South Manning Boulevard

The land between Western and New Scotland avenues was dotted with gullies and swampy patches that shaped – and slowed – its development. Case in point: Warren's Pond.

According to old accounts, the pond occupied a ravine that stretched from the west side of South Pine Avenue to about where Marion Avenue is today. In the neighborhood's early years it was a popular site for skating, sledding and tobogganing. The Albany High School and Albany Academy hockey teams would practice there, and it was also used as an ice pond.

In 1915, the Common Council authorized the purchase of land to extend Manning Boulevard to New Scotland Road. A Pine Hills oldtimer, writing to the Knickerbocker News in 1973, described watching the workmen drain the pond, then use teams of donkeys to fill it with sand graded off the surrounding hills. South Manning opened as far as New Scotland in 1925 and was hailed as a much-needed cross-town route.