Rye: The Oldest City in Westchester

Rye was settled by English colonists from Greenwich in sixteen sixty and is one of the oldest settlements in Westchester County. The name came from Rye in East Sussex, England, the hometown of some early settlers. The town sat astride the Boston Post Road, the main colonial highway between New York and Boston, and every important traveler moving between the two cities passed through.

John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, was born in New York City in seventeen forty-five, grew up in Rye, and is buried there. The town also holds Playland, the only amusement park in the country built and owned by a county government, opened in nineteen twenty-eight and still operating today on Rye's Long Island Sound shore. A small place with a long memory, Rye has stayed residential while the rest of Westchester industrialized around it.