The Grandeur That Was
It is likely that the American suburbs achieved the status for which they were intended sometime during the first decade of the twentieth century, long before the present era of suburban sprawl. In the early 1900s, no one of consequence actually lived in the suburbs. They summered there, or spent weekends there. The suburbs were essentially composed of second homes for the American rich.
From Detroit, the wealthy families who lived along Jefferson Avenue went out on private trolley cars to Grosse Pointe for weekends and holidays. It was considered a major trip. From Cleveland, families looked forward to a few carefree weeks away from home in faraway Shaker Heights. From San Francisco, trunks were packed regularly for train rides to “the Peninsula,” which was still synonymous with “the country”; and from Philadelphia, society journeyed westward to the resort hotels which the Pennsylvania Railroad had built along what it called the “Main Line of Internal Improvements of the State of Pennsylvania.”
The fashionable New York suburbs—in Westchester and Fair-field counties, on the North Shore of Long Island, and in northern New Jersey—were similarly, in those days, resort communities, devoted purely to leisure. The popular way to get to Westchester from New York, for example, was by steam-driven yacht. Clearly, times have changed. But it is important to remember that though today some Westchesterites may speak of others as “nouveau,” in those days everyone was nouveau.
Before the Civil War, Westchester County was simply farmland. In fact, before the railroads began opening up the grain fields of the Plains states and the West, Westchester County was the East’s granary, and its primary crops were wheat, oats, and corn. Then came the Civil War, and the great economic boom that followed it. This was the period—the 1870s and 1880s—when most American fortunes of any size or fame were made. Suddenly the rich of the burgeoning cities demanded second, country homes, and following the lead of the English gentry, it seemed necessary that these take the form of castles and manor houses, often complete with moats and private chapels.
Just why the new New York rich singled out Westchester County and the North Shore of Long Island for their castle-building has never been clear. Westchester, for example, is not, in many people’s eyes, a place of singular scenic beauty. It has no mountains, nor is it rich in significant hills which command sweeping views. Its beaches are inferior, and there are no lakes of any impressive size. It has been argued that the best suburbs of most cities lie to the east of their parent towns, the theory being that commuters prefer to drive to work in the morning, and return at night, without having to face the rising or the descending sun. But Westchester is more to the north of New York than to the east, and besides, in the early 1900s, no one “commuted” to Westchester anyway. The most logical explanation is that as the railroads’ proliferation encouraged the development of agriculture in the Middle West and West, the farmers of Westchester County languished and declined, and it was possible for the rich to buy up large tracts of property cheaply.
In any case, during the twenty years that followed the Civil War, Westchester County became castle poor. “The average size of a Westchester estate,” it was reported in the 1880s, “is sixty-five rooms, not including servants’ quarters. For staff, fourteen rooms are generally required.” By the 1890s, the rich being the competitive lot they are, sixty-five rooms seemed scarcely adequate and architectural excesses became commonplace. In Tarrytown, for instance, General Howard Carroll built Carrollcliff on top of one of Westchester’s few bona-fide hills. From it, on a clear day, General Carroll could view both the Hudson River and the Palisades beyond, plus a bit of the Manhattan skyline. (Today, Carrollcliff, which houses the offices of an investment banking company, has an unimpeded view of the Cross Westchester Expressway.) Carrollcliff was a line-by-line replica of a Rhine castle, and its baronial dining hall had a table that could seat eighty, which it often did, with a liveried footman behind every other chair. Several years ago, one of Carrollcliff’s linen tablecloths found its way to a local hospital, where it was cut up to provide sheets and pillowcases for twenty beds. An American flag flew from the top mast of Carrollcliff’s tallest tower. Its stars were the size of manhole covers and it weighed, when folded, forty pounds. Meanwhile, nearby, John D. Rockefeller was building Pocantico Hills, with a private police force, fire department, and post office. The bill for household servants there ran to thirty thousand dollars a year—in an era when a good maid could be got for two dollars a week.
