Somers Hamlet Historic District

Somers Hamlet is a roadside community in northern Westchester County, New York, laid out along U.S. Route 202 where two turnpikes met. The district covers about 56 acres and holds dozens of buildings, two large cemeteries and a small park. Its centerpiece is the Elephant Hotel, built in 1820-25 by Hachaliah Bailey, a drover who bought the elephant Old Bet in 1805 and toured the Northeast with menageries. Around the hotel stand a Greek Revival church from 1841, a Second Empire house of about 1870, brick duplexes and many modest wood-frame dwellings once occupied by tradesmen and laborers. The hamlet peaked by 1850 and then changed little, as railroads and parkways bypassed it. Suburban growth and large corporate campuses nearby have since pressed against it, and many houses now hold shops and offices. The district was listed because it preserves a rare, largely intact example of nineteenth-century rural turnpike life in a county that has otherwise suburbanized.