Suncliff: A hotbed of radical speech and activism in 1914

This is the Suncliff mansion in Wilson Park owned by Charles Judson and Annie Laurie Westbrook Gould. The image is from a 1945 postcard. (Public domain)

New York tea merchant and financier Charles Judson Gould (1831-1930) and his wife, suffragette Annie L. Westbrook Gould (1847-1931) were very much in the news at the Wilson Park mansion they called Suncliff in the early 20th century.

The mansion stood near the intersection of today's Suncliff Drive and McKeel Avenue, some four blocks southeast from the Warner Library and not far below Marymount College, now the EF Education First campus and Marymount Convent, and the adjacent Tarrytown Lakes.

The Goulds were a focus of controversial political thought, something unusual in the conservative Gilded Age company then tended to keep.

The Goulds -- no relation to the famous Jay Gould and his heirs of nearby Lyndhurst fame -- counted among their longtime neighbors businessmen John D. Rockefeller Sr. and John D. Rockefeller Jr. of nearby Kykuit. An anarchist speaking at the Goulds' private amphitheatre at Suncliff on June 6, 1914, called JDR Jr. a “multi-murderer” for his alleged role in the April 20, 1914 Ludlow Massacre, an anti-union action in the Colorado Coalfield War.

The Goulds invited anarchists, radical unionists and socialists to speak at their so-called Garden Theatre or Greek Theatre, (later renamed the Isadora Duncan Miniature Amphitheatre) a small outdoor amphitheatre they'd built at Suncliff, after many of those same protesters had demonstrated near Rockefeller family offices in Manhattan but were denied permission by Tarrytown politicians to demonstrate on public streets or to rent private venues.

The Goulds' Greek Theatre is shown in a June 1914 photo from the New York Tribune newspaper. It was located behind their Suncliff mansion in Tarrytown. A portrait of Mrs. Gould, taken in 1894, is inset. (Public domain)

Who were the Goulds and what was their world like? The best clues we can get come from the census.

A 1905 New York State census shows the Goulds living at Suncliff with four of their five adult children, ranging in age from 19 to 30. Two other children died in childhood. Also living in the mansion were seven servants, six of them immigrants -- three from Ireland, one each from Belgium, France and England.

By 1925, the state census shows a vastly diminished household with 93-year-old Charles and 80-year-old Annie as empty nesters living with 59-year-old cook Adelaide Johnston and 24-year-old housemaid Helen A. Johnston, likely a mother and daughter.

The Goulds hosted musical and artistic events in several buildings, including an old barn, on the estate. Artists were known to live in dedicated apartments on the estate as well. Mrs. Gould was renowned for her art collection and was known as an early devotee of Winslow Homer.

The Brooklyn Times-Union, in its obituary for C.J. Gould on July 12, 1930 said the Goulds came into the spotlight during an otherwise quiet country retirement in June 1914 during the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W., known as the “Wobblies”) riots, when they turned over the outdoor theatre on their estate to Lithuanian emigre anarchist Alexander Berkman, Ukrainian emigre anarchist Becky Edelsohn and socialist Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair after New York City officials had passed ordinances forbidding public assemblage.

Becky Edelsohn is led away by police after her arrest in Tarrytown on June 6, 1914 for disorderly conduct after leading demonstrations that alleged Kykuit resident John D. Rockefeller Jr. was a “multi-murderer” for his alleged role in Colorado's Ludlow Massacre earlier in 1914. (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Berkman had been released from prison in 1906 after serving 14 years for the attempted assassination of Henry Clay Frick, a union busting boss of the Carnegie Steel Company and last the U.S. Steel trust. Berkman shot Frick twice and stabbed him four times in Frick’s Pittsburgh office on July 23, 1892 at the height of the violent Homestead Steel Strike.

Frick not only survived the attack -- he and two associates actually tackled and captured Berkman in Frick’s own office -- he was back at work in a week.

The failed assassin was a one-time lover of anarchist movement leader Emma Goldman, another Lithuanian emigre, and edited Goldman’s magazine Mother Earth. Goldman and Berkman were imprisoned in 1917 after convictions for inducing Americans not to register for the draft that accompanied U.S. entry into World War I.

Emma Goldman is pictured with one-time lover and fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman around the time of their imprisonment in the U.S. in 1917 and prior to their deportation to the soon-to-be Soviet Union in 1919. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

The pair were deported to Russia and the fledgling Soviet Union (which laid claim to the former Russian client state of Lithuania) after their release from prison in 1919. Both were enthusiastic supporters of the Bolshevik revolution, but changed their minds after unionized workers in Petrograd and Kronstadt demonstrated against the communist leadership in 1921 demanding more food and freedom. The communists responded with force, killing some 600 of the protesters and prompting Berkman and Goldman to abandon the country.

Author Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (light-colored suit with black armband, is arrested on April 29, 1914 for protesting the Ludlow Massacre in front of the offices of John D. Rockefeller Jr. at the Standard Oil Building in Manhattan. Sinclair would continue his protest against Rockefeller on June 6, 1914 in Tarrytown at the Suncliff estate of Charles and Annie Gould. (George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress)

Edelsohn emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine -- part of the Russian Empire at the time -- as a toddler. She wound up in a New York orphanage, eventually moving in with Emma Goldman as a teenager. She met Berkman on his release from prison and became his close companion at age 14. She became his lover a year later at age 15.
She was arrested multiple times for civil disobedience, including June 6, 1914 in Tarrytown where the 22-year-old called John D. Rockefeller Jr. a “multi-murderer” during the demonstration permitted by the Goulds.

Edelsohn remained in the U.S. for life, marrying another anarchist after World War I.
After the Goulds died -- Annie passed away in 1931, a year after her husband, Hungarian immigrants Maximilian and Ancy Gold opened the Suncliff Health and Beauty Haven at the former Suncliff mansion.

The property was sold by the Golds and subdivided in 1963. Some 15 single-family homes occupy the former Suncliff site today.

This illustrated map, ca. 1920, shows the Suncliff mansion and nearby Isadora Duncan Miniature Amphitheatre (the earlier Garden Theatre or Greek Theatre) of Charles Judson and Annie Westbrook Gould. Across the bottom are illustrations of Patriots Park and the Warner Library and above Marymount Academy (later Marymount College) and the Tarrytown Lakes.