Buckhout-Jewell Farm: Estate became home to Cosmopolitan magazine

Danford Newton Barney purchased Theodore McNamee’s Rosedale mansion in 1860. It is pictured in 1925 just before it was sold and razed. Barney lived in the 18-room mansion until his family sold it and their entire estate to J. Brisben Walker in the early 1890s. It sat south of Station Road off today’s Maple and WIllow streets in what is today’s Spiro Park. (New York Public Library, 1925)

In the early 1890s, the Danford Newton Barney estate in Irvington, N.Y., was purchased by Cosmopolitan magazine owner John Brisben Walker who moved into a mansion on the adjoining Theodore McNamee estate, which he also purchased, and relocated his magazine from Manhattan to save publishing costs and offer Cosmo employees a more affordable village in which to live.

Walker built his Stanford White-designed Cosmopolitan Building off South Buckhout Street by 1895 on the western-most part of the former Barney estate. At around the same time, Walker sold off what became today’s Barney Park as an exclusive, private single-family home subdivision.

The magazine was a success, so much so that it was purchased in 1905 by publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst who promptly abandoned Irvington and moved the magazine back to New York City.

The 30,000-square-foot building still stands at 50 South Buckhout Street today. It became known as the Trent Building and is now the Stanford Bridge Building and houses a variety of business interests.

The Buckhout-Jewell family farmhouse, pictured ca. 1880, was built in 1741 and was located at today’s 50 South Buckhout Street where the Cosmopolitan building would be built by John Brisben Walker. The house was moved to its current 26 Barney Park location in the 1890s. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

The Barney estate site dated to the 1600s and what became known as the Buckhout-Jewell Farm which was leased from Frederick Philipse I, Lord of the Philipsburg Manor estate of 52,000 acres which ran from the Bronx to Sleepy Hollow. The Philipses engaged in the Atlantic slave trade and used their slaves to build and farm their estate. The Buckhout family was able to purchase its farm after Philipse lands were confiscated in 1779 after Loyalist Frederick Philipse III, the final lord of the manor, was attainted for treason by the Provincial Congress of New York for warning a British garrison in the Bronx of an impending Continental Army attack in 1777.

Attainder was a legal term meaning loss of life, property and hereditary titles. Philipse escaped the death penalty because he received sanctuary behind British lines and eventually emigrated to England where he died in 1785.

Danford Barney, president of Wells Fargo & Co. from 1863 to 1866, purchased most of the land of the estate in the 1850s, buying up Theodore McNamee’s 30-plus acre estate and 18-room mansion “Rosedale” in 1860.

McNamee had built Rosedale in 1853 when Irvington was still named Dearman. Barney moved into that house, which was sited south of Station Road off today’s Maple and WIllow streets in what is today’s Spiro Park.

The house survived into the mid-1920s.

Barney’s brother, Ashbel Holmes Barney, owned and lived on another part of the estate at about the same time. A.H. Barney was to become Wells Fargo president in 1869.

The only building left standing from the D.N. Barney estate is believed to be the former 1875 carriage house, a building transformed into a residence around 1900. It’s a single-family home today at 14 Barney Park.

This house at 14 Barney Park is the only building still in existence from the 19th century D.N. Barney estate. In the glory days of the estate it was the carriage house, but it was repurposed and rebuilt around 1900 as a single-family home. It has been renovated several times since then as well. Barney Brook, the forner Jewell Brook, flows east to west directly south behind the house and a stone and concrete foot bridge spans the brook at the site. (Zillow.com real estate listing)

That house was the home of nationally renowned print journalist and later filmmaker Jack Glenn in the 1940s and 1950s. His son, Christopher, a longtime CBS TV and radio newsman, graduated from Irvington High School in 1955.

Jack Glenn (1904-1981) worked as a reporter for the Galveston (Texas) "Daily Reporter" from 1925-1927. In 1927, he was a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune in Paris where he met Louis de Rochemont, producer of the "March of Time" newsreels shown in movie theaters in that time before television.

Glenn worked for de Rochemont as senior director for the "March of Time" series from 1927-1953, and later directed promotional films and documentaries for Chrysler Corporation, General Electric, YMCA and McGraw-Hill with his own movie production company, Jack Glenn, Inc.

