Apthorp Farm
Encyclopedia
The Apthorp Farm that lay on Manhattan
's Upper West Side
straddled the old Bloomingdale Road, laid out in 1728, which was re-surveyed as The "Boulevard" – now Upper Broadway. It was the largest block of real estate remaining from the "Bloomingdale District
", a rural suburb
of 18th-century New York City
. Legal disputes between the eventual heirs of the Loyalist
Charles Ward Apthorp and purchasers of parcels of real estate held in abeyance the speculative development of the area between 89th and 99th Streets, from Central Park
to the Hudson River
until final judgment was awarded in July 1910; at that time the New York Times estimated its worth at $125,000,000.
system the owner to-day would virtually be New York's Duke of Westminster
." The house gained its name of "Elmwood" from the mature American elm
s that shaded it until it was demolished in 1891 to make way for 91st Street, having served for decades as a beer garden, public inn and picnic grounds called "Elm Park".
Apthorp's house faced the Hudson River, whose far shore and the Hudson Palisades were visible from its elevated position. It stood on a fieldstone service basement lit from a light well that surrounded the house. Six steps led to a wide and deeply recessed entrance bay and an arch-headed main door with flanking windows united by a common cornice, the "Palladian window". A similar grouping over it lit the central upper hall. On either side there were two flanking bays with pedimented window surrounds on the grand main floor and square three-over-three windows on the bedroom floor. There were two dormer windows in the attic. At each corner was a colossal fluted Ionic pilaster
; the architecturally correct entablature was carried straight across the eaves, broken slightly forward over the entrance bay, where it was surmounted by a pediment. Ionic pilasters marched across the end fronts, three bays deep, whose gables were treated as pediments. The wooden siding was scored to imitate ashlar masonry.
It seems that such an unusual design has been adapted from an engraving in one of the illustrated architectural guides, addressed to gentlemen and builders alike, that by 1767 could have filled a library shelf. One such book owned by Charles Ward Apthorp is known, for he inscribed his name and the date 1759 in a copy of a translation of Sebastien Le Clerc
's architectural treatise that was published in London as A Treatise of Architecture, with Remarks and Observations By that Excellent Master thereof Sebastian Le Clerc, Knight of the Empire, Designer and Engraver to the Cabinet of the late French King... Its four dedications were to the Worshipful Companies of Carvers, Joyners, Bricklayers and Masons of London, each represented by their coat-of-arms. The book passed to Apthorp's nephew, the architect Charles Bulfinch
. The ultimate source for all such neo-Palladian five-bay villas with recessed loggia entrances under a pediment, is Palladio's own Villa Emo
.
Apthorp had been appointed to the Governor's Council the previous year, a position he held right through the British occupation of New York, until 1783, earning him the fierce opprobrium of his Patriot neighbors.
Aside from his private drive, Apthorp laid out cross-lanes on his farm, long known as Stryker's Lane and Jauncey's Lane. Jauncey's Lane gained its name from the rich Englishman, William Jauncey, who purchased Apthorp's "Elmwood". Also called "Apthorp's Lane" or simply the "Crossroad to Harlem, it extended eastwards to Harlem Commons
later taken into Central Park
. The Crossroad to Harlem had a part to play in the Battle of Harlem Heights
, 16 September 1776, for it was the route the British General Clinton took after marching up from the city along the Boston Post Road
, in cutting across the island; they failed to intercept Silliman's brigade of militia
, toiling up the Bloomingdale Road to rejoin the American troops at twilight. The picturesque and leafy lanes marked property boundaries when he left his estate of some 200 acre (0.809372 km²) among his ten children, but they were abolished, on paper at least, by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811
that laid out the present grid plan of Manhattan, which, it was assumed, would take more than a century to build upon. Early suits over the property were brought as early as 1799, and final litigation among the Apthorp heirs, and their assigns who had purchased parcels of the Apthorp property, for building rights over the former route of the Bloomingdale Road and lanes abandoned by the city, in order to close them once and for all, dragged on for five years, 1905-1911.
