A sunny day in Morningside Park, very much engineered to look like a Hudson River School painting
I love visiting historic houses. I find them inspirational from an interior decorating point of view, but also love soaking up their vibes . . . I don’t feel voyeuristic, I feel right at home!
Dyckman Farmhouse, built 1784
Recently, I’ve gotten a couple Inwood listings (for those of you who don’t know . . . my day job for the past 8 years is as a professional real estate agent, a perfect match for me as a native New Yorker) and so have been traveling quite a bit up and down the west side. It is time consuming to get to these neighborhoods, so I thought I would fold in visits to uptown sights I’d always meant to see . . . . but hadn’t.
First up, the Dyckman Farmhouse between 204th and 207th streets on Broadway. This is a Dutch Colonial style farmhouse continuously occupied by one family and donated to the city as a museum in the 1910s. The sisters decorated it in an early 19th century fashion, as they remember their grandparents keeping it.
It’s two floors and a cellar. The cellar is, of course, the kitchen; the first floor is the main entertaining space and upstairs are bedrooms. In undecorated rooms throughout there are vitrines of colonial artifacts that were either donated or unearthed in the vicinity. One silly touch is that many of the items are labeled with their name in Dutch (it’s not a stole, it’s a stoel!)
Out back, dug into the hill, is a Hessian hut. These were used to house George III’s Hessian mercenaries. New York is terribly cold in winter and terribly hot in summer, and was almost completely Tory during the revolution. The hut predates the house.
Walking north on St. Nicholas Ave. from 160th St., Sylvan Terrace looks like a Wild West movie set. It’s actually 20 rowhouses built in 1882 with maintained facades (the interiors are rarely even partly original). They go for around $1.6 million these days.
At the top of Sylvan Terrace is Jumel Terrace, and the Morris-Jumel mansion. Built in 1765 by one of the wealthiest men in New York, it is quite different in character from the Dyckman farmhouse.
Morris-Jumel mansion, built 1765
Like the Dyckman farmhouse, the Morris-Jumel mansion is decorated in the early 19th century style; obviously, it’s a much grander house.
Dare I say I find the juxtaposition of 1820s-40s wallpapers and carpeting against Georgian neoclassical decorative elements horrifying?
Apparently when in France the Jumels socialized with Napoleon, so there’s a lot of that Empire style of decor as well.
The house has a bit of history: this is where George Washington planned the Battle of Harlem Heights; this is where Aaron Burr and Eliza Jumel shared their marriage of convenience (her benefit being the maintenance of social standing, his the spending of her fortune).
The upstairs bedrooms are furnished with a natural feeling jumble of furniture and decorative objects from the mid 18th through mid 19th centuries.
Of course, the kitchen is again in the basement. When I reflect on my childhood, I remember spending an inordinate amount of time in colonial kitchens learning about how people cooked and ate in the 18th century. Isn’t it so silly, looking back? Isn’t it the part of history that matters the least?
The grounds of Morris park are very small but removed and peaceful. The plantings are authentic to those that would have been used in the colonial Americas. When I visited they were past their bloom, but the heirloom roses here are known for their strong and lovely scent.
I hate to say it, but Hamilton Grange (at St. Nicholas Terrace and 141st St.) was a disappointment. Firstly, it’s not on its original site, and it’s hard to contextually appreciate in the corner of granite rocks it currently occupies.
The cellar floor is a small museum for schoolchildren using a few artifacts to map out Hamilton’s biography. The piano nobile, which I’ve photographed here, contains few if any of Hamilton’s belongings. The third floor bedrooms are inaccessible National Park Service offices. In other words, a waste of a beautiful historic house! This is technically the Hamilton Memorial, rather than a historic house museum, so my hopes were likely unfair expectations.
A lot of the furniture is repro and the entry way floor is LINOLEUM! At least the palette isn’t as offensive as the Morris-Jumel mansion’s. Also, I have to give it to the basement kiddie museum: if you are quite familiar with the musical Hamilton, you will laugh at how some lyrics are pulled line for line from the 90s educational video played down there.
Would I revisit any of these houses? No, although if I’m in the neighborhood on a sunny day I won’t hesitate to take my lunch to the Morris-Jumel garden to sit and relax in tranquility.