The 1799 Gracie Mansion - East End Avenue and 88th Street

photo by City Hall Photo Unit

Jacob Walton’s 1770 country estate, Belview, sat on a high knoll overlooking the East River.  It was ideally located for commanding river views and cooling summer breezes.  It was also a spot George Washington deemed logistically ideal for defense.  In 1776, the house and grounds were appropriated and a small fort with nine guns erected.  On September 15 of that year, British battleships bombarded the property, completely destroying the house.  The Americans retreated and the English used the property as an army encampment until November 1783, after which the estate sat neglected.

George Bancker's May 1774 drawing of Belview "Seat of Jacob Walton, Esqr, at Horn's Hook near the City of New York in North America" - Collection of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy

In 1793, Scottish-born shipping merchant Archibald Gracie arrived in New York.  Before long, he owned the largest fleet of merchant ships in New York.  He purchased the large area of land from the Walton family in 1798 and began erecting his gracious summer home, most likely using the existing foundations of the ruined Belview.

The Gracies would have esteemed neighbors.  Not far away were the country seat of John Jacob Astor, as well as the homes of the Rhinelanders, the Lawrences, Nathaniel Prime, Commodore Chauncey and Richard Riker.

While the AIA Guide to New York attributes the design to architect Ezra Weeks, some historians feel it may have been the work of John McComb, Jr., who designed City Hall and whose Hamilton Grange, the home of Alexander Hamilton, is strikingly similar to Gracie’s.  Completed in 1799, the elegant home was surrounded by commodious porches on both levels that caught the refreshing river breezes.  Chinese Chippendale-style railings ran along the upper porch and around the roofline.  The Gracies used the mansion as a summer residence and hosted lavish entertainments.  The tall windows of the first floor slid ingeniously into the walls, creating additional doorways so guests could easily mingle inside and out, and cool night air could circulate throughout the home.

Gracie’s guest lists included the likes of Josiah Quincy, James Fenimore Cooper, John Quincy Adams, and De Witt Clinton.  Josiah Quincy was entertained at dinner in 1805, along with Judge Pendleton, Oliver Wolcott (whose daughter William Gracie, the eldest son, would marry) and Dr. Hosack.  Quincy wrote of the evening, “The shores of Long Island, full of cultivated prospects and interspersed with elegant country seats, bound the distant view.  The mansion is elegant in the modern style and the grounds laid out in taste with gardens.”

The foyar as it appears today with exquisite faux-marble painted floors.  Photo The Gracie Mansion Conservancy

Washington Irving wrote in January 1813, “Their country place was one of my strongholds last summer.  It is a charming, warm-hearted family and the old gentleman has the soul of a prince.”  When the exiled Louis Philippe came to New York, Esther "Hetitia" Gracie sent an invitation to dine.  According to Brentano’s 1907 Old Buildings of New York, “The carriage and four were sent to town to bring the royal visitor, and when he arrived the family were assembled to receive him.  One of the little girls exclaimed aloud, ‘This is not the king, he has no crown on his head,’ at which the guest laughed good-naturedly and said: ‘In these days, kings are satisfied with wearing their heads without crowns.’”

Archibald Gracie, from the archives of the New York City government.

In 1810 or 1811, an architecturally compatible addition was added to the house.

Unfortunately, the War of 1812 dealt a crippling blow to Gracie’s finances and in 1823 he was forced to sell his estate to Joseph Foulke for $17,000; although at one time it had been valued at $60,000.  Foulke, originally from New Jersey, had amassed a fortune through his successful shipping commission business.

The Foulkes lived in the mansion until 1857, when it was sold to Noah Wheaton and, after Wheaton’s death in 1896, it was appropriated by the City of New York, which used the surrounding 11 acres as East River Park, renamed Carl Schurz Park in 1910.

photo NYPL Collection

Archibald Gracie’s elegant country home, once the setting for glittering parties and royal guests, was now used as public toilets and an ice-cream stand.  In 1922, however, socialite Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer changed all that.  Mrs. Van Rensselaer was not only well-known for her interest in New York history and as an early crusader for historic preservation, but she was also directly descended from Archibald Gracie.  Through her efforts, a bill was introduced in the state legislature to give custody of the house to the Patriotic New Yorkers, of which she was president.

Mrs. Van Rensselaer told The New York Times, “our intention is not only to preserve the mansion for future years, but to make it a museum of early New York household conditions.  During its best days the Gracie house was one of the finest and best known country residences in the city.”

