Stern Castle: Merchants' estate dominated Irvington's skyline

Ridgeview, the mansion later known colloquially as Stern Castle, is shown ca. 1900 after being remodeled into a crenellated Rhine stone castle by dry goods merchant Isaac Stern. Stern renamed the mansion and 99-acre estate Cedar Lawn. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Renowned architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Ridgeview for wealthy New York importer August C. Richards at the pinnacle of his 99-acre estate east of North Broadway in 1875. Today it's the site of Irvington High School.

The mansion would later be renovated and redesigned by its second owner, dry goods merchant Isaac Stern, who renamed it and the surrounding estate Cedar Lawn. The mansion is today best remembered as Stern Castle.

This is a sketch of August C. Richards’ original Ridgeview, mansion ca. 1886. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Davis had already designed "Woodcliff" castle for Richards 20 years earlier on part of the site of today’s Fort Tryon Park at 176th Street in Manhattan. That residence became the home of corrupt Tammany Hall political string-puller William Magear “Boss” Tweed in 1869 and later counted department store magnate Alexander Turney Stewart and John D. Rockefeller among its owners before being torn down to make way for Fort Tryon Park in 1939.

Both Davis-designed Richards castles overlooked the Hudson River. It appears that Richards just wanted out of the city and saw the elevated Irvington property as the perfect spot for his summer home.

The Ridge view/Cedar Lawn stood off North Broadway, the mansion perched atop a hill directly overlooking the Immaculate Conception Church and today's John Cardinal O'Connor School for special-needs students (formerly Immaculate Conception School), reached by Heritage Hill Road. The land where the church and school now stand were once part of the estate.

August C. Richards Ridgeview is pictured in 1886 from St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. At right is the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church rectory. Ridgeview held a commanding view of the village of Irvington and the Hudson River to its west. The site has been home to Irvington High School since September 1965. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

The former mansion footprint has been the site of Irvington High School since 1965.

The estate was called Ridgeview by Richards but was renamed Cedar Lawn by subsequent owner Isaac Stern in the early 1900s after a radical alteration expanded it from a stone villa into a Rhine castle complete with crenellated tower offering outstanding views of the Hudson River.

August C. Richards' Ridgeview mansion, built in 1848 is shown, ca. 1890 in a photo looking east from North Broadway across today's Riverview Road (outlined by evenly spaced pine trees running from middle left to lower right). The mansion was remodeled by retailer Isaac Stern at the turn of the 20th century, becoming a crenellated stone "castle" in the process. Partially visible in the junction of a deciduous tree (foreground right) its first branch is Irving Cliff, the mansion of Eliphalet Wood. The two mansions survived well into the 20th century with Stern Castle falling to fire and the wrecker's ball in the early 1960s and Irving Cliff facing a same similar fate in the mid-1980s. (From the collection of the Museum of the City of New York)

Stern, whose given name was sometimes spelled Issac, was the co-founder with his brothers Louis and Bernard of Stern Brothers, a New York department store. The brothers were the sons of German Jewish immigrants.

Stern Brothers, later known as Stern’s, operated stores in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania for 130 years until its parent company, Federated Department Stores, in 2001 converted most of the Stern’s locations to Macy’s stores. Other locations reopened as Bloomingdale’s stores.

This is Chet Kerr's video presentation for the Irvington Historical Society on the Stearns property – also Stern Castle or Stern's Castle. For more than 130 years the 99-acre Ridgeview/Cedar Lawn estate of open lawns, pastures, and woodlands extended east from North Broadway to Mountain Road through central Irvington. Village residents worked tirelessly to protect and preserve the eastern sections of the former estate as part of Irvington Woods.

Stern’s son, Robert B. Stearns (who had changed the spelling of his surname), inherited the building which had become commonly known as variously as Stern Castle, Stern's Castle, Stearns Castle and Stearn's Castle. He lived in it until 1942, according to newspaper reports, then left it to his son Richard upon his death in 1954. The castle was never occupied by Richard Stearns. It suffered a series of minor fires before falling to a devastating blaze despite the best efforts of firefighters from Irvington and the surrounding villages of Tarrytown and Dobbs Ferry on Saturday, July 14, 1962. The castle's granite walls were all that remained and they were later removed and used as fill to expand the footprint of Matthiessen Park west into the Hudson River.

For the record, Robert Stearns changed the spelling of the family name in his late teens. He was the co-founder of the investment house Bear Stearns and later chairman of the American Stock Exchange.

Robert Stearns' obituary in the Dec. 16, 1954 issue of The Irvington Gazette newspaper recalled the time of the Gilded Age scions of the village.

Isaac Stern's 441-ton steam yacht VIrginia once docked at the northern end of today's Matthiessen Park. The yacht was delivered to Stern on Dec. 23, 1899 and Stern enjoyed it until his 1910 death at his apartment in the recently built St. Regis Hotel. The yacht was sold after to financier Frederick W. Vanderbilt in 1916 and renamed Vedette. Vanderbilt leased it to the U.S. Navy on May 4, 1917 and it was commissioned USS Vedette (SP-163) on May 28, 1917. It saw service in the eastern Atlantic Ocean during World War I primarily as a rescue ship. It is shown here in dry dock at L'Orient, France before its decommissioning on Feb. 4, 1919 when it was returned to Vanderbilt. (U.S. Naval Historical Center photo)

Isaac Stern, the paper recalled, “commuted to New York daily on his oceangoing steam yacht Virginia which docked in the Hudson River on the river's east shore at what is now Matthiessen Park but which was then known as Tiffany’s shore. He was driven to the dock by a team of beautiful, high stepping horses in a carriage whose polish would have held its own with the sheen of any of today’s highest priced automobiles.”

Isaac Stern is shown in a 1901 oil-on-canvas portrait by artist Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat. (The Museum of the City of New York)

Again harking to Stearns’ youth, the paper recalled: “[Isaac Stern] was not alone in Irvington in this manner because there were usually two or three other yachts such as Conrad Matthiessen’s ‘Inga,’ Dr. William Lanman Bull’s ‘Sayonara’ and Tracy Dows’ ‘Margaret’ at anchor along the Irvington shore, while the turnout of [horse-drawn] carriages for the arrival of the late afternoon express [train] from New York was truly something to behold.”

A 1908 report in the same paper referred to a fox hunt as having taken place at Cedar Lawn.

The then-new Irvington High School opened on the site of the razed Stern Castle in September 1965, moving from its former location at 101 Main Street, home today to Main Street School.

This hand-drawn 1891 map shows the outline of August C. Richards' Ridgeview — within a decade of being rebuilt and renamed Cedar Ridge by new owner Isaac Stern. The estate stretched east from North Broadway about a block north of Main Street and encompassed some 99 acres to its eastern terminus at today's Mountain Road. Original owner August Richards' surname is misspelled on the map. (Frederick W. Beers, David Rumsey Map Collection)

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