The ghostly passage of the lanes can still be detected; that of Jauncey's Lane subsists in the mid-block break between apartment buildings fronting Broadway just north of the northwest corner of 91st Street and running diagonally west to West End Avenue, and formerly all the way to Riverside Drive, and that of Stryker's Lane in the similar gap between 93rd and 94th Streets, once running to the house built by Gerrit Stryker overlooking Stryker's Bay, a river landing now represented by infilled parkland of Riverside Park
at the foot of 96th Street and the river.
The original divisions were carefully made by Apthorp's Patriot son-in-law Hugh Williamson
, who had married Maria Apthorp at Elmwood, 3 January 1789.
in 1855. In 1870, it was the site of the first Orange riot, in which Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics clashed, killing 8 people.
, the grand apartment block that commemorates Apthorp's name, was built in 1908 on the site of a house built in 1759 by Apthorp and sold in 1767 to James McEvers, with its "houses, outhouses, kitchens, barns and stables." McEvers' heirs sold it in 1792 to the first wife of John C. (Jan Cornelius) Van den Heuvel; following her death in 1792 he became Apthorp's son-in-law. In 1827 his heirs sold the property, extending down to the Hudson River
, before long to become a right-of-way for the Hudson River Railroad
. William Burnham rented it from 1839, maintaining it as the somewhat genteel roadhouse called "Burnham's Mansion House" A large parcel of the southern part of the Apthorp farm extending north to 89th Street, was purchased in 1860 by the real estate magnate William B. Astor
. The Van del Heuvel house, partly rebuilt after a fire but as "Burnham's" still occupying a full city lot between 78th and 79th Streets, west of Broadway to West End Avenue, was purchased by William Waldorf Astor in 1878.
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
's Upper West Side
Upper West Side
The Upper West Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, that lies between Central Park and the Hudson River and between West 59th Street and West 125th Street...
straddled the old Bloomingdale Road, laid out in 1728, which was re-surveyed as The "Boulevard" – now Upper Broadway. It was the largest block of real estate remaining from the "Bloomingdale District
Bloomingdale District
Bloomingdale is a part of Manhattan's Upper West Side between 96th and 110th Streets and bounded on the east by Amsterdam Avenue and on the west by Riverside Drive, Riverside Park and the Hudson River.-History:...
", a rural suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
of 18th-century New York City
History of New York City
The history of New York, New York begins with the first European documentation of the area by Giovanni da Verrazzano, in command of the French ship, La Dauphine, when he visited the region in 1524. It is believed he sailed in Upper New York Bay where he encountered native Lenape, returned through...
. Legal disputes between the eventual heirs of the Loyalist
Loyalist (American Revolution)
Loyalists were American colonists who remained loyal to the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War. At the time they were often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men. They were opposed by the Patriots, those who supported the revolution...
Charles Ward Apthorp and purchasers of parcels of real estate held in abeyance the speculative development of the area between 89th and 99th Streets, from Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
to the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
until final judgment was awarded in July 1910; at that time the New York Times estimated its worth at $125,000,000.
History
Charles Ward Apthorp (-1797) assembled the property through purchases in 1762 and 1763. In 1764 he built for himself an ambitious house, one of the grandest pre-Revolutionary houses on the island of Manhattan, on the rise of ground between what are now 90th and 91st Streets, and Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, with a lane forty-feet wide extending down to the Bloomingdale Road. The New York Times observed in 1910 "Had this tract been handed down from son to son on the British landed gentryLanded gentry
Landed gentry is a traditional British social class, consisting of land owners who could live entirely off rental income. Often they worked only in an administrative capacity looking after the management of their own lands....
system the owner to-day would virtually be New York's Duke of Westminster
Duke of Westminster
The title Duke of Westminster was created by Queen Victoria in 1874 and bestowed upon Hugh Grosvenor, 3rd Marquess of Westminster. The current holder of the title is Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster....
