Blue Rock: Was it or was it not "The House of Graft"?

This is a view of Irvington's "Blue Rock," the stone home of the McCullagh, Opp, Pateman and Rubić families at 10 South Cottenet Street since 1889. Chuck Pateman, who grew up in the house is a real estate developer and a former owner of the long-time (now defunct) local tavern The Alibi Inn at 5 North Buckhout Street. (Google Maps Street View, 2013)

In the course of my look at Irvington’s Gilded Age mansions and estates, readers have filled in some blanks, added information that fleshed out stories I’d posted and in some cases simply wondered about the stories behind their own homes.

The research and frequent posts about those estates precluded me from delving into questions about smaller homes. However, in some cases I’ve taken quick glimpses which led to fascinating stories.

I thought some of you might be interested in following the twists and turns one of those investigations took.

Case in point is the 10 Cottenet Street stone house formerly of Chuck Pateman, a real estate developer, lifelong Irvington resident and one-time owner of the iconic but now defunct Irvington tavern The Alibi Inn at 5 North Buckhout Street.

Pateman reached out to me saying he’d heard his house was built by a retired New York police captain and was known as “The House of Graft.” I later found out from Pateman that the cornerstone of the house, originally known as “Blue Rock,” is dated 1889 and that at one time the property had frontage of 200 feet in from Main Street on both South Cottenet and South Buckhout streets and 100 feet on Main Street between Cottenet and Buckhout.

Captain John H. McCullagh is shown in an undated photo portrait
 taken from the book New York State's Prominent and Progressive Men,
 Volume III, edited by Mitchell C. Harrison and published by the
New York Tribune in 1902. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

It took a moment, but I realized that my lifelong Irvington resident grandfather Edward M. Connors’ first cousin, Catherine T. “Kitty” Connors, had lived in the top floor apartment of the Patemans’ home from at least the early 1960s until her death in 1979 at age 95. In fact, Pateman told me he’d been living in the house in the late '70s when Kitty had fallen and broken her hip, an injury that would lead to her death not long after.

When I started researching the house, I found a reference in the Irvington Gazette newspaper of April 6, 1923. It read: "Mr. Paul R. Opp has moved into the former McCullough house. Work is being put forward to making two apartments of the building, the upper to be rented. Mr. Opp is also planning to make good use of the old stable by converting it into a garage."

I found references later to a Mrs. John H. McCullough, widow of a New York CIty police captain, living on South Buckhout and South Cottenet streets with two sons, a housekeeper and three servants. I also found references to Mrs. McCullough -- her first name was Isabella -- leaving an estate worth $64,000 at her death in 1911. Other reports valued the estate at almost twice that.

That raised red flags since I’d found references to her and her husband being immigrants and $64,000 in 1911 would be worth $1.72 million today, a fortune for a police officer.

With this all in hand, I delved further. I learned that John H. McCullough’s surname had also been spelled McCullagh, that he’d been famous enough to have a color trading card with his name and image printed and distributed with a brand of chewing tobacco, that he’d been through several official misconduct controversies and that his Irvington home was called “Blue Rock.”

This Gold Coin Chewing Tobacco collectible card, ca. 1884, features a colorized portrait of New York Police Captain John H. McCullagh of Irvington. On the reverse side (not pictured), the card states: “We will pack in the celebrated Gold Coin Chewing Tobacco the portraits of all the leading base-ball players, police inspectors and captains, jockeys and actors in the country in full uniform and costume.” (New York Public Library collection)

He also had a home at 148 East 49th Street in Manhattan and owned several rental properties in the city.

The twin spellings of the surname had thrown me off target for a while, but once I realized it, I was back in business.

Here’s his story.

John H. McCullagh emigrated to the United States with his parents from County Tyrone in today’s Northern Ireland as an 11-year-old in 1853, settling in Dearman, which would become Irvington, in 1854.

Little is known of his life in Irvington, but we do know that he landed a job as coachman for the owner of the New York Central Railroad and patriarch of the uber wealthy Vanderbilt family, Cornelius Vanderbilt, nicknamed “The Commodore.”

