Ardsley: Innovation, fame, tragedy marked Irvington's largest estate

 

“The Homestead,” ca. 1887, was the 25-room mansion on the 780-acre “Ardsley” estate of Cyrus West Field Sr. Most of it survived until about 1978 on a plot of about 2½ acres near the intersection of Osceola Avenue and Field Terrace through a variety of private residents until it fell victim to fire. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Irvington's largest Gilded Age estate and its myriad mansions had ties to a presidential assassination and a run of personal tragedy that would have tested Biblical Job -- Cyrus West Field’s “Ardsley.”

Field (1819-1892) was a self-made millionaire who began work at age 15 in 1834 as an office boy for A.T. Stewart & Co., Manhattan’s first department store. By age 20 he was a partner in a paper manufacturing company and at 33 in 1852 he retired from day-to-day operations, a wealthy man. By 1882 he was earning around $300,000 a year by his own admission, $9.34 million a year today.

In 1854 Field began his quest to lay a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean from Newfoundland to Ireland. After founding the Atlantic Telegraph Company, he arranged for the British and American naval ships HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara to lay the cable. And Great Britain’s Queen Victoria sent the first transatlantic cable to U.S. President James Buchanan on Aug. 16, 1858. But the cable broke after just three weeks, and Field did not complete repairs on the project until 1866.

Field and his wife, Mary Bryan Stone, had seven children. They lived primarily in New York City, but spent the summer months in Field's country estate called "Ardsley" after the birthplace of Zechariah Field, a 17th century Field immigrant ancestor born in East Ardsley, West Riding, Yorkshire, England.

After Cyrus Field Sr.’s death in 1892, 400 acres of his “Ardsley” estate including the disgraced Edward Field’s “Ardsley Towers” mansion (pictured, ca. 1900) were sold to the so-called “Asphalt King,” Amzi Lorenzo Barber, a renowned real estate developer whose company laid about 50 percent of all the pavement in the U.S. before 1896. (Westchester County Historical Society)

The Field mansion, “The Homestead,” was purchased along with 20 acres of land by Field's wife, Mary, from Charles and Margaret Stirling in 1869. It lay between what is now 49 and 55 Field Terrace. The Stirlings bought the property five years early from New York banker John Aikman Stewart. Stewart had owned the property and reportedly built the house during his eight-year tenure on the estate.

The Ardsley estate, which he first began occupying in 1869, eventually spanned 780 acres from South Broadway in the west past the Saw Mill River to Sprain Brook in the east -- including the entire Woodland Lake -- and between Irvington’s "Nevis" estate (later the Halsey estate) to the north and the Dobbs Ferry line to the south. It included what is now the Village of Ardsley and the Ardsley Park neighborhood in Irvington and makes up a large chunk of what is now the The Irvington Woods, a 400-plus acre public park area that is the largest wooded area in southern Westchester County.

He later purchased land between South Broadway and the Hudson River intending to build housing for workers that could be rented for affordable prices, but the plan never came to fruition as Field’s financial position crashed.

Field built houses for himself and each of his seven children on his main estate. His house, “The Homestead,” burned in around 1978 after many years of private on-site ownership including from 1920 to about 1946 by the Monks family and then for another quarter century or so by the Ryan family. It burned shortly after the Ryans sold it.

“Inanda,” was the “Ardsley” estate residence of Mary Grace “Grace” Field and her husband, Daniel A. Lindley built by her father, Cyrus West Field Sr., at what is now 65 Field Terrace, Irvington. Inanda was completed in 1875 for the newlywed couple who had married in 1874. The house was completely remodeled and updated around 2000. It’s one of two residences on the former 780-acre estate to survive. Field built a home for himself and individual homes for each of his four sons and three daughters on the estate before his death in 1892. (Google Earth Street View 2018)

One of his children’s mansions, Inanda -- it means “pleasant place” in Zulu -- still stands at 65 Field Terrace and was modernized and restored in about 2000.

Field built Inanda in 1875 for his daughter, Mary Grace and her South African-born husband Daniel A. Lindley. It is located on a 2.3-acre parcel today.

Field was a major national political power broker. He owned the New York City newspapers “Evening Express” and “Mail” which Field merged into the “Mail and Express.”

According to a family member, on 6 June 1881 Field noted in his diary that he had invited President James Garfield to visit “Ardsley” en route to Williamstown, Mass., where Garfield was scheduled to give the commencement address at Williams College on July 6, 1881.

This is an engraving of the mortal wounding of President James A. Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881, published in “Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper.” President Garfield is at center right, leaning backward after being shot. He is supported by U.S. Secretary of State James G. Blaine wearing a light colored top hat. At left, assassin Charles J. Guiteau is restrained by members of the crowd, one of whom is about to strike him with a cane. Guiteau was the nephew of well-known Irvington resident Frederick W. Guiteau. He shot Garfield while Garfield was waiting to board a train to Irvington where he was to visit Cyrus W. Field Sr. at Field’s Gilded Age estate, “Ardsley.” (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 16, 1881)

Garfield, of course, was shot by assassin Charles J. Guiteau on July 2 as the president prepared to board a train in Washington, D.C., for his trip to Irvington and thence to Williamstown.

