Airdrie Cottage: Gingerbread icon legacy of famed designer

Airdrie Cottage, then known as Cottage Home, is pictured c. 1881 when it was the property of Rev. Dr. Stephen H. Tyng. Note the circular drive to the south (right) side of the house with horse-drawn carriage and the stables/carriage house with another such carriage at the left forefront of what is now northernmost North Buckhout Street. The stone wall still lines the east side of North Buckhout Street. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection).

Airdrie Cottage, an 11-room house still standing at 19 North Cottenet Street, Irvington, N.Y., features breathtaking views of the Hudson River and was once owned by a five-term village mayor who bought it from one of America’s foremost clerics.

Airdrie was designed by or based on a design published by one of America’s premier antebellum horticulturalists and architects, Andrew Jackson Downing, and built by either Nathan Culver or Stephen and Sarah Cole between 1851 and 1853.

Culver and his wife Lucy Ann purchased the property from George Dearman in mid-1850 and sold it to Sarah Cole, whose husband Stephen was a contractor, in 1853.

In addition to his building designs, Downing had landscaped the Smithsonian Institution, White House and U.S. Capitol grounds and was involved with Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead in envisioning Manhattan’s Central Park.

Famed 20th century author Carl Carmer, who once lived in Irvington, described the gingerbread trim of Airdrie Cottage as "vergeboards cut in mad scroll-saw patterns, poetic fancies of thousands of carpenters let loose in an orgy of quick carving." Airdrie is pictured, c. 2018, facing the Hudson River. (Photo courtesy Robin and Todd Juenger).

Downing died before the house was built. He was 37 when a fire claimed the paddlewheel steamboat Henry Clay on the Hudson River off Riverdale on July 28, 1852 while Downing was en route to his home in Newburgh. The fire claimed almost 50 lives among the 500-plus on board, making it America’s worst steam disaster to that date.

The fire was blamed by some on the fact that the Henry Clay was racing another steamboat at the time, a common occurrence between vessels of the day on the runs up and down the Hudson between New York and Albany. Gamblers wagered heavily on the outcomes of the races. One of the reasons the Henry Clay was so crowded was that people enjoyed being part of the competition. Steamboat racing was banned by the state Legislature in the fire’s aftermath.

Evangelical Episcopal Rev. Dr. Stephen Higginson Tyng (1800-1885) bought the estate from the Coles in 1863. He was a leading clergyman in the evangelical Anglican movement.

After buying the property, he purchased some adjacent lots to expand it to 2 1/2 acres and renovated the house, naming it “Cottage Home.” It was situated on the northern two-thirds of the block between North Buckhout and North Cottenet streets, brushing the southern border of what is now Matthiessen Park -- the residential area that housed the Matthiessen, Tiffany and Dunham families, not today's riverfront village park.

The property extended in a narrow band east a block to North Dutcher Street along the Tiffany estate line.

Cottage Home held a commanding view of the Hudson River and a stables/carriage house at the northernmost end of North Buckhout, which is paved over today.

Harvard educated, Tyng became one of young America’s leading preachers and was called as rector to prominent Episcopal churches in Georgetown in the District of Columbia, as well as in Maryland and Philadelphia before heeding the call to the new Church of the Epiphany on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1833.

He left in 1845 for his final and most well-known post as rector of St. George’s Church, affiliated at the time with the famed Trinity Church at Broadway and Wall Street in Lower Manhattan. St. George’s was located at Beekman and Cliff streets, near Wall Street. He was to serve there for 33 years until his retirement in 1878.

Tyng winterized Cottage Home after retirement and moved to the property year-round in 1881.

During his time at St. George’s, Tyng converted Gilded Age financier J.P. Morgan to the faith and Morgan helped build a new church for the St. George congregation on East 16th Street and Rutherford Place, facing Stuyvesant Square in New York.

Under Tyng, the new church served both rich and poor, taught 2,000 children in its Sunday School and raised funds for four churches in Africa and another in Moravia as part of its outreach.

Tyng married twice -- his first wife died at age 27 -- and had eight children, four with each of his wives. Two of his sons became ordained Episcopal clergy members of note.

This photo shows the Abercrombie and Dearman grocery store ca. 1890 at the northeast corner of Main and North Dutcher streets in Irvington. The building would be replaced later, but the 49 Main Street address remained a grocery store into the 1960s when it was part of the Gristedes chain. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Scottish immigrant businessman Robert Gardner Abercrombie purchased the property after Tyng’s death in 1885 named it Airdrie Cottage after his birthplace in Scotland.

Abercrombie was a five-term mayor of Irvington -- the title was technically Board of Trustees president at the time. He also served as president of the local school board. He was a political progressive and attended the 1917 second inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson.

Abercrombie got started in business when he joined his father’s grocery business “Abercrombie and Dearman” at the northeast corner of Main and North Dutcher streets likely in the 1870s.

The store’s 49 Main Street building was replaced, but remained the site of a grocery store from 1939 into the 1960s. It has held a variety of business tenants since, most recently Method Fitness.

Abercrombie went on to become founder and president of Irvington National Bank, later Irvington National Bank and Trust, chartered in 1902, which had its headquarters directly across North Dutcher Street from his grocery store.

Abercrombie died in 1930 and Airdrie Cottage was sold by the Abercrombie family later in the decade to the James Warring family followed by the Finney family and went through the better part of 15 years taking in boarders. Ads touting furnished rooms for rent at Airdrie Cottage with optional board available are frequent in the Irvington Gazette newspaper of the day.

In about 1955, the house got a second life as it was purchased by the family of John P.R. Budlong, an executive with a series of Manhattan book publishing companies. Budlong and his wife, Ramona, did an extensive restoration of the house and property.

Jay and Iris Greenberg bought Airdrie Cottage in the 1980s and over the years parts of the property were sold off. Today it is the ¾-acre private residence of Robin and Todd Juenger and has one amenity that wasn’t around in 1843 -- a 20-foot by 40-foot natural quartz saltwater heated pool with stone surround.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story contains information generously provided by Charles "Chet" Kerr of the Irvington Historical Society. Mr. Kerr found information that the house was not buiit in 1843 as previous reports had stated and added new owners that made it clear the Cole family did not purchase it until 1853. Also, Mr. Kerr's research led us both to agree that Andrew Jackson Downing either designed the house before his death in 1852 or the design was based on an 1842 book of designs by Downing and "borrowed" by the initial builder after Downing's death.

Airdrie Cottage is shown from the front on North Cottenet Street, Irvington, in this recent photo taken in spring with dogwood and wisteria in full bloom. This view gives a good idea of the home’s Victorian and Colonial styles, as well as its abundant use of verandas and “gingerbread” decorative elements on its gables. (Photo courtesy Robin and Todd Juenger)

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