A Little Rye History
Who Put the Indian in Indian Village?

– By Laura Brett –

The neighborhood we now know as Indian Village was laid out at the turn of the century by James S. Merritt, Frederick Odell and Charles Lee Austin, as a neighborhood called Glenhyrst. Streets were laid out and lots subdivided to incorporate all of the property from Ridge Street through Highland Road and extending south to the railroad tracks in one neighborhood. Although it appears that some houses were built as part of the subdivision, most of the property was sold around 15 years later to the Apawamis Land Company. 

The original Glenhyrst plan called for lots to average about 50 by 125 feet. The streets had different names, some of them based on Native American words or tribes, and were laid out slightly differently. Where Mendota is the only street today that travels through the neighborhood north to south, the Glenhyrst plan called for two streets to cross the neighborhood, Waubunk and Glenhyrst Parkway, and the parkway was to be directly adjacent to Blind Brook. Only two streets, Natoma and Ravell, rather than the four there now, traversed the neighborhood from east to west and both crossed Blind Brook and continued across Wappanocca Avenue to Purchase Street.

The only street names that survived from the earlier development are Wappanocca, which is laid out pretty much as it originally existed, and Natoma, which was substantially shortened and no longer travels across the brook and through to Highland. Glenhyrst even had a different name for Highland; it was to be called Mohegan Avenue.

In 1915 the Apawamis Land Company purchased most of the land developed as Glenhyrst, excluding the property east of Blind Brook, changed the street names to Native American-based names and subdivided the property into smaller lots. Their plan called for lot sizes closer to 25 by 125 feet. The Land Company was more successful in developing the neighborhood as Indian Village, and most of the houses in the neighborhood were built within the next 10 years.

The streets were originally laid out as we see them, with a bridge extending from Cayuga across Blind Brook to Wappanocca. The house that stands on the corner of where Cayuga would have crossed the brook sits sideways on Mendota today. The property east of the brook was not developed by the Apawamis Land Company and the corner of Highland and Ridge was home to a barn with a horseback riding ring and stables for many years.

Mendota is a Native American word meaning mouth of a river or meeting of the trails.  Either definition suits the position of Mendota Avenue, which intersects all of the other streets in Indian Village and sits on the edge of the brook. The five other Native American street names in Indian Village are named for the original five tribes of the Confederacy of Iroquois Indians: Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca.  Iroquois was named for the confederacy itself.  The Confederacy of Iroquois Indian, also called the “League of Peace and Power,” was based in New York, and parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario and Quebec. It was formed between 1400 and 1600 and had a constitution called the “Great Law of Peace.”  The Confederacy aided the settlers in the Revolutionary War against the British.  

Meadow Place, just north of Indian Village, off of Highland, is named for the meadow it overlooked, now Indian Village. It was laid out before Indian Village, but was not a public street until 1924. The streets on the opposite side of Highland, including Dogwood Lane, Upper Dogwood Lane, Club Road, and Sunset Lane, were private roads leading to large estates and remained private until after 1985.