Hillcrest: Dunham estate enjoyed 2nd life as libertarian think tank

Hillcrest (pictured in about 1900) was built for Dr. Carroll Dunham Jr., and wife Margaret Dows Dunham in 1889. The Dunham family was related to the Tiffany and Dows families who also owned Gilded Age estates in Irvington. The estate was located at 30 South Broadway and has been razed since being sold by the Foundation for Economic Education in 2014. The grounds were designed by Charles Eliot, who also planned the Boston park system, with later alterations by Frederick Law Olmsted, the co-creator of New York City's Central Park. The Colonial Revival mansion was designed with 34 rooms, 16 fireplaces, gables and bay windows, a large staircase, walls of mahogany paneling and glass designed by Irvington resident and Dunham relative Louis Comfort Tiffany. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Irvington's “Hillcrest” estate was a familiar sight to many from its construction in 1889 to its demise in 2015.

Carroll Dunham Jr., M.D., and his wife Margaret W. Dows Dunham were related to a pair of other Irvington Gilded Age estate owners, Dr. Dunham through his father, renowned 19th century homeopathic physician Carroll Dunham Sr. to Charles Lewis Tiffany and Louis Comfort Tiffany of Matthiessen Park, and Margaret Dows to David Dows of Charlton Hall on parts of which are now Dows Lane Elementary School and Half Moon Co-op Apartments.

The Dunhams built Hillcrest in 1889 at what is now 30 South Broadway, on the south side of Irvington Estates Co-op Apartments, 14 South Broadway. The 34-room, 16-fireplace mansion with mahogany-paneled walls and Louis Comfort Tiffany windows offered a commanding view of the Hudson River.

At the dawn of the 20th century, Hillcrest's neighbor was “Redwood,” the estate of Lord & Burnham Co. executives Frederick Allen Lord and William Addison Burnham.

The Dunhams sold Hillcrest to Charles Harris, a son of the owner of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in 1923 shortly after Carroll Dunham’s death in London at age 64.

Harris sold the estate in 1946 to well-known author and philosopher Leonard E. Read, founder of the libertarian economic think tank the Foundation for Economic Education. Read moved the Foundation to the estate the same year and it remained there until 2014 when it relocated to Atlanta and sold Hillcrest. Read died in 1983 while still at the Foundation’s helm.

Hillcrest is pictured in 2008 during its tenure as the home of the Foundation for Economic Education at 30 South Broadway, Irvington. Less than a decade later the old Dunham mansion was torn down to make way for some 21 attached single-family homes. (Wikimedia Commons)

Margaret Dows Dunham lived to be 91 and had a highly successful philanthropic career including founding the Westchester County Children’s Association in 1914 and heading a Westchester County medical relief effort for the French armed forces in World War I until the U.S. entered the war and those efforts fell under the bailiwick of the American Red Cross.

Her husband was also a noted philanthropist. He was involved with Westchester County’s Grasslands Reservation that was developed by the state in 1918 to treat U.S. veterans of World War I suffering from Spanish flu and later as an almshouse for the poor and what is now Westchester Medical Center.

He was also heavily involved in the Thrift Exchange of Westchester, a thrift store whose proceeds supported allied relief efforts in World War I and survives today as the White Plains-based The Thrift Shop, in operation since 1918 and now the oldest continuously operating thrift shop in New York State and possibly the nation.

Margaret died in 1951 in Pleasantville.

The Dunhams had four children. Their son, Dows, led an adventurous life, graduating from Harvard University in late 1913 and heading to Egypt for a two-year stint as curator there for Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 1914.

He then volunteered and served with the French Army Ambulance service in 1916 in France at the height of World War I. He remained with French forces until the United States declared war on Germany in 1917. At that point he transferred to the American Expeditionary Forces and served with the AEF until the Nov. 11, 1918 Armistice.

He became a renowned Egyptologist.

The former 4½-acre Hillcrest estate is being redeveloped as The Walk at MarkeRidge condominiums.

AUTHOR’S NOTES:  For a deeper dive into the Dunham, Tiffany and Matthiessen families and their Irvington estates and impact on the village, check out Irvington Historical Society historian Chet Kerr's video presentation on the subject from June 14, 2020. Chet's presentations are terrific for anyone interested in the history of the Village of Irvington. ...

If the Dunham name rings a bell, one of the Irvington clan’s descendants is actress, writer, director, producer and progressive political activist Lena Dunham. Another is her father, renowned artist Carroll Dunham.

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