Map of Valhalla CDP

Valhalla /vælhælə/ is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) within the town of Mount Pleasant, in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the New York City metropolitan area. Its population was 3,162 at the 2010 U.S. Census. The name was inspired by a fan of the composer Richard Wagner, and the hamlet is known both as the home of the primary hospital campus of Westchester Medical Center and New York Medical College and as the burial place of numerous noted people. Valhalla is the realm of the gods in Norse mythology.

Valhalla CDP overview:
Name:	Valhalla CDP
LSAD Code:	57
LSAD Description:	CDP (suffix)
State:	New York
County:	Westchester County
Elevation:	256 ft (78 m)
Total Area:	0.83 sq mi (2.15 km²)
Land Area:	0.83 sq mi (2.15 km²)
Water Area:	0.00 sq mi (0.00 km²)
Total Population:	3,213
Population Density:	3,871.08/sq mi (1,495.44/km²)
ZIP code:	10595
Area code:	914
FIPS code:	3676639
GNISfeature ID:	0968353

Online Interactive Map

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Valhalla online map. Source: Basemap layers from Google Map, Open Street Map (OSM), Arcgisonline, Wmflabs. Boundary Data from Database of Global Administrative Areas.

Valhalla location map. Where is Valhalla CDP?

Valhalla location on the U.S. Map. Where is Valhalla CDP. — Valhalla location on the U.S. Map.

Valhalla location on the New York map. Where is Valhalla CDP. — Location of Valhalla in New York.

History

Kensico Cemetery

The Kensico Cemetery was founded in 1889 in Valhalla at a time when many of the cemeteries in the city of New York were filling up, and several rural cemeteries were founded near the railroads that served the metropolis. Initially 250 acres (100 ha) in size, the cemetery was expanded to 600 acres (2.4 km) in 1905, but reduced to 460 acres (1.9 km) in 1912, when a portion of its land was sold to the neighboring Gate of Heaven Cemetery.

The Kensico Cemetery is the final resting place of the writer Paddy Chayefsky (The Americanization of Emily and Network), actress Billie Burke, who played Glinda, the “Good Witch of the North”, in the classic film The Wizard of Oz, alongside her famed Broadway impresario husband, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. Also interred within Kensico Cemetery and Gate of Heaven Cemetery are the big band leader Tommy Dorsey; the New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno; the former CBS News president Fred Friendly; the legendary New York Yankees star Lou Gehrig; the film star and comedian Danny Kaye; the comedian and TV pioneer Soupy Sales; the virtuoso pianist, composer, and conductor, Sergei Rachmaninoff; the author Ayn Rand; NBC founder David Sarnoff; artist Robert De Niro, Sr.; and the first Chief Scout Executive of the Boy Scouts of America, James E. West. It is also where Herbert Howard Booth, the son of the Salvation Army founder William Booth, who was the founder of the Salvation Army Musical Department is interred. Also buried there is actress Anne Bancroft, and Giovanni Turini, a sculptor from Italy, who made the bust of Giuseppe Mazzini in Central Park and the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Washington Square, a man he served in the fighting surrounding the unification of Italy. It is also the resting place of Harriet Quimby, America’s first certified female pilot. The Pakistani writer and delegate to the United Nations, Patras Bokhari. is also buried there.

Valhalla and neighboring Hawthorne are fairly densely packed with cemeteries, albeit not as densely as Colma, California.

Recent events

On July 12, 2006, the Westchester tornado, an F2 event, touched down in nearby Hawthorne and proceeded to move into Valhalla, causing much destruction in the Stonegate section of the community. This was one of the strongest tornadoes the area had ever seen, as tornadoes of this magnitude are mostly in the Midwest. Power lines were knocked down, and hundreds of trees were uprooted. There were no deaths, but much of Valhalla changed as a result.

On September 11, 2006, The Rising memorial to September 11 victims was dedicated at the Kensico Dam by Westchester County and the Westchester County September 11 Memorial Committee. The Rising honors the 109 county residents who were killed in the terrorist attacks.

In July 2007, Valhalla hosted the opening ceremony of the 2007 Empire State Games. The ceremony was held at the Kensico Dam honoring the athletes and their families and was attended by Governor Eliot Spitzer among other politicians. ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap was a keynote speaker.

On February 3, 2015, in the Valhalla train crash, a Metro-North train crashed into a Mercedes-Benz SUV that was stuck on the tracks at Commerce Street near the Taconic State Parkway. The crash caused six deaths and 15 injuries, including seven serious.