Millett estate: Property has links to Red Sox, Braves and Martin Luther King Jr.

Pictured is the Irvington Gilded Age mansion of stockbroker Stephen Caldwell “S.C.” Millett and later paper manufacturing magnate John Guthrie Luke, ca. 1915-20. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

The Millett estate in Irvington is renowned today for its charitable uses, but it was once the 72-acre country home of financier Stephen Caldwell “S.C.” Millett, whose firm helped finance the construction of two iconic Boston baseball stadiums.

The firm also owned Boston’s National League franchise, the Braves.

The estate would later be the property of paper manufacturing magnate John Guthrie Luke at 100 North Broadway, east of Broadway north of Strawberry Lane. It has become a haven for sick and displaced children since a few years after Luke’s death in 1921. It also was the site of a visit by the most famous of all Civil Rights icons.

The estate was originally part of the George Denison Morgan estate “Woodcliff” which lay to the immediate west of the property and is home today to the Maxon Companies, third party administrators of health benefit packages.

These are the formal gardens of S.C. Millett's Irvington estate with soaring views of the Hudson River and the Palisades, ca. 1915-20. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

S.C. Millett, his wife Thalia and their children lived on the property they purchased from George D. Morgan’s heirs in the first decade of the 20th century.

Millett was a self-made man who entered the business world at 14 in 1887 after leaving his hometown of Beaufort, S.C. By age 29 he became founding senior partner of the banking/brokerage firm Millett, Roe and Hagen at 33 Wall Street in Manhattan. He was living at his Irvington estate no later than 1905.

Millett later became president of the Exchange Buffet Corp. and was a director of both the Mutual Milk & Cream Co. and the Merchants' Fire Assurance Corp. of New York. He was a member of many clubs, including the Ardsley and Sleepy Hollow country clubs and the City Midday Club of New York.

Millett’s brokerage firm played a key role in the financing of Boston’s Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, in 1911 and financed the construction of Braves Field, the home of Boston’s National League franchise, the Boston Braves, in 1914-15.

This is a rear view of S.C.Millett's mansion, ca. 1915-20. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

Millett, Roe and Hagen actually bought the Braves in January 1916, just before the opening of Braves Field, and sold that franchise in January 1919.

Millett’s marital life was gossip fodder in the 1920s. Thalia divorced Millett in 1920 with the couple leaving Irvington. Thalia moved to Paris, Millett to Manhattan. In 1921, Millett remarried. Hoping to win sole custody of the Milletts’ two daughters, Thalia -- also remarried -- sued Stephen in French court, alleging that his new wife had lied about her name and background, claiming she was a Scottish woman named Irene MacNeal while in actuality, she was Irene Frederika Lorenz, the daughter of a German father and French mother, born in Paris. Thalia further claimed Irene was actually an actress on the French stage before marrying Millett.

The New York Times covered the contentious court hearings in Paris in 1923.

John G. Luke was the son of a Scottish immigrant who rose to helm the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company. Luke would work with his father and eventually replace him as company president.

Pictured is the entrance hall of S.C. Millett's Irvington mansion, ca. 1915-20. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

The company flourishes today with a different name after several mergers and acquisitions as WestRock, a corrugated packaging company.

It was formed in July 2015 after merger with MeadWestvaco (the successor company to West Virginia Pulp and Paper) and RockTen. WestRock is the second largest American packaging company and one of the world's largest paper and packaging companies with $15 billion in annual revenue and 42,000 employees in 30 countries.

John A. Luke Jr., a Luke family descendant, was chairman and CEO of MeadWestvaco when it merged in 2015.

This is a look at a decorated, furnished porch at S.C. Millett's mansion, ca. 1915-20. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

The published series “Paper: Devoted to the Manufacture, Sale and Use of Pulp and Paper, Volume 29,” reported on John G. Luke’s Oct. 15, 1921 death in Delaware after failed surgery for appendicitis at age 65.

“Funeral services for John G. Luke … were held at his late residence in Irvington-on-Hudson on Tuesday, Oct. 18,” the book states. “The number who boarded the special car attached to the 11:35 a.m. train from the Grand Central station, so greatly exceeded the capacity of the car that accommodations had to be provided in other parts of the train.

“It was the same at the Luke mansion in Irvington where many of those attending to pay a last tribute of respect to the deceased were obliged to stand in corridors and on the walks surrounding the home.”

Luke’s funeral took place at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church just south of Luke’s estate.

S.C. Millett's Irvington mansion featured this extensive library with fireplace, ca. 1915-20. (Photo courtesy Museum of the City of New York)

The Irvington House for Cardiac Children took over the 42-acre John G. Luke estate and mansion in 1924, but it burned in 1930. The site was rebuilt and was taken over by Abbott House in 1963. Abbott House still occupies the site.

Sisters Edith and Grace Abbott were icons in the social justice and social service movements of the early 20th century. And Abbott House was opened bearing their name shortly before Christmas 1963 on the old Luke estate.

What became Abbott House began as an adjunct to Irvington House in the mid-1950s, using available space at Irvington House to help children and adults with complex needs.

The first modern iteration of Irvington House is shown in this c. 1932-34 aerial photo showing the building that replaced the Luke/Millett mansion which was destroyed in a 1930 fire. (Robert Yarnall Richie Photo Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)

After Irvington House moved all its cardiac pediatric patients to hospitals in New York, Abbott House took over the entire property and refined its program to servicing children with complex needs, from trauma ridden environments and in group home settings, offering a suburban home haven.

Today it serves families, children and the developmentally disabled.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther KIng Jr. is pictured giving his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Civil Rights era icon was a speaker just over two years later at Abbott House in Irvington. (Wikimedia Commons)

At its first fundraising banquet on Oct. 29, 1965, Nobel Laureate The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech he titled "The Dignity of Family Life."

King’s speech sounded themes of community, identity and family particularly appropriate to the times and the abiding beliefs of the Abbott sisters. “Who is my neighbor?” he challenged. “A great man (has) the capacity to project the ‘I’ into ‘thou’.”

In 2016, Abbott House hosted a 50th anniversary celebration of its 1963 founding with TV host and journalist Meredith Vieira, an Irvington resident, serving as emcee, and awards presented to husband and wife Al Roker of NBC News and Deborah Roberts of ABC News.

This 1914 map shows the then-72-acre Morgan-Millett-Luke estate off North Broadway on a west-to-east (left to right) view. The estate is pictured in the name of Stephen Caldwell Millett’s wife, Thalia, designated Mrs. T.C. Millett here. Broadway, not shown, ran perpendicular to the estate at left. Note that the estate runs behind several other estates north to East Sunnyside Lane after reaching its deepest position to the east (right).  (G.W. Bromley & Co., 1914)