[3] Caleb Heathcote purchased land that would become Scarsdale at the end of the 17th century and, on March 21, 1701, had it elevated to a royal manor.

The British commander, Sir William Howe, lodged at a farmhouse on Garden Road that remains standing.

Scarsdale's wartime history formed the basis for James Fenimore Cooper's 1821 novel, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground, written while the author lived at the Angevine Farm in the present-day Heathcote section of town.

[citation needed] In 1940, Nazi agent Gerhardt Alois Westrick secretly met with American business leaders at his Scarsdale home until public pressure—a reaction to articles in the New York Herald Tribune produced by British Security Coordination in New York[5]—drove his family from the community.

Scarsdale became the subject of national controversy in the 1950s when a "Committee of Ten" led by Otto Dohrenwend alleged "Communist infiltration" in the public schools.

This same group, known as the Scarsdale Citizens Committee, sued to prevent a benefit for the Freedom Riders from taking place at the public high school in 1963 because some of the performers (Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Pete Seeger) were allegedly "communist sympathizers and subversives.

"[9] Another controversy enveloped the town in 1961, when the Scarsdale Golf Club, headed by Charles S. McCallister, refused to allow a young man who had converted from Judaism into the Episcopal Church, Michael Cunningham Hernstadt, to escort a young woman, Pamela Nottage, to her debut at the club.

George French Kempsell of the Church of Saint James the Less announced that he would ban any supporters of the club's decision from receiving Holy Communion.

[10] Scarsdale's public library, which had been housed in historic Wayside Cottage since 1928, moved to its present structure on the White Plains Post Road in 1951.

[11] The driving force behind the library was New York City publisher S. Spencer Scott, who raised $100,000 for the project after the village rejected a bond issue to fund the building in 1938.

Walter B. Cocking, the president of the New York State Committee for the Public Schools, delivered the dedication address.

[12] In 1967, U.S. Secretary of State and former longtime resident Dean Rusk returned to Scarsdale at the height of the Vietnam War to receive the town's Man of the Year Award and was greeted with a silent protest.

[13] Scarsdale was the subject of a landmark United States Supreme Court decision, ACLU v. Scarsdale (1985), that established the so-called "reindeer rule" regarding public nativity scenes and upheld the right of local religious groups to place crèches on public property.

[citation needed] On January 1, 2022, the village of Scarsdale banned the sale of all tobacco and cannabis products as well as smoking on public property for people of all ages.

[14] According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 6.68 square miles (17.3 km2), of which 0.12% is water.

Scarsdale is divided into five neighborhoods, which correspond to the public elementary schools: Greenacres, Fox Meadow, Heathcote, Quaker Ridge, and Edgewood.

According to Lisa W. Foderaro of The New York Times it was well known in Japan as a place with good housing stock and schools.

[24] By 1991, many Japanese businesspeople with work assignments in New York City chose to move en masse to Scarsdale.

[25] The large settlement of Japanese caused friction among the American population, particularly students at Scarsdale High School.

[citation needed] Scarsdale selects its Board of Trustees using a nonpartisan system that dates back to 1911.

Our local non-partisan system encourages cooperative, deliberative and open civic government to attract highly qualified individuals to public service.".

As of today, the department consists of 45 full-time Police Officers, 9 civilian employees, and 14 School Crossing Guards.