The museum, which opened in 1924, was the beginning of the Museum of the City of New York and when new facilities were built for it on Fifth Avenue in 1936, the Parks Department opened the Gracie House as a house museum.

Gracie Mansion as a house museum 1939 - NYPL Collection

It was Parks Commissioner Robert Moses who convinced the City to utilize Gracie Mansion as the official residence of the Mayor and, after renovations and problems (The New York Times reported on April 6, 1942 of inadequate appropriations and priorities of wartime construction materials), Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia moved into the mansion in 1942.

Since then, the refined Federal mansion has functioned as home to mayors and the entertainment venue for visiting dignitaries.  When Susan E. Wagner, wife of Mayor Robert Wagner, suggested an addition to the mansion in 1964 to better accommodate state functions, critics were alarmed.  Architect Mott B. Schmidt (who had designed homes for the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Rockefellers) submitted his first proposal that year.  The New York Times said it, “had all the charm and suitability of a suburban garage.”

Early 20th Century aerial photo showing the high location near the river that attracted Archibald Gracie - NYPL Collection

 A year later, his revised plans were better-received, The New York Times saying, “this year’s revised design is notable for its scholarly and appropriate good taste.”  The Susan E. Wagner Wing opened in 1966, including a ballroom and two additional rooms.

A major, three-year restoration was begun in 1981 and another restoration in 2002.

Alexander Hamilton's 1802 "The Grange"

photo NYPL Collection

In 1800, a year after John McComb, Jr. designed Archibald Gracie’s country house–which would become known in the 20th century as Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York–and three years before he received the commission for New York’s City Hall, the architect was hired by Alexander Hamilton to design his country estate.

That summer Hamilton had purchased land eight miles north of the city where he would erect the first house he owned, an undertaking he called “my sweet project.” He chose a site near the estate of his friend, Gouverneur Morris, with astonishing uninterrupted views of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers roughly where 143rd Street and Convent Avenue is today.

print from the New York Public Library Collection

McComb an elegant two-story frame Federal residence with columned porches on all sides to catch the summer breezes. Completed in 1802, Hamilton named the 18-room mansion “the Grange,” after his ancestral home in Scotland.

Alexander Hamilton lived in the Grange only two years with his wife, the former Elizabeth Schuyler, and their eight.  On July 11, 1804, he died in the infamous duel with Aaron Burr.

The Hamilton family lived on in the house for another three decades after which various families owned it as the Harlem neighborhood rapidly grew.  In 1889, the Greenwich Village parish of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church purchased land that included the Grange as it anticipated its northward relocation.   By now the area was becoming heavily populated and as city street construction commenced, the house occupied a site directly in the path of 143rd Street. The church moved the building 350 feet southeast to 287 Convent Avenue, where it was used for services while a permanent structure was planned.

John McComb’s elegant porches, the cornice and roof balustrade were stripped off.  The broad entrance steps were removed, the imposing entranceway was boarded shut, and an entry was cut into the side, which now faced the street.

The Grange, sitting sideways, with the new St. Luke's Episcopal Church encroaching -- photo New York Public Library Collection

The parish began construction of its new church in 1892. When the attractive Romanesque church was completed in 1895, it came within feet of the Grange.  A few decades later a six-story apartment building rose on the opposite side, cramping Hamilton’s house between.  The once-elegant residence which had sat among 32 acres of lawns and gardens was unrecognizable in its claustrophobic setting.

The Grange, squeezed in between its new neighbors -- photo New York Public Library Collection

At a time when historic homes and buildings were given little importance, the Grange began attracting attention.  On May 6, 1908, an act authorizing the City of New York to purchase the mansion and move it “to a site in St. Nicholas Park, formerly constituting a part of the Alexander Hamilton farm” was passed by the State Legislature.

When the city failed to act, a frustrated reader wrote to the editor of The New York Times on October 9, 1913 saying, “For some reason there is a halt, either from indifference of overwhelming politics.”

“The Grange,” the writer continued, “…was built by Alexander Hamilton from timber grown on the Albany estate of his father-in-law, General Philip Schuyler.  It is of white oak and hand hewn.  From the porch steps of this house Hamilton went for the last time to fight the duel with Aaron Burr on the west shore of the Hudson River.”

Despite the push by the State and public outcry, Hamilton’s Grange sat squashed and unrestored.  In October of 1929, The New York Times criticized city authorities “for alleged indifference in the matter of the acquisition of the Colonial home of Alexander Hamilton.”

Four years later the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society purchased the house and, nearly a decade after that, in 1933, opened it as a museum.  The Crescent Athletic-Hamilton Club presented the Grange in June of 1936 with the 30-foot bronze statue of Hamilton which had stood before the Brooklyn Heights club since 1892.

