Eastview Farm: Grocery magnate parlays fortune into horse racing, charity fame

The 24-room Butler family Eastview Farm mansion of native cut stone is shown in 1952 at the time of the estate's sale to Union Carbide and Carbon Co. At the time, the house was occupied by James Butler's daughter, Mrs. Walter E. Travers and two of her daughters. Another of her daughters lived in another house on the estate. At the time of sale, the estate consisted of 282 acres, 178 in the Town of Greenburgh, 104 in the Town of Mount Pleasant. (The Bronxville Reporter, June 19, 1952)

Twenty-year-old James Butler emigrated to the U.S. with his parents in 1876, fresh off the family farm near Russelltown, County Kilkenny, Ireland that his family had operated for 15 generations -- from just before Columbus’ maiden voyage of discovery to the New World.

Butler came to the U.S. to chase the American dream. Within 10 years that dream was a living, breathing reality. He would have wealth and fame, he would indulge his love of horses and sport, owning and breeding racehorses on his stud farm, buying three race tracks, driving his own trotters to wins and receiving a knighthood.

Meet James L. Butler, the Squire of Eastview.

When Butler came to the U.S., he found work on a farm outside Boston, then moved to Illinois where he joined his immigrant brother working at a hotel in Urbana. He moved up to Chicago’s Sherman House hotel working in food preparation and purchasing for its famed College Inn restaurant.

He parlayed his new skills into jobs in Manhattan, first at the Windsor Hotel, then the Murray Hill Hotel as a steward, buying the restaurants’ food from outside vendors.

With his eye on his future, Butler saved $2,000 ($55,000 today, adjusted for inflation) which he invested with Patrick J. O'Connor, son of the landlady of his rooming house, in a grocery on Second Avenue in 1882. O'Connor, a former newspaper reporter, managed the shop, Butler keeping his hotel day job, but coordinating the purchasing of both the hotel and grocery, buying the best meats, dairy and produce for the upper-crust New York City customers he courted, part of the carriage trade.

Butler added another Manhattan store within a year and by age 29 in 1884 had bought out O'Connor. He was well on his way to becoming a grocery magnate, opening stores in select locations, all painted in his distinctive green and gold colors. The James Butler Grocery Company was born.

This James Butler Grocery Co. store at 31-80 Steinway Street, Astoria, Queens was one of 1,100-plus stores operated by Kilkenny, Ireland immigrant James L. Butler Sr. by 1927. (Queens Chronicle, Dec. 19, 2016)

Customers valued Butler’s for its top quality and wide variety of products along with its affiliated liquor stores and the services he offered included home delivery by horse-drawn delivery vans driven by Irish-born immigrants. Always a horse lover, he purchased 350 acres of farmland east of Tarrytown in 1893, about two-thirds in the Town of Greenburgh, the rest in the Town of Mount Pleasant.

The land included the well-known Paulding family farm. Yeomen farmers John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart and David Williams were the three Continental Army militiamen who captured British spy Major John Andre on Sept. 23, 1780 in Tarrytown. Andre was en route from a meeting with traitorous Continental Gen. Benedict Arnold to British Commander-in-Chief Gen. Sir Henry Clinton in Manhattan with a scheme to take the Continental fort at West Point.

Butler’s Eastview Farm (sometimes spelled East View) provided pasture and haven for his city-based carting horses in retirement. By 1895, Eastview Farm would house Butler’s newest purchase and pride and joy, 10-year-old trotting legend Direct, 2:05 1/4, a California-bred stallion with a long pedigree of wins who sired a long line of champions.

On the home front, life wasn’t as happy. Butler’s wife of 23 years, Mary Ann Rourke Butler, died of heart disease in 1906, leaving Butler with his five surviving children -- Beatrice 18, Genevieve 16, James Jr. 14, William 12, John 11 and Pierce 10. Two other children -- George and Margaret, had died in 1890 and 1886 respectively, George at 6, Margaret in infancy. Some reports say the couple had 11 children in all, five of whom died young, but those reports are sketchy.

At the time of Mary’s death the New York State census showed the Butlers living at Eastview with their six surviving children and eight servants in the Eastview mansion.

The servants included butler Frederick Freeman 25, cook Bridget Hart 28, nurse Catherine McNulty 27, kitchen maid Margaret McArdle 20, maid Matilda LaRoche 28, laundress Nora Furien 30, coachman Thomas Cary 46 and groom Thomas Hays, 26.

Cary was living with his wife, Lizzie, 40.

