When Frank Ross Chambers died on April 30, 1940, his obituary in the Bronxville Review Press called him the “first citizen of Bronxville,” using a phrase that was often heard around Bronxville to describe an extraordinary man. Chambers lived in Bronxville for fifty-two years, from 1888 until his death. He played a leading role in incorporating the Village of Bronxville in 1898, and for the next thirty years he served—and shaped—the village in many ways. In village government, he was at different times village clerk, street commissioner, and president; he served on the Bronxville board of education, the Bronxville Library board of trustees, and on Lawrence Hospital’s board of governors. He was for many years a deacon and elder and member of the consistory at Bronxville Reformed Church, and he was superintendent of the church’s Sunday school. He also gave the Village of Bronxville many gifts, including half the cost of acquiring land for and building a magnificent Village Hall and part of the cost of building a new village school building. He wanted the village to have a large park on land near his house, and he accumulated sizable holdings of land for the purpose, but eventually most of this land was occupied by Bronxville School. He made other donations of land to the village as well, including the parcels which became home to the public library and a new village hall. The outcome of Chambers’ donations of land, and of his dedication to education and public service, was the creation of Bronxville’s civic center at the intersection of Pondfield and Midland Roads. Frank Ross Chambers during his long life saw Bronxville transformed from a rural hamlet into a suburban village. “When we came to Bronxville in 1888,” he wrote when he was an old man, “there were less than 300 people living within present Village limits. Now there are 7,000.” The village which Chambers left behind at his death in 1940 was in significant measure his creation and his gift to Bronxville’s residents and visitors.