Behind the Front Door | Yorktown, NY

Before this part of Yorktown became residential neighborhoods, it contained one of the most remarkable tree nurseries in the country.

Amawalk Nursery grew millions of trees and specialized in something unusual: very large trees.

Not seedlings.

Mature specimen trees.

Trees tall enough to transform an estate, a park — or even the grounds beside the White House.

In 1924, a 35-foot Norway spruce from Amawalk Nursery became the first living tree used for the National Christmas Tree ceremony in Washington.

The nursery eventually disappeared.

The land changed.

Neighborhoods followed.

But Yorktown never completely lost it.

Some of the trees are still here.

And once you know where to look, even the street names begin telling the story.

Amawalk Nursery occupied land along the Yorktown-Somers border and grew into an extraordinary horticultural operation.

The nursery began with Major Orlando Jay Smith, who acquired property in the area and developed a private collection of specimen trees.

After his death, his daughter Evelyn W. Smith became the driving force behind the nursery.

Under her leadership, the operation expanded dramatically.

Historical records preserved by the Somers Historical Society describe Amawalk as the largest “big tree” nursery in the world during its peak years, with roughly two million trees growing there and mature specimens reaching as much as 70 feet in height. 

That scale is difficult to picture today.

Imagine acres and acres of Yorktown not filled with houses, cul-de-sacs or school fields —

but rows of deliberately cultivated trees waiting to be moved somewhere else.

And Amawalk had become very good at moving them.

Most people hear “nursery” and picture small trees lined up in containers.

Amawalk operated on an entirely different scale.

Its surviving catalogs advertised specimen trees many feet tall, including substantial evergreens intended to create an established landscape almost immediately. A surviving Amawalk catalog even gives directions to the nursery opposite the old Amawalk railroad station and describes its location approximately forty miles from New York City. 

The location helped.

The railroad provided access.

Roads connected the nursery to estates and growing communities throughout the region.

And the company's specialty became mature trees that could be dug, transported and replanted elsewhere.

Amawalk was essentially selling something unusual:

time.

Instead of waiting decades for a landscape to mature, a property owner could bring in a tree that had already done much of the growing.

That expertise eventually put a Yorktown-area tree on a national stage.

The first national Christmas-tree ceremony in Washington used a cut tree.

The following year, organizers wanted something different.

They wanted a living tree that could remain in place and be used again.

The American Forestry Association supplied the answer.

A 35-foot Norway spruce from a nursery in Amawalk, New York was planted at Sherman Plaza near the White House.

President Calvin Coolidge lit it during the national Christmas celebration.

The National Park Service identifies it as the first living National Christmas Tree. 

So one of America's most recognizable holiday traditions has a rather unexpected connection to Northern Westchester:

the tree came from Amawalk.

The original living tree remained part of the ceremony for several years.

But decorating a living tree repeatedly was harder on it than anyone anticipated.

Trimming, ladders, lights and heat damaged the spruce.

Eventually it had to be replaced.

And when another Norway spruce was needed, the American Forestry Association returned to Amawalk Nursery for the replacement. 

That detail matters.

Amawalk had not simply gotten lucky once.

The nursery had earned a reputation for supplying and successfully moving unusually large living trees.

Yorktown wasn't just growing trees.

It had become known for knowing how to move established landscapes.

The National Christmas Tree may be Amawalk's most surprising claim to fame, but its specimen trees traveled widely.

Local historical research records Amawalk trees being supplied for major private estates and public locations, including prominent sites in New York.

The nursery also sent enormous trees into New York City. Historical accounts describe a pair of towering Norway spruces from Amawalk displayed at Grand Central Terminal before being replanted elsewhere afterward. 

The business had grown from one man's tree collection into an operation with a reach far beyond Yorktown.

Then the nursery's fortunes changed.

Economic pressures, fires and financial difficulties eventually brought the operation to an end.

And something very familiar began happening to the land.

The acres that had once grown specimen trees gradually took on new uses.

Residential development arrived.

Schools arrived.

Roads appeared where rows of nursery stock had once grown.

Local Yorktown historian Monica Doherty has documented how the former nursery property became woven into the growing community, including the area around Brookside School and surrounding residential streets. 

And some of the street names are almost too perfect.

Evergreen Street.

Blue Spruce Drive.

Willoway Street.

Suddenly those names don't feel quite so random.

They are little linguistic fingerprints of what came before.

But the strongest evidence isn't a road sign.

It's alive.

Yorktown's own Comprehensive Plan identifies a line of beech trees along Evergreen Street as surviving remnants of Amawalk Nursery.

The town considers them a historic landscape resource worth protecting. 

That might be my favorite part of this entire story.

The nursery itself is gone.

The operation disappeared.

Much of the land became something completely different.

And yet trees planted during that earlier chapter of Yorktown are still standing inside the landscape that replaced it.

The proof is still growing.

This is also where local history becomes useful when thinking about property.

Neighborhoods rarely appear on completely blank land.

Before the houses, there was something else.

A farm.

An orchard.

A quarry.

An estate.

A railroad.

Or, in this case, one of the country's great tree nurseries.

Older land uses can help explain things we still encounter:

the shape of parcels,

the direction of older roads,

mature trees that seem unusually established,

stone walls,

drainage patterns,

street names,

and sometimes even why one neighborhood simply feels different from another nearby.

None of that determines the value of a house by itself.

But it helps explain the property.

And Yorktown contains a lot of different property stories.

That matters here.

Yorktown includes established neighborhoods, lake areas, older homes, newer subdivisions, larger parcels and several distinct hamlets and residential pockets.

Two houses can carry the same Yorktown identity while offering very different settings, lots, utilities, approvals and buyer appeal.

That's why a town-wide median — or an online estimate — can only take you so far.

The house matters.

But so does the land beneath it and the neighborhood around it.

Sometimes the reason a place looks and feels the way it does began long before the first house on the street was built.

Amawalk Nursery is a rather spectacular example.

You don't have to travel to Washington to find what's left of this story.

Drive through Yorktown.

Find Evergreen Street.

Look at the mature beech trees.

The Town of Yorktown itself identifies them as remnants of Amawalk Nursery. 

A tree grown here once became America's first living National Christmas Tree.

Millions of others filled the surrounding acreage.

The nursery disappeared.

Homes and streets took its place.

But some of those trees never left.

Once you know that, Evergreen Street isn't just a street name anymore.

It's part of the story.