Tuesday, October 4, 2022 – NEW YORKERS HAD HOMES IN THE OUTER BOROUGHS
FROM THE ARCHIVES
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2022
THE 798th EDITION
SUMMER HOMES
STEPHEN BLANK
| Summer Homes Stephen Blank Like swallows coming back to Capistrano (admittedly that happens in March, but you get the idea), New Yorkers come back from their summer homes. Could be Maine, Upstate New York (anything north of Westchester), Cape Cod or Out East. Like the swallows, this return is nothing new. New Yorkers have been coming back from their summer homes almost since the very beginning of the City. They went not just for a change from the crowded, dirty streets of what was then New York City, tucked at the far bottom of the Manhattan island, but rather more pressing, to escape from the continuing epidemics of yellow fever and cholera that racked the City. Where in these early days – the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries – did they go? Some went up the island. One of the most famous summer homes in what now is the UES belonged the wealthy merchant and shipowner Archibald Gracie. Born in Scotland in 1755, Gracie arrived in New York in 1784 with a cargo of goods that netted him enough money to invest in a trading company and soon he was very rich. His regular residence was a State Street townhouse known as “The Pillars”. But like other wealthy city residents, he wanted a summer house, too. For $3,700, Gracie bought 11 acres of rolling land facing Hell Gate, the section of the East River between Astoria and Randall’s Island, just beyond the northern tip of our own Island. |
 https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/new-york-summer-houses/It took a day to sail from the Battery to reach his house at today’s East 88th Street. But Gracie and his family made the trip often, entertaining political and literary figures such as Alexander Hamilton (a business partner and the owner of a lovely summer estate in Harlem), James Fenimore Cooper, John Quincy Adams, and Washington Irving. Irving wrote of the Gracies, “Their country seat was one of my strongholds last summer, as I lived in its vicinity. It is a charming, warm-hearted family, and the old gentleman has the soul of a prince.” Alas, but not the purse. Gracie lost much of his fortune by 1819 and the home. Through the mid- to late-19th century, the house changed owners at least twice. As the area’s summer estates were sold off and parceled out and Yorkville became more urbanized, the house fell into disrepair. And then, thanks to Robert Moses, it became the home of our Mayors. |
 John Jacob Astor build a mansion close by Gracie’s place, a modest summer home for America’s first multi-millionaire. It became known more for its literary and musical associations than for its architectural grandeur. When Washington Irvin wasn’t enjoying Gracie’s hospitality, he lived here, writing Astoria, a patriotic account of Astor’s failed fur-trading colony at Oregon. (Makes you think about long term summer guests.) https://househistree.com/houses/astor-mansion-hellgate The house was demolished in 1869 and the gardens are today part of the public Carl Schurz Park.. |
 househistree.com/houses/nathaniel-prime-mansion Nathaniel Prime also lived in this prime real estate hood. By 1830, Prime was one of New York’s five millionaires and first President of the New York Stock & Exchange Board. His country home stood near the East River facing east over Hell Gate and Long Island, situated between William Rhinelander’s estate to the north and the Astor Mansion to the south and close on to Gracie’s mansion. |
 And the UWS too. We have a contemporary photo of a spectacular summer palazzo owned by Dr. Valentine Mott. Dr Mott was the most prominent physician in 19th century New York—a pioneer of heart surgery who at the age of 75 helped Civil War battlefield hospitals implement anesthesia. His year-round residence was on fashionable Gramercy Park. But during the summer, he left behind the hot city and fled to today’s West 94th Street and the former Bloomingdale Road – just about as far away as could be managed then. Today, the house would be smack in the middle of Broadway. Back then, this was the country; the Upper West Side was a collection of estates and small villages in the mid-1800s. Others chose Harlem for their summer estate. Why Harlem? The flat, rich, eastern portion of Harlem was fertile farmland, and some of New York’s most illustrious early families, like the Delanceys, Bleekers, Rikers, Beekmans, and Hamiltons kept large estates in the high western section. Harlem recovered slowly from the Revolutionary war struggles that took place there and remained largely rural through the early 19th century. Some of the estates were available at knockdown prices, and Harlem also attracted new immigrants to the City. Undeveloped, but not poor. It is said that Harlem was “a synonym for elegant living through a good part of the nineteenth century.” To reach Harlem from lower Manhattan Island by stagecoach and later by horse car took a hard hour and a half to two-hour ride. But by boat, there was no lovelier vista than the banks of the East River from Jones’ Wood north, where the shore was dotted by splendid country homes with large grounds of well-to-do New Yorkers – except when steaming past Blackwell’s Island. “Sylvan” steamboats raced up and down the East River from Peck’s Slip to 120th and 130th Streets in Harlem via a stop in Astoria and through Hell Gate. |
