Redwood: Home to the Lord & Burnham family that kept Gilded Age under glass

A horse-drawn carriage with coachman and passenger pulls up to the porte cochere at "Redwood," the Gilded Age Victorian mansion of Frederick Allen Lord and William Addison Burnham of Lord & Burnham fame in this photo, ca. 1900. (Photo courtesy Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Frederick Allen Lord's and William Addison Burnham’s "Redwood" mansion and estate stood on the site occupied by the Irvington Estates co-op apartments at 14 South Broadway in Irvington today.

Burnham’s wealth stemmed from his partnership with father-in-law Frederick Allen Lord in the Irvington-based Lord & Burnham Co., a manufacturer of greenhouses, conservatories and boilers. Burnham later became president of Lord & Burnham, a director of the Irvington National Bank and presiding officer of Dobbs Ferry Hospital.

Lord founded the company in upstate New York and moved it to Irvington in about 1870 where it would be in close proximity to its primary customers, Hudson River valley Gilded Age estate owners. Burnham joined the company in 1872 when he married Lord’s daughter. Lord & Burnham manufactured greenhouses for the New York Botanical Garden, the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., and the first steel curvilinear greenhouse for railroad magnate Jay Gould at his Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown in 1881. It would go on to become the biggest greenhouse manufacturer in the nation.

This is an illustration, ca. 1890, of the Redwood mansion and estate of Frederick Allen Lord and William Addison Burnham looking from Broadway towards the Hudson River to give an idea of the views the mansion enjoyed. (Westchester Historical Society)

Lord & Burnham’s factory at the southeast corner of Main and Astor streets still stands. In the late 1800s, the company bought water rights across from its factory and past the railroad tracks, filled in land and built the Irvington docks to provide space for more manufacturing facilities and the Turner Lumber Co., which worked hand-in-hand with Lord & Burnham’s construction projects, especially providing the durable wood products its all-weather greenhouses needed. The company still had a few employees in Irvington when it went out of the greenhouse business in 1988. Today the Irvington Public Library and apartments are situated in the old Astor/Main building.

The former Lord & Burnham red-brick headquarters faces Astor Street at its corner at the foot of Main Street in Irvington. Since the demise of Lord & Burnham as a greenhouse maker in 1988, the building now houses the Irvington Public Library and apartments. (Google Maps Street View)

Burnham Commercial (the boiler business) was formed by W.A. Burnham and continues in business in Lancaster, Pa., where it has been headquartered since 1921.

Lord & Burnham itself sold the rights to the plans and designs of its greenhouses and conservatories in 1989 to the companies Under Glass Manufacturing and Rough Brothers.

The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is a centerpiece at the New York Botanical Gardens and it has been since its construction there by Lord & Burnham Co., between 1899 and its dedication in 1902. The stunning building -- more than an acre under glass -- is the largest Victorian-era glasshouse in the United States and a New York City landmark. (New York Botanical Gardens)

A “little, red brick school house” stood on the eventual 2.3-acre Redwood mansion site before Lord purchased the site in the early 1870s. It’s unclear when, but a map as early as 1881 labels the estate “Redwood, Lord & Burnham.” It may be that Burnham and his wife, Lord’s daughter, moved to the estate and lived with Lord. Burnham eventually took sole ownership after Lord’s death and the property was sold to Dr. WIlliam R. Roane in the mid-1920s after Burnham’s death.

The property was eventually sold and developed by 1948 into Irvington Estates apartments.

In January 1921, Burnham gave a report on the state of Dobbs Ferry Hospital’s finances that jump out to a modern reader during the era of ever-expanding health care issues. He writes in one excerpt: "The great increase in the price of supplies, wages and salaries has so advanced the cost of running the Hospital that each patient now costs $4.61 per day. While the expense of running the Hospital has nearly doubled, the charges made to patients who are able to pay has been advanced one-half as much, or only 50 per cent. The number of free patients continues about the same as in the past. It is the policy of the Hospital to make the charges as reasonable as possible so that its usefulness to the community may not be impaired."

So highly regarded was Burnham in town that St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church on Main Street at North Eckar Street -- since 1962 the Isabel K. Benjamin Community Center -- announced it would not hold services on Sunday, April 29, 1923, so as not to conflict with the nearby Irvington Presbyterian Church’s memorial service for its late congregation member, Burnham.

This 1891 map shows the location of the “Redwood” estate at what is now the Irvington Estates co-op apartments at 14 South Broadway. Redwood was owned by the founders of Lord & Burnham Co. (Frederick W. Beers, 1891, David Rumsey Historical Maps)

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