Mount Vernon New York History & Facts

Cheektowaga is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town has grown to a population of 89,877.The town is in the north-central part of the county, and is an inner ring suburb of Buffalo. The town is the second-largest suburb of Buffalo, after the Town of Amherst.

The town of Cheektowaga contains the village of Sloan and half of the village of Depew. The remainder, outside the villages, is a census-designated place also named Cheektowaga. The town is home to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Erie County's principal airport.

Villa Maria College, Empire State College, and the Walden Galleria are in Cheektowaga.

It was not until well after the American Revolutionary War that European-American settlers began to live here permanently. The Seneca had been forced to cede most of their land to the United States after the war, as they had been British allies. Cheektowaga was formed from the Town of Amherst on March 22, 1839. Upon the formation of West Seneca on October 16, 1851, it was reduced to its present limits—about 30 square miles (78 km2). Throughout the 19th century, it was referred to by its original name, "Chictawauga".

In 1894, the voters of Mount Vernon participated in a referendum on whether they wanted to consolidate into a new "City of Greater New York." The cities of Brooklyn (coterminous with Kings County) and Long Island City, the western towns and villages of Queens County, and all of Richmond County (present day Staten Island) all voted to join with the existing city (present day Manhattan and The Bronx). However, the returns were so negative in Mount Vernon and the adjacent city of Yonkers that those two areas were not included in the consolidated city and remained independent to this day.

The Mount Vernon Public Library, a gift to the city from Andrew Carnegie, opened in 1904 and is now part of the Westchester Library System, providing educational, cultural and computer services to county residents of all ages. The Mount Vernon Trust Company, opened in 1903. It was the largest bank in Westchester County, with branches in the east and west sections of the city.

During the 1960s, Mount Vernon was a divided city on the brink of a "northern style" segregation. Many African Americans from the southern United States migrated north and settled in the city of Mount Vernon for better job opportunities and educational advancements. At the same time, many white Americans from the Bronx and Manhattan looked to Mount Vernon as a new "bedroom community" due to rising crime in New York City (a "white flight" factor contributed as well). As a result, Mount Vernon became divided in two by the New Haven Line railroad tracks of the Metro-North Railroad: North Side and South Side. The population south of the tracks became predominantly African American, while that north of the tracks was largely white.

Famous Peoples From Mount Vernon New York

Ed Limato

Edward Frank "Ed" Limato (July 10, 1936 – July 3, 2010) was an American talent agent and a senior vice president at the William Morris Agency, representing clients such as Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicolas Cage, Mel Gibson, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Richard Gere, and Denzel Washington.Before coming to WMA, Limato was a partner and co-president at International Creative Management for more than a decade, from 1988 to 1999.

Limato grew up in a working-class Italian family in Mount Vernon, New York. He worked as a disc jockey and traveled to Europe, where he got a job as assistant to Franco Zeffirelli. Zeffirelli's agent helped Limato get a mailroom job at Ashley-Famous Agency in New York. That agency eventually merged to become International Creative Management (ICM).

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