Where to Stay in Mount Vernon, New York

What is Mount Vernon known for?

Mount Vernon ranks eighth-largest among the cities of New York and stands as the state's largest city with an African-American majority, a weight it carries in a compact space beside the Bronx. Jamaican families settled here. Arrivals from Jamaica after the island's independence from Britain in 1962 added to the city's mix.

Yonkers Raceway sits at the edge, and the Thomas Paine Monument marks the older ground.

What are the main landmarks in Mount Vernon?

Thomas Paine is remembered here. The Thomas Paine Monument stands as the city's best-known marker, and the First Presbyterian Church and Lewis Pintard House keeps an older layer of the city. Yonkers Raceway runs beside the city.

Older parish buildings fill out the rest of the list. The Bronx begins just beyond, and Westchester County opens out on the other side.

What is the history of Mount Vernon?

Mount Vernon became a city in 1892. Before that charter the ground belonged to Westchester County like any other stretch of it, and the buildings that survive from those years include the First Presbyterian Church and Lewis Pintard House. The city sits immediately north of the borough of the Bronx, and that position set the terms of nearly everything that followed the charter.

New York City pressed north. Mount Vernon settled into the role of an inner suburb rather than a separate town, and its streets filled in as the metropolitan area reached the county line. The Thomas Paine Monument went up on its streets.

Jamaica won its independence from Britain on August 6, 1962, and the years that followed brought Jamaican families to Mount Vernon in numbers large enough to mark the city permanently. Those who came carried African and Indian descent alike, and they settled across the city's blocks. The change was lasting.

By the 2020 census Mount Vernon ranked eighth-largest among the state's cities and first among those with an African-American majority. Westchester County holds it still, though the streets read as an extension of New York City.

Where is Mount Vernon?

Mount Vernon adjoins the Bronx. The city occupies about eleven square kilometres of Westchester County, packed against the New York City line so that its southern edge meets the borough of the Bronx. Westchester County spreads out beyond it.

Yonkers Raceway marks one side of the built-up ground, and nothing in the city is far from another part of it.

What is the climate of Mount Vernon?

Weather here arrives with New York City's, since the Bronx line is a few streets away and nothing in the landscape separates the two. Temperate northern-hemisphere seasons run the year, with warm months at its middle and cold ones at either end. Westchester County shares the pattern.

Outdoor days at Yonkers Raceway fall in the warmer half of the year.

How do you get to Mount Vernon?

Approaches come through the Bronx, since the borough's streets run up to the Mount Vernon line and the city sits inside the built-up edge of New York City. Westchester County lies beyond. Roads north lead further into the county, while the routes south end in the boroughs.

Yonkers Raceway sits near the same approaches. Nothing about the trip involves leaving the metropolitan area.