The Eastview mansion of “The Squire of Eastview,” James L. Butler Sr., is pictured behind the estate’s fenced-in tennis court in this undated photo presumably dating to the late 1940s. The original 350-acre estate stretched across the towns of Greenburgh and Mount Pleasant. (Westchester County Historical Society)

The total workforce on the estate was likely much more extensive. In addition to Butler's 24-room mansion built of stone quarried from the immediate area, the estate included tennis courts, a swimming pool, a ½-mile race/training track for Butler's horses, greenhouses, orchards, gardens, stables, barns and more. Landscapers, gardeners, grooms, jockeys and others would have been required to keep up the estate. Many would have lived in houses on the estate, among which would have been included the old Paulding family farmhouse.

Bereft with grief after the loss of his wife, Butler acted on Mary’s last request to promise to build an academy for the Catholic education of young girls. Butler turned to his Kilkenny-born cousin, Roman Catholic nun Mother Marie Joseph Butler of the French order the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (RSHM). He purchased the brick Reynard mansion and estate in Tarrytown not far from Eastview and donated the property and additional cash to the RSHM and his cousin to open the Marymount Academy of the Sacred Heart of Mary, a secondary school which evolved into Marymount College after he purchased several more estates in today’s Wilson Park area of Tarrytown and donated those to the RSHM as well.

Horseman Colonel Edward Riley Bailey (left) is pictured with James L. Butler Sr. -- the self-described “Squire of Eastview” -- ca. 1925.

The New York Herald in a story published Sept. 1, 1907 in Canada's Maclean's magazine, offered an in-depth story about Butler, who had just bought and re-opened the shuttered Empire City Race Track. Empire City was renamed Yonkers Raceway after World War II and is now MGM Resorts International’s Yonkers Raceway & Empire City Casino.

The Herald story said of Butler: "As a horseman he is among the country's foremost breeders and drivers, and his horses at East View Farm are among the best known trotters in the country, many of them sons and daughters of the famous stallion Direct. He knows a horse from the hooves up. He knows how to drive as only a man who loves horses and understands them can drive … On Monday last, at the Empire track, he personally drove five winners, three of them being by his own horse Direct. This was a record which has not been equalled."

His harness racing venture ended almost immediately. In November 1907, he auctioned off his entire stable of trotters and pacers and replaced them with thoroughbreds, and established thoroughbred racing as the standard at Empire City.

In 1912, anti-gambling sentiment was on the rise in the U.S. and Butler and his horse-racing collaborator, Colonel Matt Winn, opened a track in Jaurez, Mexico to literally hedge his bets. Two years later, Butler took over Laurel Park in Maryland, with Winn appointed general manager.

James L. Butler (left) and his horse racing associate Col. Martin J. “Matt” Winn (right) are pictured in an undated photo, perhaps snapped ca. 1920. (George D. WIdener Collection)

By 1909 Butler owned more than 200 grocery stores. One of them was in Tarrytown at the corner of Central Avenue and Orchard Street, then the business district of the village, but razed in 1969. The location is now the parking lot north of Walgreens (162 Wildey Street). The Butler chain eventually grew to 1,025 stores, sixth most in the U.S., second in the New York area behind A&P, and Butler was said to be worth $30 million in 1929 ($455 million today, adjusted for inflation).

By 1929, Eastview, in addition to foals, featured 38 thoroughbred mares and three stallions at stud, including stakes winners Sting and his sire, Spur.

The Butlers lived at Eastview most of the year, retreating to their home at 230 W. 72nd Street in Manhattan only in winter. The Manhattan townhouse, which still exists, albeit as apartments above a ground-floor deli and a second floor political office, stands about 21/2 blocks west of the Dakota building at 72nd Street and Central Park West where ex-Beatle John Lennon lived and was slain.

One-time Tarrytown historian Richard Miller wrote for River Journal Online in 2010 that Butler entertained frequently at Eastview. Guests included his neighbor, John D. Rockefeller and his large family, and Roman Catholic luminaries including cardinals and bishops.

This postcard, ca. 1910, shows the infield (foreground), clubhouse (left) and grandstand of James L. Butler’s Empire City Race Track, today’s Yonkers Raceway and Empire City Casino.

Miller wrote that when the Catholic clergy visited: “the estate was decorated with the Papal and American flags. At dusk the grounds were illuminated with lanterns hidden amongst the abundant foliage. He also held many baseball games that were attended by local children. The refreshments were always very lavish and plentiful. His track, where his thoroughbreds actually raced, was often the center for wagering and having a grand time."

Tragedy struck Butler again in 1918. His youngest son, Lieutenant Pierce H. Butler, died of wounds sustained in battle six days before the Armistice that ended World War I on Nov. 11, 1918.