Despite the relatively shoddy treatment of the house, finally on May 2, 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed the bill that designated it a national monument.  The New York Times said that Kennedy “did more than enhance the memory of the eminent statesman, a founder of this nation.  He also preserved one of the all too few examples of an exquisite style of American architecture, the ‘Federal,’ so light, so decorative and yet so noble.”

Two weeks later, the Kennedy Administration passed a resolution to acquire and preserve the Hamilton Grange as a national shrine under the ownership and management of The National Parks Service.  At long last, in 1967, the City of New York Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house a landmark.

In designating the mansion, the Commission noted that “as the building is now situated, the Grange cannot be made to reflect either its architect’s conception or its condition when it was Alexander Hamilton’s residence.”

On June 25, 1999, State Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright requested perpetual easements for a portion of St. Nicholas Park for use as a site for the Hamilton Grange national Memorial.  Within four years the Park Service had set aside $11 million to move and restore the house.

The news was not received favorably by everyone.  Many residents felt the house should stay.  The vicar of St. Luke’s, William M. Savoy, said “It’s here, and it’s been here, and why not leave well enough alone?”  Yet another local, Sam Pittman, told The New York Times he was in favor of the move. “Oh, it’s a nice house. But the thing is in sideways!”

photo by Schwartz - New York Daily News

In early May 2008, the Grange was gradually jacked up 35 feet off the ground–a process that took two weeks to accomplish.  Lowered onto rollers, it was cautiously inched a block and a half down Convent Avenue to the park–part of Hamilton’s original estate.  Of the $8.4 million earmarked for restoration, the move accounted for approximately 40 percent.

photo by Joshua Bright for The New York Times

The National Park Service initiated studies to determine precisely how the house looked in 1802 in order to fully restore the exterior.  The Grange was reopened to the public in September 2011.  Its new site in St. Nicholas Park allows the visitor, once again, to fully appreciate the house in a suitable setting.

Those Very Old, Very New Houses on Harrison Street

If you can count on one thing in New York City, it is that neighborhoods change.

The area around Washington Street and Harrison Street was originally part of Annetje Jans’ 62-acre farm.  Eventually it became property of the English crown, then in 1705 it was transferred to Trinity Church.  By the end of the 18th century, prosperous merchants were erecting fine Federal-style houses here.

John McComb, Jr., New York’s first native-born architect, built his home at 317 Washington Street in 1797, five years before he would design City Hall with Joseph Francois Mangin.  In 1804, across the street at 314 Washington, wealthy merchant Jonas Wood built his house. By the 1820s construction was booming along Washington and Harrison Streets as homes were built to specification for individual buyers--unlike the speculative developments being constructed elsewhere.

Ebenezer Miller, who ran a printing business on Greenwich Street, built 33 Harrison Street.  Wilson Hunt, a well-heeled merchant on Pearl Street, erected 327 Washington Street.  By 1830, the neighborhood was completed and fashionably dressed home owners greeted one another before their elegant red brick homes.  Inside, detailed plasterwork adorned the ceilings and parlors were decorated with costly carpets and Duncan Phyfe furniture.

But if you can count on one thing in New York City, it is that neighborhoods change.

Slowly the Washington Street Market crept closer to the Harrison Street area.  Although two of the original families were still in occupancy in 1850, by the end of the Civil War the homes were being converted to rooming houses, crammed with immigrant workers.

As the 20th century neared, the Washington Street Market had engulfed the old neighborhood.  Loft buildings and warehouses replaced elegant Federal homes, however for some reason a handful of the houses were simply recycled rather than razed.  The residences of John McComb and Ebenezer Miller were turned into businesses.  The Columbus Celery Company did business out of 314 Washington–ripping out the parlor floor façade and replacing it with warehouse doors.  McComb’s home was taken over by Silverbank and Arbeiter, who junked the elegant mantles and interior details to make room for modern commerce.

Astonishingly, most of the surviving houses retained their second floor details, roofs and dormers.

Washington Street in 1940.  Note surviving keystone lintels and arched doorway - NYPL Collection

The houses remained as warehouses for three-quarters of a century until the entire area was threatened with demolition by the planned Washington Market Urban Renewal Area in the mid 1970s.  A wide swath of buildings were slated to be demolished.  The fledgling New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, however, deemed nine of the Federal-period buildings worthy of preservation, even in their severely altered condition.  The Commission negotiated funding to move and restore the houses as part of the Renewal project.