Guiteau, ironically, was the nephew of Cyrus Field’s Irvington neighbor, Frederick W. Guiteau, whose “Clare Court” estate was located on South Broadway where the Highgate subdivision is located today.

Field immediately used his telegraph system to raise funds for the mortally wounded Garfield. "If President Garfield should die from the wounds received on the 2nd, he would leave for his wife and children about $20,000. I shall cheerfully subscribe $5,000, toward the sum to be raised. If you or any of your friends would like to join, please telegraph me tomorrow for what amount I may put your name." The pledges that were returned amounted to more than $360,000, $9.66 million today.

Field’s contribution of $5,000 would be $134,000 today. Garfield died from his wounds on Sept. 19, 1881, 10 weeks after being shot.

A decade later, Field’s family and financial lives took terrible turns. His beloved wife Mary died on Nov. 23, 1891. Days later things got much worse when son Edward’s stock brokerage business, Field, Lindley, Wiechers & Co. -- in which Field Sr. was heavily invested -- failed, apparently because of Edward's actions, defrauding his partners as well as his father.

Edward was judged insane and admitted to Buffalo's New York State Asylum for the Insane where he would remain for years.

“The Sun” newspaper of New York reported on Nov. 29 “nearly all of those who have spoken on behalf of the firm have attributed to the alleged mental derangement of Edward M. Field all the damaging irregularities in the firm’s business methods which have come to light. The statement that Mr. Field is insane and has been for some time was reiterated yesterday with a great deal of circumstantiality and was denied also.”

Pictured is the gatehouse lodge, ca. 1870, at the Osceola Avenue entrance to the Ardsley estate of Cyrus West Field off South Broadway in Irvington. The lodge is a renovated, modernized private residence today. (Westchester County Historical Society)

It could get worse and it did. Daughter Grace’s husband Daniel Lindley was Edward’s business partner and Grace collapsed, perhaps with a nervous breakdown, on Nov. 28 and had to be hospitalized and then moved to her father’s mansion in the wildly prestigious Gramercy Park area of Manhattan at Lexington Avenue and 21st Street.

On Jan. 11, 1892, Grace died at her father’s Manhattan mansion. Her bereaved and financially ruined father didn’t survive the multiple blows either. He retreated to “Ardsley” in late spring and died in “The Homestead” at 9:45 a.m. on July 12, 1892 at age 72.

He was remembered in newspapers nationally.

The New York Times wrote: “The name of Cyrus W. Field will pass into history as that of the man whose grit and genius succeeded in connecting the continents of Europe and America by a submarine cable.”

Later in 1892, 400 acres of the estate including the disgraced Edward Field’s “Ardsley Towers” mansion were sold to the so-called “Asphalt King,” Amzi Lorenzo Barber, a renowned real estate developer whose company laid about 50 percent of all the pavement in the U.S. before 1896.

Barber redeveloped much of the area as residential Ardsley Park for upscale Manhattan commuters. His houses were built around holes of the new Ardsley Casino (later Ardsley Country Club) that occupied all the land on the river side of South Broadway as well as land on the eastern side of the same road.

Barber’s family sold Ardsley Towers after Barber’s death in 1909. It passed through several private owners and even became a school -- The Ashton School -- in 1922 for several years before being razed in 1929 and its 10 acres later redeveloped.

The footprint of Ardsley Towers is now the site of a private swimming pool next to a house at 55 Field Terrace.

Ardsley Country Club later sold its property on the river side of South Broadway and extended its properties to the east above Ardsley Park including a new clubhouse and several new golf holes and other amenities, including a curling building.

One other building remains from the original “Ardsley” estate -- the original 1870 gate lodge at the corner of South Broadway and Osceola Avenue, now a private home.

Field's heirs sold the family's properties that included Woodland Lake and what is now V. Everit Macy Park to financier J.P. Morgan early in the 20th century and Morgan sold the 212 acres to the State of New York in 1923 for $157,000 ($2.42 million today). It was acquired by Westchester County in 1926.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Photographer Charles D. Arnold (1844-1927) published 38 photos of the Ardsley estate in an album titled "Ardsley Park Estate." The photos were taken between 1886 and 1888. The photos are available online via the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. To see those photos, click here. Note that the estate was a working farm and included all of Woodland Lake to the east and a large stretch of the Saw Mill River, to explain some of the bridge and water photos in the collection. In that same vein, there are photos in the collection of railroad bridges over the Saw Mill, part of the defunct New York Central Railroad Putnam Division, the "Old Put." The rail bed is now the North-South County Trailway and the Putnam Trail.

An 1893 map of Greenburgh including the Cyrus Field estate can be found here ... The map was too large to effectively post here. ... Select full frame option at top right of the screen and use the sizing options (+ and -) at the lower right of the screen to zoom in on the area in question.

Special thanks to Chet Kerry of the Irvington Historical Society for pointing out several inaccuracies in the original post which have all be corrected. For a look at the Irvington Historical Society's video of Chet's presentation on the Ardsley estate from March 28, 2021, click here.

Cyrus West Field's Ardsley estate comprised 780 acres including all of Woodland Lake (pictured, with Field estate house at right, rear). The lake and neighboring farmland totaling 212 acres were later sold to J.P. Morgan who would sell it in turn to the state. Westchester County now operates the area as V. Everit Macy Park. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1887, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

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