(The Journal News Posted the following story by Michael Risinit on its website on April 16.)
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — Riders will take the last train to Brewster North sometime in October and find the stop’s name changed to Southeast.
Metro-North Railroad and local officials this week confirmed the renaming of the stop between Brewster and Patterson. The switch, Metro-North spokesman Dan Brucker said, was a logical one, given the close and confusing proximity of Brewster. It is also possibly the only complete renaming of a stop by the transportation agency.
“When you have two stations with very similar names, it created some confusion among our customers,” Brucker said. “Often, people would get off at Brewster instead of Brewster North and wait an hour or hours to get up to Brewster North.”
The change means “Brewster” will appear only once on Metro-North’s schedules, maps and information boards denoting the stop on the village’s Main Street. The new name for the stop off Route 312 at the bottom of Southeast’s Independent Way will come into use around Oct. 25, when the next edition of the railroad’s schedule becomes available and workers install new signs along the station’s platform.
The switch will mark the first time the name Southeast will appear anywhere outside of town offices and documents. Interstate signs and the post office use only Brewster, a village of 2,162 that is part of the larger surrounding town of 17,316. Southeast Supervisor Lois Zutell said the town has trouble getting agencies to acknowledge the municipality because its name is also a direction.
“I don’t know of any signs that recognize our town except for the ones we put up (on the town’s borders),” Zutell said. “We’re very happy.”
Town officials and U.S. Rep. Sue Kelly, R-Katonah, requested the change. The Town Board passed a resolution last month asking for the renaming “to avoid confusion to the commuting public and to lend definition to the town of Southeast.”
“The name change will benefit riders by making it easier to distinguish between the Brewster and Brewster North stations and will also give the town of Southeast the recognition it deserves as part of Metro-North’s Harlem line,” Kelly said.
The station, about a mile from the village border and four minutes by train from the village’s station, opened in late 1980. Brucker didn’t know why the station in Southeast was given a name similar to Brewster. The name apparently caught the attention of monologist and author Spalding Gray, who named a character in a 1990 monologue after the stop.
The railroad recently added “Harlem” to its 125th Street stop, making it Harlem-125th Street. Brucker believes renaming Brewster North is the only complete name change by Metro-North.
In Brewster on Monday, Mike Connor of Manhattan was ready to blame the stations’ names for his own unfolding mix-up.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said about 15 minutes after getting off the 11:50 a.m. from Grand Central Terminal. “My son’s supposed to be here right now picking me up. Maybe that’s why I’m still waiting.”