In memory of his son, Butler endowed the Butler Memorial Chapel in Marymount Convent on Warren Avenue where a crypt today contains the remains of the Very Rev. Mother Marie Joseph Butler, James Butler, Mary Ann (Rourke) Butler, and Lt. Pierce Butler.

In 1912, Butler was named a Knight of the Holy See’s Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great for his faith and contributions to the church.

Butler died on February 20, 1934 at 79. Some 3,000 people attended his funeral Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The family’s fortunes plummeted after James Butler Jr. inherited his father’s business mantle and became president of the company in 1935. He was more interested in horse racing than the food business. The Butler Grocery chain filed for bankruptcy in 1938.

In October 1940, Butler Jr., 52, president of The Empire Racing Association and owner of the Laurel Track in Maryland, was thrown from his horse and died.

In the aftermath of World War II, Eastview was briefly considered -- along with the nearby Rockefeller estates Kykuit and Rockwood Hall -- as potential sites for the fledgling United Nations, but were ruled out because of their distance from Manhattan.

Members of the Butler family lived at Eastview Farm until 1952 when the estate was sold by Butler’s heirs to Union Carbide and Carbon Co. in 1952.

After Union Carbide closed its headquarters in the late 1980s, the property changed hands several times and was eventually sold to BioMed Realty Trust for $100 million in 2004 when it was reconfigured as “The Landmark at Eastview,” one of the largest privately owned, multi-tenant science parks in New York State.

In the last few years, it was sold for $720 million to biotechnology giant Regeneron Pharmaceuticals which has its headquarters on the site. Regeneron had earlier purchased a neighboring 100 acres while still leasing at Landmark at Eastview.

Regeneron was in the news during the 2020-21 pandemic for its REGN-COV2 antibody cocktail used to treat Covid-19 patients, including then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

This is an aerial photo of the Madison Square Garden Training Facility, practice home of the NBA New York Knicks, NHL New York Rangers and WNBA New York Liberty. The Knicks/Liberty facility is the white roofed building at upper left, the Rangers facility is the white-roofed building at lower right. In the upper portion of the photo is the Sawmill River and behind that, just visible, the Sawmill River Parkway. The facilities are on a 13-acre portion of the former Eastview Farm of James Butler and encompass 105,000 square feet of practice, workout, lounge and office space. The facilities are not open to the public. (JMC Planning)

Another 13 acres of the former Eastview Farm site is home today to the Madison Square Garden Training Facility, practice home of the NBA New York Knicks, NHL New York Rangers and WNBA New York Liberty. The facility encompasses 105,000 square feet of practice, workout, lounge and office space and abuts the Regeneron headquarters.

The training center is closed to the public.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The hamlet of Eastview near today’s Tarrytown Lakes Pump Station east to the current park-and-ride lot, consisted of 15 frame houses, general stores and candy shops, a community hall, a Methodist church, a one-room schoolhouse, and surrounding farms that supplied dairy to Tarrytown, was named after Eastview Farm, not the other way around.

A train pulls out of the Eastview Station on the now-defunct Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad ca. 1945. The station lay between the Tarrytown Lakes and James Butler’s Eastview Farm. (Westchester County Historical Society)

Some 46 families lived in the hamlet which included a railroad station on the Putnam Division of the New York Central Railroad and a post office. John D. Rockefeller Jr. inherited the Kykuit estate next to the hamlet of Eastview in 1928 and thought the hamlet an eyesore. As a result, he bought it all, plot by plot, the residents moved away and Rockefeller removed all traces of it in the 1930s. The railroad was moved closer to the Saw Mill River at Rockefeller Jr.’s expense, the tracks running down the former hamlet’s main street, and Rockefeller donated land for the construction of the Saw Mill River Parkway, which covered the Eastview cemetery with 20 feet of soil under the parkway itself. ...

... Former Tarrytown historian Miller vividly recalled seeing a life-sized bronze sculpture of a horse in front of the Eastview mansion when he was a child. Reports indicate that no one is sure which horse, if any, the statue memorializes, but some think it’s “Dollar” or “Desire” or “Sting” one of Butler’s most famous thoroughbreds. The statue once stood in front of the Empire City Race Track and today stands in front of the Elmsford Town Hall at 15 South Stone Avenue.

This 1901 map shows the Eastview Farm working estate of grocery chain magnate James L. Butler in the upper right quadrant bracketed on the west by the Saw Mill River and the east by Nepperhan Avenue/Saw Mill River Road. The Tarrytown Lakes are in the upper left quadrant. (G.W. Bromley & Co. Publisher, 1901 Atlas of Westchester County)