The castle-builders of Westchester did their best to harness nature and to bring the landscape to its knees, creating grottoes and vistas and artificial lakes, streams, and waterfalls. Not all these attempts were successful. When Benjamin Holliday built Ophir Farm in Purchase (which later became the summer home of publisher Whitelaw Reid), he wanted, as he put it, to surround his house with “a private prairie.” On his seven hundred and fifty acres Mr. Holliday placed a large herd of elk and an even larger herd of buffalo. But the elk jumped his fences and the buffalo broke them down, and the neighbors, understandably, complained. A similar neighbor problem presented itself to the first owner of Belvedere in Tarrytown, which later became the home of liquor magnate Samuel Bronfman. When a vast underground sprinkler system to water the lawns of Belvedere was turned on, it reduced the water pressure of the entire surrounding area to zero. A compromise was reached, and the owner of Belvedere agreed not to turn on his sprinklers during morning hours when gentlemen on neighboring estates might be shaving.
Hard by Belvedere, Jay Gould built Lyndhurst, a huge replica of a French château surrounded by seven hundred acres of lawns, gardens, greenhouses, stables, and other outbuildings. On Gould’s death, the estate passed to his daughter Helen, who was by then Mrs. Finlay Shepard, and who continued to maintain the place on a lavish scale. Mrs. Shepard not only added a colonnaded swimming pool, but hired her own private lifeguard as well. Lyndhurst became the headquarters for what Mrs. Shepard called her “pet charities,” which included a “crusade against Mormonism” and an attempt to halt Mohammedanism by having hundreds of thousands of Holy Bibles printed and distributed throughout the Middle East. As far as her household was concerned, on the other hand, rigid economy was the watchword. Her four children—all of whom she had adopted at once when she was in her late forties—received only fifty cents spending money apiece per month. Of this, five cents a week was to go into the Sunday school collection plate, and another five cents was for the church collection. This left each child with exactly a dime a month to do with as he pleased.
When Mrs. Shepard died, without having stamped out either the Mormons or the Mohammedans, Lyndhurst passed to a second Gould daughter, Anna, who had married, first, Count Paul Ernest Boniface de Castellane, and, second, “Boni” de Castellane’s first cousin the Due de Talleyrand-Perigord. The Duchesse de Talleyrand was, if anything, more eccentric than her sister. As though Lyndhurst were not large enough, the duchesse began buying up parcels of adjoining property as they became available, so that eventually Lyndhurst consisted of dozens of houses. Once she had bought them, however, the Duchesse de Talleyrand seemed to lose interest, and left them, empty and unmaintained, to fall into ruin and disrepair, much to the displeasure of her neighbors. But when they tried to approach her on the subject, they inevitably found themselves stopped at the gate by armed guards. Letters to the duchesse went unanswered, the telephone calls were not returned. For several years, it was a matter of local speculation as to whether the mistress of Lyndhurst was really there, or whether she had actually died within the walls of her fortress. The servants, it was whispered, had stashed the duchesse’s earthly remains in the walk-in refrigerator in order that their wages would continue to be paid by the banks and lawyers who handled such mundane matters. Then, at last, the duchesse officially died. For a while, it looked as though Lyndhurst would surely be broken up and the house would go under the wrecker’s ball. But a foundation came forward to save the estate, and today it operates as a museum and can be visited by the public for a fee. It is almost unique in that it is one of the few of the Westchester mansions, built to last for untold generations, that still remains intact. The Lyndhurst Foundation adds to the revenues it needs to pay for the considerable expense of upkeep by renting the house to motion picture producers, who find it a useful setting for horror movies.
Dr. Charles Brace, who made millions in patent medicines in the days when there were no income taxes, was another who built a house “to last a thousand years,” in nearby Irvington-on-Hudson. His daughter, Mrs. Harold Scott, who lived to be a very old lady, used to like to reminisce about the great house and the way things were in that long-ago perfumed age. “Oh, those were days like none that will ever come again,” she used to say. “The house was built of Westchester granite that was quarried right on the property. Father was so proud of that house—it’s gone now, of course. At Father’s house, dinner was at seven. And that meant not two minutes after seven, but seven. If you were early, you waited outside the door until the clockstroke. The gentlemen wore white tie, and the ladies long gowns. The ladies took their wraps to the downstairs cloakroom, and the gentlemen took theirs upstairs. In the gentlemen’s cloakroom, white envelopes were arranged on a silver tray, with a gentleman’s name on each envelope. Inside was a card with a lady’s name on it—the lady he was to take in to dinner. That way, you see, a lady never knew which gentleman would escort her, which made it exciting, and the gentlemen were careful not to spend too much time during cocktails with the ladies they were escorting. When the ladies and gentlemen gathered downstairs, there were cocktails, but none of this “What’ll you have to drink?’ business. Father liked a Jack Rose cocktail, and so that was what was served. The butler came in with the tray—one Jack Rose for each guest. He was followed by the parlormaid with a tray of canapés—one apiece. No one would dream of asking for a second canapé, much less a second drink!