Washington Street mid-20th Century with four Federal Houses - NYPL Collection

Architects Oppenheimer, Brady & Vogelstein who were designing the 40-story Independence Plaza Tower nearby, were given the task of salvaging the old homes.  The three Washington Street houses were moved to Harrison Street, creating a row of six.  Three other Harrison Street houses remained on their original sites, forming an L-shaped enclave.

The architects replicated the lost facades, installing new doors, windows and trims.  The replacement bricks were sandblasted to simulate aging; but, according to Herbert Oppenheimer, “we didn’t want it to match perfectly.”

Immediately architectural critics and historians complained.  In his The City Observed: New York, Paul Goldberger disparaged the project saying, "There are facades at Disneyland that look more real, and all that these houses make you want to do is run back again across Greenwich Street where old buildings are still real and not kept alive by artificial respirator.”

Norval White and Elliot Willensky, in their AIA Guide to New York City, noted, “They have been lovingly restored - perhaps too lovingly; the patina from the passage of time has been totally erased.”

New Yorkers, however, didn’t seem to mind.  The city began offering the properties, all with unfinished interiors, for between $35,000 and $75,000 and the houses quickly found new owners.

Today the lost “patina from the passage of time” is coming back. Three decades of weathering has given the replacement brick a warm, aged look.

Despite the critics who denounced the impure restoration; an important remnant of early 19th century Manhattan has been salvaged and a charming residential enclave created in the midst of a bustling city.

Which just proves that if you can count on one thing in New York City, it is that neighborhoods change.

7 State Street - The James B. Watson / Elizabeth Seton House

State Street, at the southern tip of Manhattan was lined with graceful Federal-style residences in the years following the American Revolution.  The cooling breezes off the harbor and the ability to watch ship traffic made the location ideal for the homes of the wealthy merchant class.  So it was here that James B. Watson commissioned John McComb Jr. to design his new home at 7 State Street in 1793.

McComb, who would become famous for designing landmarks like New York's City Hall and the Archibald Gracie Mansion, provided Watson with a superb merchant-class home worthy of his status.  Watson, a Yale graduate, was not only a successful importer and exporter, he was a New York State Senator, a Speaker of the New York State Assembly and a Federal Senator.

Neoclassical Adams-style detailing graced rooms where Alexander Hamilton and George Washington were entertained during grand balls. 

photos from the collection of the New York Public Library

In 1806 Watson sold 7 State Street to Moses Rogers who joined it with the residence next door which sat significantly back due to the curve of the street.  In order to create a unified facade, a colonnaded portico was added using, reportedly, masts from his fleet of merchant ships which he was converting to steam power.

Later Richard Bayley moved his family into the mansion.  A reknowned physician and professor of anatomy at King's College, Bayley was socially important and a prominent member of nearby Trinity Church.  His daughter, Elizabeth, would grow up to marry William Mcgee Seton.  She was later canonized as the first saint of the Catholic Church in the United States.

By the middle of the century the affluent neighborhoods had migrated northward and commercial interests took over the once grand homes of State Street.  Beginning around the time of Civil War the Watson House served as government offices.

Photograph  from the collection of the New York Public Collection

As the neighborhood continued to change, the venerable homes of State Street were, one by one, razed for office buildings.  Fortunately, through the efforts of Charlotte Grace O'Brien the Catholic Church purchased 7 State Street from the government in 1870 for the total sum of $1.00.  O'Brien, an Irish immigrant herself, was concerned with the plight of poor Irish immigrant women.  While these women were leaving Ireland for a better life in America, white slave traders were waiting for them as they debarked.  Without help, the girls were at the mercy of ill-intentioned criminals.

The Mission of Our Lady was established in the house.  As the girls arrived, they were taken to the Mission where they were housed and efforts were made to contact relatives.  If none could be found, they were placed into respectable homes as domestic servants.  By 1912 the Mission had helped more than 65,000 girls.

In April 1912 the survivors of the RMS Titanic arrived in New York Harbor.  Those from first class were whisked off to The Waldorf Hotel.  Those from steerage were sent to The Mission of Our Lady.

Interestingly, today the Catholic Church supports the complex from income garnered through the sale of air rights above the house and the adjoining church -- a tidy $6 million.

In the spring of 2010 restoration began on the facade under the direction of Easton Architects, LLP.  Seventeen coats of paint were removed from wooden trims to determine original colors.  It is the last surviving residence of the Federal Period in the Financial District.  The facade restoration brought the appearance of the structure approximately back Moses Rogers's 1806 alteration.  

photograph by Martin Furtschegger