." The house gained its name of "Elmwood" from the mature American elm
American Elm
Ulmus americana, generally known as the American Elm or, less commonly, as the White Elm or Water Elm, is a species native to eastern North America, occurring from Nova Scotia west to Alberta and Montana, and south to Florida and central Texas. The American elm is an extremely hardy tree that can...
s that shaded it until it was demolished in 1891 to make way for 91st Street, having served for decades as a beer garden, public inn and picnic grounds called "Elm Park".
Apthorp's house faced the Hudson River, whose far shore and the Hudson Palisades were visible from its elevated position. It stood on a fieldstone service basement lit from a light well that surrounded the house. Six steps led to a wide and deeply recessed entrance bay and an arch-headed main door with flanking windows united by a common cornice, the "Palladian window". A similar grouping over it lit the central upper hall. On either side there were two flanking bays with pedimented window surrounds on the grand main floor and square three-over-three windows on the bedroom floor. There were two dormer windows in the attic. At each corner was a colossal fluted Ionic pilaster
Ionic order
The Ionic order forms one of the three orders or organizational systems of classical architecture, the other two canonic orders being the Doric and the Corinthian...
; the architecturally correct entablature was carried straight across the eaves, broken slightly forward over the entrance bay, where it was surmounted by a pediment. Ionic pilasters marched across the end fronts, three bays deep, whose gables were treated as pediments. The wooden siding was scored to imitate ashlar masonry.
It seems that such an unusual design has been adapted from an engraving in one of the illustrated architectural guides, addressed to gentlemen and builders alike, that by 1767 could have filled a library shelf. One such book owned by Charles Ward Apthorp is known, for he inscribed his name and the date 1759 in a copy of a translation of Sebastien Le Clerc
Sebastien Le Clerc
Sébastien Le Clerc was an etcher and engraver from Lorraine, who worked in Paris specializing in subtle reproductive engravings of paintings...
's architectural treatise that was published in London as A Treatise of Architecture, with Remarks and Observations By that Excellent Master thereof Sebastian Le Clerc, Knight of the Empire, Designer and Engraver to the Cabinet of the late French King... Its four dedications were to the Worshipful Companies of Carvers, Joyners, Bricklayers and Masons of London, each represented by their coat-of-arms. The book passed to Apthorp's nephew, the architect Charles Bulfinch
Charles Bulfinch
Charles Bulfinch was an early American architect, and has been regarded by many as the first native-born American to practice architecture as a profession....
. The ultimate source for all such neo-Palladian five-bay villas with recessed loggia entrances under a pediment, is Palladio's own Villa Emo
Villa Emo
Villa Emo is a patrician villa in the Veneto, northern Italy, near the village of Fanzolo di Vedelago. It was designed by Andrea Palladio in 1559 for the Emo family of Venice and remained in the hands of the Emo family until it was sold in 2004...
.
Apthorp had been appointed to the Governor's Council the previous year, a position he held right through the British occupation of New York, until 1783, earning him the fierce opprobrium of his Patriot neighbors.
Aside from his private drive, Apthorp laid out cross-lanes on his farm, long known as Stryker's Lane and Jauncey's Lane. Jauncey's Lane gained its name from the rich Englishman, William Jauncey, who purchased Apthorp's "Elmwood". Also called "Apthorp's Lane" or simply the "Crossroad to Harlem, it extended eastwards to Harlem Commons
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
later taken into Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
. The Crossroad to Harlem had a part to play in the Battle of Harlem Heights
Battle of Harlem Heights
The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought during the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American Revolutionary War. The action took place in what is now the Morningside Heights and west Harlem neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City on September 16, 1776....
, 16 September 1776, for it was the route the British General Clinton took after marching up from the city along the Boston Post Road
Boston Post Road
The Boston Post Road was a system of mail-delivery routes between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts that evolved into the first major highways in the United States.The three major alignments were the Lower Post Road The Boston Post Road was a system of mail-delivery routes between New York...
, in cutting across the island; they failed to intercept Silliman's brigade of militia
Gold Selleck Silliman
Gold Selleck Silliman was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, graduated from Yale University and practiced law and served as a crown attorney before the American Revolution...