Glenn also directed the motion picture "The House of the Seven Gables" in 1973. Glenn was president of the Screen Directors Guild from 1948-1958 and public relations director of the Screen Directors International Guild.

Christopher Glenn (1938-2006) worked with CBS for 35 years before retiring in 2006 and died the same year of liver cancer. He delivered his best-known report on Jan. 28, 1986, when he anchored CBS Radio's live coverage of the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Glenn had just signed off—after what was thought to have been a normal launch—when the shuttle disintegrated, killing the seven astronauts on board. "I had to get back on the air real fast to describe that, and had a very difficult time doing that," he recalled.

Christopher Glenn was inducted into the national Radio Hall of Fame shortly after his death.

Today, the lands of the former Barney estates primarily comprise the single-family home developments of Barney Park, Spiro Park and Jaffray Park.

Barney Park itself features about 16 single-family homes with large yards and is a small area extending south about one block off each of Cottinet, Dutcher and Eckar streets and joined by a 2 block east-west connecting road. Barney Park’s streets are private, with only Cottinet Street providing a vehicular entrance. Pedestrian gates to Barney Park are in fences at the ends of Dutcher and Eckar street. All the houses in Barney Park are north of east-west flowing Barney Brook.

On this 1872 map, the Rosedale mansion of Theodore McNamee is marked with the name “D.N. Barney.” Danford Newton Barney  purchased the estate on which Spiro Park now stands from the McNamee family in 1860 and occupied the 18-room Rosedale mansion. Note other Barney properties on the greater Barney estate at this time, including A.H. Barney’s home just northwest of Rosedale, the estate’s greenhouse (“GreenHo” on the map) between the southern ends of South Dutcher and South Eckar streets, a bowling alley, an ice house (where ice blocks cut in winter from frozen ponds and the nearby Hudson River were stored underground in straw through the summer months) and a grapery greenhouse. Also note that properties later occupied by Barney descendants and in-laws, specifically from the north side of today’s Station Road west of Broadway to Main Street, are owned by D.N. Barney (DNB on the map) at that time. To the immediate east of D.N. Barney’s estate just below the Croton Aqueduct in 1872 is the estate of his son, Newcomb Cushman Barney (N.C. Barney on the map). (1872, J.B. Beers, David Rumsey Map Collection)

The eastern-most part of the Barney family holdings, bordered by the Croton Aqueduct and Station Road, was a 9-acre parcel including a house, carriage house, garage and barn. It was originally purchased by Newcomb Cushman Barney in the 1850s and remained in the Barney family until it was sold by the estate of Arthur Latham Barney’s daughter Mrs. Reginald Jaffray in October 1948. That tract became Jaffray Park, a subdivision of single-family homes. The property had been in the Barney family since about 1860.

Arthur L. Barney was the son of D.N. Barney and named the estate “The Lindens” after two massive Linden trees that flanked the main house, which remains on a 1-acre plot at 54 Jaffray Court today.

Two smaller Barney family properties straddled Station Road at South Broadway in an 1881 map of the area. One, owned by R.N. Barney, was to become the children’s playground at Memorial Park. The other was on the north side of Station Road and was owned by Lucy Latham Barney.

Meanwhile, D.N. Barney’s daughter Belle Barney Gurnee owned the estate to the immediate north of sister Lucy’s property.

The R.N. Barney property was sold to architect Alfred John “A.J.” Manning around 1900. Manning designed Irvington’s Town Hall in 1902 and also designed “Rochroane,” later known as “Halsey’s Castle.” Manning married into the Wood Rutter family well known for their possession of the “Irving Cliff” estate that ran east of the top of Main Street. The Wood Rutters’ owned Irving Cliff into the 1970s.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Surprises are many when researching properties one grew up around. In this case, the surprise was personal. My family owned a house at 32 South Eckar Street into the late 20-teens and its backyard featured a tall, east-west red brick wall on its south side. Its function was never clear until I saw a map from the 1880s that showed a Barney greenhouse at that exact site. The wall was the southern-facing back wall of that Barney greenhouse and it still stands. Walls like that were used to retain heat in winter months for glass-paned greenhouses ...

On the spelling front, Danford Barney’s given name is often misspelled Danforth. … Also, J. Brisben Walker’s middle name, which was the name he went by, is often misspelled Brisbane or Brisbain.

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