“In fifteen minutes, dinner was announced. No one would think, either, of carrying an unfinished cocktail to the dinner table. There was always sherry with the soup. At the table were printed menus and place cards; the menus outlined the courses through the appetizer, soup, meat, salad, cheese and fruit, dessert, and coffee, with, perhaps, a sherbet course somewhere in the middle to clean the palate. Dinner lasted for at least two hours. Really, I don’t know how we managed to eat so much! It was a day of gracious living, and when you look at the way people do things now! Cocktail parties! Father would have died of horror if he’d seen a cocktail shaker in the drawing room. It was a kitchen implement.”
It was an era so accustomed to entertaining on the classic, grand scale that hostesses were unfazed by situations which, today, would unhinge the average society woman. There were, for example, two prominent Brown families in western Westchester—the Franklin Q. Browns and the Walston H. Browns. One evening, the Frank A. Vanderlips (he was president of the National City Bank) got their Browns mixed. Instead of arriving at the Walston Brown’s, where they were expected, they appeared at the door of the Franklin Q. Browns, who were having a quiet evening at home. Mrs. Franklin Q. Brown, however, sensing that something of the sort had happened, rose to the occasion magnificently. Murmuring to the Vanderlips that she was delighted to see them, and that dinner would be en famille, she then had a quick word with her kitchen staff. Within fifteen minutes, both couples were seated at a place-carded table for a six-course dinner with four wines. The Walston Browns, of course, spent the evening wondering what in the world had happened to the Vanderlips, while the Franklin Browns assumed that they had invited the Vanderlips and forgotten to put it on their calendar.
A great feature of this turn-of-the-century social life was the Afternoon Drive down Broadway in Tarrytown, a ritual that had been copied from similar promenades in such resorts as Newport and Saratoga. The Afternoon Drive was taken with huge seriousness and ceremony, and to appear on the drive was a mark of social status. Virtually all Westchester society turned out in full fig for these drives in good weather, sitting stiffly and erect in coaches-and-four. The horses wore silver harnesses and were driven by blue-coated coachmen with silver buckles, buttons, and brocade, high silk hats with black or red cockades, white gloves, white trousers, and patent-leather boots with blue or pink tops, everything polished to a gleam. On these splendidly important drives, Vanderbilts and Fields and Goelets, Schwabs and Rockefellers and Archbolds and Whitehouses, smiled distantly and bowed politely at one another, as gentlemen tipped tall silk hats at the ladies. Mr. John Archbold, who, like Mr. Rockefeller, was “in petroleum,” was one of the more imposing figures, boasting not only one coachman but a second “on the seat,” whose job was merely to help the Archbolds in and out of the carriage. Mrs. Jennie Prince Black, who wrote a chatty book about Westchester in those days, recalled seeing Alexander Hamilton II daily during the Afternoon Drive. “He always sat along in the rear of his barouche, a small figure wrapped in a gray plaid shawl.… He never seemed to notice anyone or to change his expression of solitary boredom.” Mrs. Black also commented on the presence of “an interesting visitor”—Winston Churchill, “the novelist.”
Two spinsters, the wealthy Wendel sisters, Miss Ella and Miss Rebecca, kept a large summer place in Tarrytown, which they shared with their aging bachelor brother, J. G. Wendel. The Misses Wendel always dressed alike, in patched and tattered black dresses whose fallen hems trailed in the dust, and in matching black sailor hats which were secured to the ladies’ heads with wide elastic bands beneath their chins. Though the Wendel sisters were not twins, it was difficult to distinguish Ella from Rebecca, and adding to the problem was the fact that they often spoke in unison. Despite their odd appearance and behavior, the Wendels were from a fine old New York family, listed in the earliest edition of the Social Register as well as in its predecessor, the Elite Directory. As an indication of their social prominence, they were allowed—long after New York City had passed an ordinance banning the keeping of large livestock in Manhattan—to keep their cow, Bossie, in the rear garden of their town house at 442 Fifth Avenue. In Westchester, each sister drove her own team of horses, with a groom seated at her side. At the same time, they were notoriously thrifty. Once, when a friend who had not seen them for some time asked of their whereabouts, the sisters chorused, “Why, we’ve been busy mending the saddle blankets for the past six weeks!”
