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| Corner of Forster & Primrose Avenues, around 1900 |
Around 1890, when the
lawyer Frederick P. Forster shifted his gaze from Manhattan to Mount Vernon,
N.Y., the burgeoning village was two years shy of incorporating as a city.
Beyond the commercial district where the railroad chugged through, much of Mount Vernon’s four-square miles formed a patchwork of farms, fields, orchards, and eighteenth-century manors.
A 39-year-old Boston native, Forster thrived on real estate deals, buying and selling along the Hudson River and in Riverdale. In 1888 he came to Mount Vernon to referee an auction of contested land.
Before long he returned, now in partnership with three local men: Winfield, Murphy, and Lucas. These three were big boosters of the city and looked forward to investing in property and making a lot of money.
The blustery Winfield claimed he was already a millionaire, having made his fortune buying and selling land in South Dakota.
Forster had no particular affinity with Mount Vernon, although periodically during the next 20 years he would make noises about building a house there. The house never materialized, and it appears that Forster conducted business from a distance.
Ironically, three city streets are named for him although he declined the opportunity to lend his name to a small park.
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| Original bricks are still visible under street pavement on Forster Avenue. |
That park, where my friend and I used to chalk up the sidewalks with childish pictures, lay in the middle of what became known as the Forster Tract.
Eventually the four men amassed 75 acres. Since the tract bore Forster’s name, his investment probably was the largest.
By 1901 they were on their way. “The Choice Forster Tract Being Improved,” one headline stated, “The Most Desirable Land in Fifth Ward.”
Winfield, Murphy, and
Lucas hired men to regrade the terrain, lay out and macadamize the streets, and
install sewers and gas lines after slugging out costs with the city.
On some of the new streets one might find an old farmhouse. But most of the lots stood empty, waiting to be purchased.
SECURE
FIRST LOTS AT BOTTOM PRICES.
High ground, flagged sidewalks, high terraced lots.
Only
10 minutes walk to Station.
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| The Forster Tract |
***
Alas or perhaps not alas, Frederick
Forster never got to see the development of the Forster Tract. In 1912 he
leased out the family home on West 84th Street and skedaddled to
Milton, Mass. with his wife Edith and six of their children.
There, in the winter of 1913, the Forsters hosted their daughter Dorothy’s wedding to a Yale man with the inimitable name of Rutger Bleecker Miller.
Soon after, the scandal hit the papers. As executor of several large New York City estates, Forster had borrowed and embezzled upwards of $900,000, even causing one man to go to jail because he could not pay alimony.
The ensuing lawsuits and bankruptcy uncovered securities fraud.
Forster’s defense—he claimed to have been afflicted with partial paralysis—did not hold water with the eminent Judge Samuel Seabury, who would go on to bring down Tammany Hall in the 1930s.
In 1914, Forster was forced to relinquish his unsold property in Mount Vernon. This may have broken his heart. If so, he did not suffer long, dying one year later at age 62.
I must confide that this news came as a terrible shock. Although it has been impossible to find a portrait of Frederick Prentiss Forster, I imagined him as an amiable bearded man who put the interests of his clients first.
It would seem to follow
that the streets which bear his name—Frederick Place, Forster Avenue, and Forster Parkway—honored
a generous spirit with an artful sensibility.
I love Mount Vernon, but it has a habit of misleading me.
To be continued.
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