Pictured: Bronxville’s First Village Hall, 1906-1940

By Ray Geselbracht, Bronxville Village Historian; Photos by N. Bower

April 2, 2025: On May 14, 1906, the Bronxville Board of Trustees learned that the village had received a magnificent gift.  A letter from two of the village’s most important leaders, Frank Ross Chambers and William Van Duzer Lawrence, informed the Board that the two men were giving the new Village Hall that was then under construction at the intersection of Pondfield Road and Kraft Avenue, to the Village for free—land, building, furnishings and equipment, all at no cost to the Village.  The cost to the donors is estimated at $60,000.

Pictured above: Frank Ross Chamber (left) and William Van Duzer Lawrence (right)

Shortly after Chambers’ and Lawrence’s letter was received by the Board of Trustees, the Gorham Manufacturing Company in New York City was commissioned, presumably by the Board, to create a large bronze plaque memorializing their donation (pictured below).  It was in the classical style, with Bronxville’s first Village Seal—featuring a bee—at the top and a text in a large field underneath reading, “This Tablet is Erected in Recognition of the Public Spirit and Generosity of Frank Ross Chambers and William Van Duzer Lawrence Who Donated to the Village of Bronxville This Building Fully Equipped and the Land on Which It Stands.  June 1906.”

Pictured: Bronze Plaque referred to above

Pictured: Larger photo of the top of the plaque

The plaque probably hung either in the lobby or the main first-floor corridor that ran from front to back of Village Hall.  There is one eye-witness account of its being in the building.  “Today,” an article in the Bronxville Review, April 24, 1936, reported, “a tablet in Village Hall records the generosity of Mr. Chambers and William Van Duzer Lawrence, who were the donors of the new building and its site.”

The plaque hung in the stairwell at 116 Kraft, in the building which was put up on the original Village Hall site, for a very long time, perhaps since the building was completed in 1941 or 1942.  The historic importance of the plaque was recognized a few years ago, and its owner, Jonathan Gordon and his partners at Admiral Real Estate Services, donated it to the Village. 

It now hangs, together with a small exhibit, in the lobby of Village Hall, memorializing now, as when it was first mounted in the old Village Hall in 1906, the public spirit and generosity of the building’s two donors, as well as, more generally, the civic spirit which has always been at the heart of the village and its people.