Sunnyslopes: From Presbyterian parsonage to private home

This, the original Irvington Presbyterian Church parsonage now known as Sunnyslopes, has stood at 119 North Broadway since its construction in 1856, when the original church was located at 16 North Broadway. That church was built in 1853 and occupied until 1869 when a new church opened across the street at 25 North Broadway. A new parsonage was built next to the church in 1900 on land donated by Jay Gould. (2013 Google Earth Street View)

The pink Gothic Revival house at 119 North Broadway, Irvington, known as the Presbyterian Parsonage on 19th century maps, is known as Sunnyslopes today. It was the Irvington Presbyterian Church parsonage when built in 1856 and continued in that role until the completion of the new parsonage, Kirkside, in 1900 at the 25 North Broadway church, or kirk, site.

The original parsonage predates the existing church building. It served the church when the congregation worshiped at its original home at 16 North Broadway east across the street from 1853 to 1869 on property now occupied by the Roman Catholic Immaculate Conception Church.

The Presbyterian congregation quickly outgrew its original church which remained vacant until 1874 when it was purchased for use by the tiny Catholic congregation of Irvington, a congregation that had just been assigned its first permanent resident priest in 1873.

The original Irvington Presbyterian Church is pictured before becoming home to the Immaculation Conception Church in 1874. The new Roman Catholic parish installed a large main entry door under the massive windows at the center of the church in 1874. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

The original church at 16 North Broadway up the hill and just south of the current Immaculate Conception Church, just behind the rectory which housed the church’s priests until 1974. The rectory building still stands, but the original church is long gone, having burned in about 1970 and been replaced by the current church next to Broadway in 1974.

The original Presbyterian Parsonage is believed to have housed the Irvington Presbyterian Church’s first six pastors and their families.

Here’s a list of those pastors including their years at the helm of the church: Rev. Charles King McHarg 1853-1864; Rev. John De Witt 1865-69; Rev. Rollin A. Sawyer 1870-79; Rev. Washington Choate 1880-88; Rev. John Simpson Penman 1888-93; and Rev. John Albertson Ingham 1894-unknown.

The house belonged after 1900 to Margaret Ditmar of Brooklyn, an absentee owner who leased it out at least once -- from 1911 to 1915 -- to Elwood Osborn Roessle, though it may have been leased to others as well at different periods between 1900 and its sale by Ditmar to William N. Walker, who had homes in Manhattan and Connecticut, in 1917.

Walker renovated the house, leased it several times and then sold it to George W. Dexter, vice president of Mutual Life Insurance Company of Manhattan in 1925.

It was under Dexter's ownership that the stone wall fronting the property on the west side of North Broadway was added. Dexter died suddenly, likely in 1926 (his widow, Ann, remarried in 1927) and Frederic Dewhurst Carter and his wife, Betty, bought the house from Dexter’s estate in 1929.

Carter was a natural to move into the former parsonage. He had been serving as choir director and organist at South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry and assumed both those roles at the Irvington Presbyterian Church when he moved into the old parsonage.

Carter was a Renaissance man. A Yale University alumnus and World War I veteran, he became a stockbroker in addition to his keyboard skills. He was a managing director of the New York Stock Exchange firm John H. Lewis & Co. In 1929, the Carters began hosting popular annual Christmas parties at the house that were regularly reported on in local and regional newspapers.

Carter was the church’s senior elder when he died in 1959 at age 62 at the Carters' summer home in Vermont. The church’s carillon was purchased with memorial gifts and dedicated to him.

The Carter family owned the property into the 1990s and the house remains in private hands today. It was listed for sale in 2020 for $1.99 million. It was described as a 24-room, 4,930-square-foot Gothic Revival with six bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms. The house features six original fireplaces and period wallpaper.

A former carriage house at the back of the property at West Sunnyside Lane holds a 2-car garage with a studio apartment and 1½ bathrooms according to a 2018 real estate listing. 

The main house's modern name, Sunnyslopes, is engraved on a plaque ensconced in the stone entrance pillars of the property’s Broadway driveway entrance.

Sunnyslopes, the old Presbyterian Parsonage property at 119 North Broadway (marked by red dot), is in private hands today. Its former carriage house (left-center, upper half of frame off West Sunnyside Lane) remains as well. (Google Maps Satellite VIew screen capture)

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