, toiling up the Bloomingdale Road to rejoin the American troops at twilight. The picturesque and leafy lanes marked property boundaries when he left his estate of some 200 acre (0.809372 km²) among his ten children, but they were abolished, on paper at least, by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811
Commissioners' Plan of 1811
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 was the original design plan for the streets of Manhattan, which put in place the grid plan that has defined Manhattan to this day....
that laid out the present grid plan of Manhattan, which, it was assumed, would take more than a century to build upon. Early suits over the property were brought as early as 1799, and final litigation among the Apthorp heirs, and their assigns who had purchased parcels of the Apthorp property, for building rights over the former route of the Bloomingdale Road and lanes abandoned by the city, in order to close them once and for all, dragged on for five years, 1905-1911.
The ghostly passage of the lanes can still be detected; that of Jauncey's Lane subsists in the mid-block break between apartment buildings fronting Broadway just north of the northwest corner of 91st Street and running diagonally west to West End Avenue, and formerly all the way to Riverside Drive, and that of Stryker's Lane in the similar gap between 93rd and 94th Streets, once running to the house built by Gerrit Stryker overlooking Stryker's Bay, a river landing now represented by infilled parkland of Riverside Park
Riverside Park (Manhattan)
Riverside Park is a scenic waterfront public park on the Upper West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, operated and maintained by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The park consists of a narrow four-mile strip of land between the Hudson River and the gently...
at the foot of 96th Street and the river.
The original divisions were carefully made by Apthorp's Patriot son-in-law Hugh Williamson
Hugh Williamson
Hugh Williamson was an American politician. He is best known for representing North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention.Williamson was a scholar of international renown...
, who had married Maria Apthorp at Elmwood, 3 January 1789.
Elm Park
For a time in the mid- to late-19th century, until 1891, the mansion and its grounds, between 90th and 92nd Streets and Ninth (now Columbus) and Tenth (now Amsterdam) Avenues, served as a beer garden, inn and picnic ground known as "Elm Park", a venue that was favored by the large German immigrant community in Manhattan. It was also used as a parade ground by the 69th Regiment69th Infantry Regiment (United States)
The 69th Infantry Regiment was a Regular Army infantry regiment in the United States Army.-History:There have been three different lineages started under this number: The Famous 69th Infantry Regiment , and two under the Federal designation....
in 1855. In 1870, it was the site of the first Orange riot, in which Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics clashed, killing 8 people.
The Apthorp
The ApthorpThe Apthorp
The Apthorp is a historic condominium apartment building in New York City, New York. The Renaissance Revival building designed by architects Clinton & Russell for absentee landowner William Waldorf Astor was built between 1906 and 1908; it occupies the full block between Broadway and West End...
, the grand apartment block that commemorates Apthorp's name, was built in 1908 on the site of a house built in 1759 by Apthorp and sold in 1767 to James McEvers, with its "houses, outhouses, kitchens, barns and stables." McEvers' heirs sold it in 1792 to the first wife of John C. (Jan Cornelius) Van den Heuvel; following her death in 1792 he became Apthorp's son-in-law. In 1827 his heirs sold the property, extending down to the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
, before long to become a right-of-way for the Hudson River Railroad
West Side Line (NYCRR)
The West Side Line, also called the West Side Freight Line, is a railroad line on the west side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. North of Penn Station, from 34th Street, the line is used by Amtrak passenger service heading north via Albany to Toronto, Montreal and Chicago...
. William Burnham rented it from 1839, maintaining it as the somewhat genteel roadhouse called "Burnham's Mansion House" A large parcel of the southern part of the Apthorp farm extending north to 89th Street, was purchased in 1860 by the real estate magnate William B. Astor
William Backhouse Astor, Sr.
William Backhouse Astor, Sr. was an American businessman and member of the Astor family.-Origins and schooling:...
. The Van del Heuvel house, partly rebuilt after a fire but as "Burnham's" still occupying a full city lot between 78th and 79th Streets, west of Broadway to West End Avenue, was purchased by William Waldorf Astor in 1878.