Villa Nuits: Irvington's Cottenets, Astors called it home

Francis Cottenet’s Villa Nuits was built in 1853 but a conservatory and wing (right extension and right rear) were added in the early 1860s. The villa is shown in a colorized 1890 postcard. The view is looking northwest. The Hudson River (not pictured) would be to the left of the villa. (Wikimedia Commons)

French-born silk importer Francois (Francis) Cottenet (1795-1884) built his Nuits Saint Georges mansion known variously as Villa Nuits, Nuits or the Cottenet-Brown House, on a 65-acre estate west of South Broadway overlooking the Hudson River in 1852.

The 15,000-square-foot Italianate villa stands on five acres today and was completely renovated and restored over a 35-year span beginning in 1980.

Cottenet was born in 1795 in the Champagne region of France and grew up in Nuits-Saint-Georges, France. He emigrated to the U.S. at age 27 in 1822 and went by the name Francis after that time.

The three-story mansion listed on the National Register of Historic Places was designed by Danish German architect Detlef Lienau. Lienau was renowned for bringing French style to American architecture, notably the mansard roof. Lienau used cream-yellow Jurassic limestone quarried near Caen in Cottenet’s native France and brought to the U.S. as ballast in Cottenet’s fleet of merchant sailing ships.

Cottenet added a wing in the 1860s that including bedrooms, a billiard room and a conservatory. A heated outdoor swimming pool is among the accoutrements today.

Cottenet’s fortunes survived a financial disaster. His warehouse in Hanover Square in lower Manhattan was among some 700 buildings destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835. Ironically, the Croton Aqueduct which ran through his original Greenburgh/Dearman/Irvington estate was built as a direct response to that fire.

On the evening of Dec. 16, 1835, temperatures in New York City dipped to minus-17 Fahrenheit, freezing the East River from which firefighters had to draw water to fight the blaze. The hard freeze stymied their efforts to quench the fire which was spread by gale-force winds.

In the fire’s aftermath, New Yorkers were convinced of the need for another water source and OK’d the construction of the incredibly expensive aqueduct running from the Croton River into lower Manhattan. The aqueduct was built between 1837 and 1842.

Cottenet, founder of the import/export firm Cottenet & Co. of New York, had made his fortune by manufacturing silk products in colors not available for importation along with importing the finest available home products for wealthy Americans. He had rebounded from the loss of his warehouse by the time of Villa Nuits’ construction.

Villa Nuits was a country estate for the Cottenets, used primarily in summers. The family’s permanent residence was in Manhattan. Cottenet and wife Frances Carolina Laight (1803-1870) had a son named Edward William Laight Cottenet and a daughter named Ann Elliott Huger Cottenet.

Villa Nuits has had many owners, the most famous of whom included Cyrus West Field of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, who owned the nearby Ardsley estate, financier John Jacob Astor III who lived out his final days at Nuits, and Chauncey M. Depew, a two-time U.S. senator from New York and president of the New York Central Railroad.

Field bought the estate from Cottenet’s heirs in 1886 and had to sell it for financial reasons a year later. He was responsible for putting a covenant on the deed to the property that limits its use to residential only, the reason it remains in private hands today.

This is a view of the west side of Villa Nuits looking up towards South Broadway from the Hudson River side. (February 2009 photo by Daniel Case, Wikimedia Commons)

Astor made about $100,000 ($2.89 million today, adjusted for inflation) in renovations before his death in 1890, after which the property was sold to Manhattan College The college sought to ease Field’s restriction and to use the mansion for educational purposes, but when that effort failed, the estate was sold to Amzi Lorenzo Barber, known as the “Asphalt King," who parceled off much of the estate’s 65 acres for the development known now as Ardsley Park.

Cottenet and Astor lived on the estate when the north-south streets off east-west oriented Main Street were referred to by letter only -- A Street, C Street, etc. When the streets were given names to honor prominent residents, Cottenet and Astor had streets named after them.

Owners after Barber include New York real estate investor Robert Hewitt Jr., engineer John Wiley, Gillies Coffee owner James Henry Schmelzel, and Irvington native and investment banker Martin W. Dolan, the current owner.

Gillies Coffee is America’s oldest wholesale coffee company and remains in business today.

Dolan is one of 10 children born to late longtime Irvington physician Mario Dolan, whose home and office were once in the historic McVickar House at 131 Main Street that houses the Irvington Historical Society today.

Villa Nuits is located at 2 Clifton Place between Columbia University’s Nevis estate to the north and Mercy College to the south.

Dolan bought the estate for $4.3 million in 2000 and has listed Villa Nuits for sale since 2008. The asking price in July 2020 was $8.25 million, down from a high of $14.75 million in 2015. It is also available for rent at a price of $4,500 per night through Airbnb.

The estate includes a 1,200-square-foot former carriage house restored as a residence.

This 1891 map shows the former Cottenet estate, listed as"Nuit" on the map, in light blue between the Hudson River (above the railroad tracks) and South Broadway. By this time, the estate had been sold to Manhattan College. Its neighbor to the north is Alexander Hamilton III's "Nevis" estate and to its south, in Dobbs Ferry, is the Agawam estate of General Samuel Thomas that is home today to Mercy College. (Frederick W. Beers, 1891, David Rumsey Map Collection) 

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