When, eventually, their horses died, the sisters refused to replace them. Nor, long after other forms of transportation had become more fashionable and convenient, would they travel any other way; wherever they went, they went on foot. Nor was any other kind of traffic permitted to enter their estate. A visitor to the Wendels’ estate who arrived by automobile was obliged to leave it at the gate and negotiate the long gravel drive on shank’s mare, as the ladies did. One day a grounds keeper noticed Miss Ella Wendel walking up her drive carrying her little dog Tobey and in an attitude of some distress. When the grounds keeper asked her what was wrong, she explained that Tobey had got a piece of gravel wedged in his paw. The grounds keeper removed the bit of gravel from the troubled paw and remarked, in passing, that if the Wendels would have their drive paved with concrete, similar mishaps could be avoided in the future. “Excellent idea!” cried Miss Ella. She immediately telephoned a contractor, and within a few weeks, the drive was paved. When the contractor presented Miss Ella with the bill—for twenty thousand dollars—she opened her shabby purse and promptly paid him, in cash. Several years later, Tobey—a mongrel no more prepossessing in his appearance than his mistresses—achieved national celebrity as “the world’s most expensively maintained dog.” It seemed that the Union Club had offered the Wendel sisters five million dollars for their Manhattan dwelling in order to build a clubhouse. The Wendels turned the offer down. It was not, they said, that they minded selling the house; they could not bear to give up the backyard garden. It was needed as a run for Tobey and, of course, for the cow.
Those few men who, for business reasons, needed to commute from Westchester to New York on a more or less regular basis did so, needless to say, in a grand manner. The late Mrs. H. Stuart Green (a Browning, whose family founded Browning Fifth Avenue stores, formerly Browning-King) used to reminisce about the days when her father commuted to the city on his hundred-foot steam yacht, the Gracemere, named after the family’s Tarrytown estate. “Father and a few of his friends would gather at the pier in the morning,” Mrs. Green would recall. “They would go aboard the Gracemere, where breakfast was served and the morning newspapers were waiting for them. Then they’d cruise down the Hudson to New York. It was slow, but it was wonderfully leisurely and relaxing—such a pleasant way to go to business.” After her father’s death, Adelaide Browning Green kept the Tarrytown estate (though not the yacht), or at least as much of it as she could. Gradually, the surrounding grounds diminished through the steady attrition of real estate development and offers too lucrative to refuse. Eventually, she and her husband moved from “the big house” to “the little house”—not really little, though it had been intended as a guest cottage.
Sitting on her terrace overlooking Tarrytown—with the new high-rise apartment houses, the fast-food outlets, the smoke of industry that has moved there, and the hum of traffic on the new Tappan Zee Bridge, which connects Westchester with the interstate that leads to Albany “and God knows where else”—Mrs. Green liked to recall that long ago, more naïve, almost forgotten time. “It was wonderful,” she would say. “It really was an escape to come up here, a beautiful dream. This was where it all started, you know, in this Hudson River Valley. There was nothing”—with a disparaging wave of her hand toward Rye and the other eastern suburban towns along the Sound—“over there. Tarrytown was Tarrytown, and Ardsley was Ardsley. These were towns that meant something. The Ardsley Club was founded here—in 1896, just eight years after golf was first introduced in this country; one of the very first golf clubs in America. And the founding board of governors of that club—John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Chauncey Depew. There were giants in the land in those days, believe me. What’s more, they were gentlemen, and their wives were ladies. People were kind to one another in those days. I sit here and wonder where it went, and when it began to go. I try to tell my grandchildren about it, and they can’t believe it ever was. Sometimes I wonder if it ever was. Perhaps”—a wistful look would come into her eyes—“it was simply all too beautiful to be true.”