Bar length is the permit count. Open any of them: 69 Haverford Ave · 15 Oak Way · 12 Sherbrooke Rd · 185 Heathcote Rd · 31 Saxon Woods Rd.

These read in order: a new dwelling, a garage, a porch enclosed, a boiler, a pool, a kitchen, a generator, an addition, a second kitchen thirty years after the first. The village centre blocks on Garth Road and East Parkway have far more permits still, but they are apartment buildings and shops rather than houses, so they are left out here.

Longest continuous records

The houses whose paperwork starts earliest and keeps going:

Show the numbers — longest-documented single-family houses

First permit	Last permit	Span	Address	Permits
1900	2023	123 years	10 Richbell Rd	52
1900	2023	123 years	6 Richbell Rd	12
1900	2023	123 years	2 Edgewood Rd	11
1900	2017	117 years	303 Boulevard	24
1900	2013	113 years	25 Rodney Rd	31
1915	2026	111 years	51 Crossway	13

Things people built in Scarsdale

Searching the descriptions turns up things that never make it into an assessment roll.

6,262 of the 63,262 permits on file were cancelled — one in ten. The 1926 pool at 13 Cooper Rd is one of them. Both treehouse permits are two more. Cancelled permits are counted in the totals on this page and excluded from the dates.

• Bomb and fallout shelters13 on file. Earliest is 1960 and was cancelled. First to go ahead: 1961, 11 Westview La.PMT : 06810 - ORIGINAL BOMB SHELTER NOW USED FOR STORAGE ROOM/WINE CELLAR *
• Chicken coops2 on file. Earliest 1943, 4 Winslow Pl.PMT : 03433 - NEW CHICKEN COOP *
• Stables and barns32 on file. Earliest 1926, 244 Mamaroneck Rd.PMT : 00932 - ALT.& REPAIRS TO BARN
• Treehouses2 on file, all cancelled. None was ever built.PMT : 08449 - TREEHOUSE - Removed / VOID
• Saunas9 on file. Earliest 1965, 22-28 Garth Rd.PMT : 07363 - SAUNA ROOM *
• Gazebos and cabanas75 on file. Earliest 1967, 62 Birchall Dr.PMT : 07762 - CABANA *
• Dumbwaiters1 on file. Earliest 2013, 37 Drake Rd.INTERIOR RENOVATIONS - BASEMENT KITCHEN RENOVATION WITH DUMBWAITER MODERNIZATION
• Coal2 on file. Earliest 1929, 14 Freightway.PMT : 01712 - Demolish old coal warehous*
• Squash and basketball courts15 on file. Earliest 1995, 72 Haverford Ave.Fence, arbor & basketball court

The chicken coop is April 1943 — wartime, when the federal government was actively encouraging households to keep hens. The treehouse permit was later marked “removed / void.” In 1929 someone applied to demolish an old coal warehouse on Freightway.

What people actually build

Each category's first application, the first one that went ahead, and its busiest year:

Show the numbers — permit categories

What	First applied for	First built	Total permits	Busiest year	That year
Pool	1926	1929	2,264	2022	155
Tennis court	1928	1957	169	1976	10
Greenhouse	1924	1924	156	1947	14
Solar	1974	1977	267	2025	41
Geothermal	2011	2011	60	2022	15
Standby generator	1997	2003	2,432	2013	535
Elevator	1950	1950	52	2019	3
Wine cellar	1961	1961	12	2025	3
Demolition	1924	1925	495	2017	38
New dwelling	1900	1900	4,031	1925	194
Addition	1900	1923	6,114	2002	249
Deck or patio	1927	1927	2,790	2021	157

Solar runs 38 permits in its first thirty-eight years and 229 since 2015, 41 of them in 2025 alone.

The oldest records on file

Show the numbers — earliest permits in the archive

Year	Address	Type	Description
1900	10 Richbell Rd	Building	PLM : 09364 - REPLACE WATER SERVICE VALV*
1900	109 Brewster Rd	Building	PMT : 05432 - ADDITION TO PORCH *
1900	2 Edgewood Rd	Building	PMT : 00032 - NEW DWELLING
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER
1900	25 Rodney Rd	Plumbing	PMT : SEE FILE LETTER

Where this comes from

Parcel-level permits are compiled from the Village of Scarsdale's public PROS records — permit type, status and description, with no fee amounts, which the village does not publish online. Nothing here is an official record; confirm anything that matters on PROS.

Dates on this page come from permits that went ahead. Counts include the 6,262 that did not. Full method: how Dale Ledger is built.

Browse the underlying records in the Scarsdale search, which carries the permit history for every individual parcel.