| Alexander Hamilton’s uptown estate was called the Grange, after his father’s ancestral home in Scotland. In 1802, disenchanted with Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, he “threw himself into building a house in northern Manhattan nine miles from town,” writes Richard Brookhiser in Alexander Hamilton, American. Hamilton commissioned architect John McComb Jr. (who also designed Gracie’s mansion) to build a Federal-style mansion on 32 acres near today’s 143rd Street and Convent Avenue in Harlem. |
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| ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/a-founding-fathers-country-home-in-harlem/ It was a simple, dignified house on a high foundation amid fields and woods. “The bay windows had sweeping views of the Harlem River to the east and the Hudson River to the West,” writes Brookhiser. Front and rear porticos were complemented by side piazzas. On the lawn, Hamilton planted 13 sweet gum trees (for the 13 colonies), gifts from George Washington. Aaron Burr lived in Halem, too – but briefly – in Manhattan’s now oldest surviving house. The Morris-Jumel Mansion was built in 1765 as a summer retreat for British colonel Roger Morris and his American wife Mary Philipse. With the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Morris, a Loyalist, left for England. His home, which he called “Mount Morris,” was occupied by George Washington and then British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton, and the Hessian commander Baron Wilhelm von Knyphausen. In 1810, Stephen and Eliza Jumel bought the property. She was poor, he wasn’t. The Jumels spent several years in France, where they made friends in the elite circle around Napoleon’s court. They returned to the United States in 1828 to settle in the mansion. Inspired by cutting-edge French fashion, Madame Jumel bought new furniture and redecorated her home in the elegant Empire style. One year after her husband’s death in 1832 from injuries sustained in a carriage accident, Madame Jumel married former Vice President Aaron Burr in the mansion’s front parlor. The marriage was not a success, and the couple formally divorced in 1836. |
| And Astoria By the 1830s, wealthy New Yorkers were finding that bucolic Queens made for a convenient escape from the ever more crowded and sometimes unhealthy conditions of their own tiny island. Between 1835 and 1841, streets in the townships along Long Island’s East River coast were laid out and buildings erected. By this time, ferries connected with Manhattan. Soon, these coastal areas would become refuges for wealthy New Yorkers, particularly Astoria and Ravenswood. Country estates with names like Bodine Castle and Mount Bonaparte served as getaways for rich Manhattanites. The Jacob Blackwell family (our Blackwells) lived there during the Revolution, in a large house at 37th Avenue overlooking the river. |
 These waterfront villas, built in Ravenswood during the 1800s, were abandoned and crumbling a hundred years later. Courtesy of the New York Public Library. These wealthy residents swam in the coves, sailed in local yacht clubs, fished in the river, and hunted ducks, plover, and snipe in the nearby marshes of Sunswick Creek (roughly along today’s 21st Street.) The New York Times urged New Yorkers to make the trek out to Queens. In 1852, the New York Times urged New Yorkers to take a day trip to the countryside: Queens was underrated, fancier than Broadway, a great place to explore, and worth the trip from Brooklyn. “There are charming residences and delightful lawns at Ravenswood and Astoria,” said the paper as it urged people to take long walks to Astoria. “It is lamentable that with such fine weather and pleasant country promenades at hand, our fair friends, especially of Brooklyn and Williamsburg, do not avail themselves of their privileges. They would find an agreeable change from the usual hackneyed routes…Throw off this deathly indolence that is benumbing your physical and spiritual faculties” On this last day of September, welcome home dear readers, from your summer estates and world travels. Thank you for reading. Stephen Blank RIHS September 30, 2022 |
Tuesday Photo of the Day
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MONDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
PIGEONS FEASTING ON NEWLY LAID GRASS SEEDS AT THE TRAM LAWN. AFTER THE RAINS, THE GRASS SEED WILL BE LAID AGAIN
GLORIA HERMAN HAD THE RIGHT ANSWER.
Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter and Deborah Dorff
All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
Sources
https://househistree.com/houses/astor-mansion-hellgate
https://oana-ny.org/history/
https://househistree.com/houses/nathaniel-prime-mansion
https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/country-estates-manhattan/
https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/new-york-summer-houses/
https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/a-founding-fathers-country-home-in-harlem/
https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/roger-morris-park/history
Stephen Blank, Steaming on the East River
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