During the deadly New York City Draft Riots of 1863, McCullagh was among the special police appointed to crack down on the rioters, mainly Irish Catholic immigrant laborers protesting Civil War Union Army draft rules that allowed the wealthy to pay $300 to escape military duty and forcing the poor immigrants to go in their stead.
The rioters lynched and killed many of the city’s black residents, out of racism born of fear that freed slaves would eventually take their jobs

In February 1864 at Vanderbilt’s request, McCullagh was named a permanent member of the New York City Police Department. He was known by the nickname “Farmer John” until his nephew, John H. II, joined the force. He was then known as “Old McCullagh.” In his 1893 obituary, he was called a “terror to evil-doers” and it was noted that he raced his way up the NYPD ranks.

His fame grew as he battled criminal gangs in the tough Hell’s Kitchen, Fourth Ward and Battle Row neighborhoods of Manhattan.

Famously he was noted for single-handedly battling Hell’s Kitchen Gang leader Dutch Heinrichs and two of his henchmen armed only with a nightstick. Heinrichs had been terrorizing Hell’s Kitchen for two years. A half-hour battle resulted in all three gang members being knocked unconscious by McCullagh who arrested the trio.

McCullagh also famously escaped an assassination attempt by a disgraced former NYPD officer whom he had reported. The ex-officer attempted to shoot McCullagh in an ambush, but McCullagh escaped with a minor head wound and a scarred ear.

He was promoted to sergeant in 1866 after only two full years on the force and was shot and wounded in 1871 during New York City’s Orange Riots which pitted Protestant Irish immigrants against Catholic Irish immigrants -- McCullagh was Presbyterian -- and involved the NYPD and National Guard. The riot left 60 Irishmen and three Guardsmen dead.

McCullagh overcame his leg wound and was able to win influential and powerful friends while working at Grand Central Station and within a year had been promoted to captain at the tender age of 29 in 1872. His precinct was the 17th (later renamed the 14th) in the Murray Hill area east of midtown Manhattan.

In his new role, he gained renown for breaking up the operations of famed waterfront gang leader Thomas “Shang” Draper in the early 1880s.

But McCullagh, who was featured on a series of chewing tobacco cards honoring baseball players and heroic police officers, wasn’t admired by everyone. He was brought up on corruption charges by the NYPD. The charges were tried in-house at NYPD Headquarters and dismissed.

He was also involved in three investigations by the New York State Senate in the early 1890s into corruption in the NYPD and his in-house reports on his own precinct found no wrongdoing. However he was transferred to the 21st Precinct in a shakeup in 1892 in response to the Senate probes.

In early 1893, McCullagh, only 51, died in his bed at the 21st Precinct of hemorrhagic purpura after a weeklong illness. His death came suddenly after he’d appeared to rally and improve. Isabella had been so confident in his recovery that she’d gone back to Irvington and was not at his bedside when he died.

Isabella continued living at Blue Rock until her death. The family later sold Blue Rock to Opp, a New York printer, who renovated it and made it his family’s year-round home -- the Opps summered in Saybrook, Conn., which is where they retired in the early 1940s after selling the house to the Patemans. Chuck Pateman was born shortly after.

Returning to my research, I examined the auction map at which lots on the east-west Main Street (it was still called “The Avenue”) and the lettered north-south streets of Dearman Town were sold and saw that an R.B. Lewis had purchased the four lots facing Main Street between South Buckhout and South Cottenet streets and the two lots behind those on both Buckhout and Cottenet, giving him basically a square block property. His next-door neighbor on South Cottenet was future U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary John Jay, grandson of the eponymous U.S. Founding Father and first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jay had ties to Irvington "royalty" as well as a Founding Father.

His mother, Hannah Augustus McVickar Jay, was the sister of Episcopal Rev. John McVickar, a former two-time interim president of Columbia University who owned a 30-acre estate on the river side of North Broadway, part of which eventually became home to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church.

McVickar's son, William, was St. Barnabas' first rector.

The house which John McVickar built and where son William lived at 131 Main Street, is home to the Irvington Historical Society today. It is the second oldest house remaining on Main Street, second only to the old Dearman family homestead directly across the street.

The McVickar House (pictured), 131 Main Street, is the second oldest house on Main Street and was built by the aunt of future U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary John Jay. It once housed the rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church and is now home to the Irvington Historical Society. (Google Street View, 2019)

* Click here for links to dozens of other Gilded Age stories by this author