Wolfert's Dell: Riverfront park-to-be once a country seat, private zoo and private eye's crib

Groundbreaking Philadelphia photographer Frederick Langenheim and his brother William, both German immigrants, invented stereoscopy photography and used it to manufacture postcards featuring famous Americans and their mansions from 1850 to 1860 as the American Stereoscopic Company. Here, Frederick Langenheim captures Wolfert’s Dell, the home of Moses Hicks Grinnell, with what appears to be gardeners at work on the front lawn in 1850. This is a cropped half of a double-image stereographic postcard. (Frederick Langenheim Patent, New York Public Library)

Wolfert’s Dell was the estate of Irvington, N.Y., founding father and one-time U.S. Congressman Moses Hicks Grinnell (1803-1877). It bridged the land between the Sunnyside estate of Washington Irving -- earlier known as Wolfert's Roost -- to the south and the Lyndhurst estate of railroad magnate Jay Gould to the north. The three Gilded Age estates fronted the Hudson River.

Grinnell was the brother of the founder of the pre-eminent New York shipping firm Grinnell, Minturn & Co. and was married to Julia Irving, niece of Grinnell’s Sunnyside  neighbor. Julia was the daughter of bachelor Washington Irving’s older brother Pierre.

Grinnell bought the land for his original 38.5-acre estate in 1849, the year the Hudson River Railroad extended its tracks north past the estate. He built his home on the southern part of the estate near Sunnyside. In Grinnell’s lifetime, the house was called Wolfert’s Dell. After 1906 it became known as The Arcades. He lived in the house  from 1851 until his death in 1877.

This 1891 map of southern-most Tarrytown from the Irvington border at West Sunnyside Lane shows the onetime Moses Hicks Grinnell estate Wolfert's Dell under the ownership of Mrs. Ellen J. Banker abutting the estates of the Washington Irving heirs -- Sunnyside -- and E.S. Jaffray -- Willowbrook -- to the south. To the north, Wolfert's Dell, later called The Arcades, adjoins the "guest house" addition to the estate, also under Mrs. Banker's ownership, later called The Colonnades and later still, the Spratt House. The combined Banker estates bordered Lyndhurst, home to robber baron Jay Gould. Combined with the neighboring estates already mentioned and the pictured estates of Roswell Skeel Jr. and Mrs. Henry Rossiter Worthington, this area was known as Millionaire's Row. (Frederick W. Beers, 1891, Watson & Co.publisher, David Rumsey Historic Map Collection)

A couple of years later Grinnell built a guest house on the northern part of the estate next to Lyndhurst that became known as The Colonnades after renovation and expansion post-1906. He loaned it rent-free to his niece, Mary Russell Grinnell, her husband, Henry Holdrege, and their children.

In 1854, Moses Grinnell and George Denison Morgan, a neighbor at the Woodcliff estate just south on Broadway, were key to the renaming of Dearman to Irvington in honor of their friend and business partner, Washington Irving. Grinnell used his political ties to get U.S. Postmaster General James Campbell on board with changing the name of the local Post Office and Morgan, a railroad man, got the Hudson River Railroad to rename its train station at the foot of Main Street.

Grinnell was a power player on the political scene. He was one of the first members of the fledgling Republican Party in 1854 (after earlier stints with the Democrat, Whig and Know Nothing -- or Native American -- parties). President-elect Abraham Lincoln visited Grinnell and Grinnell’s daughter in Manhattan en route to his inauguration in Washington, D.C., in 1861. Grinnell held lucrative posts in New York. He was Collector of the Port of New York from March 1869 to July 1870, and the Port of New York’s Naval Officer of Customs from July 1870 to April 1871. He was Central Park Commissioner during the early years of the Manhattan park's design and construction.
Grinnell Street in Irvington is named in his honor.

Grinnell and Holdrege both died in 1877 and the aptly named James H. Banker, vice president of the Bank of New York, bought the entire estate including both houses. He died in 1885 and his wife, Ellen, maintained ownership until her death in 1903.

This is an aerial view ca. 1932-34 of The Spratt House, owned by stockbroker William R. Spratt during the 1930s. The house was built around 1850 by Moses Hick Grinnell for his niece and her husband,Mary Russell Grinnell and Henry Holdrege. In 1907, Russell Hopkins and his 15-year-old wife Vera Siegrist were deeded the property and renamed the house The Colonnades and the estate Veruselle. In 1929, Spratt bought the property. The estate later was sold to Anna Gould, the Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord, of neighboring Lyndhurst. A fire destroyed the abandoned mansion in 1969. (Robert Yarnall Richie Photograph Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University)

Russell Fox Hopkins, the son of a wealthy Atlanta inventor and businessman, and wife Vera Lawrence Siegrist, were deeded the estate around 1907 by Hopkins’ father who had just purchased it at his son's request. Russell Hopkins renamed it Veruselle -- Vera plus Russell. The couple had eloped in October 1906 and caused a sensation because Hopkins was 23, Siegrist 14 when they exchanged vows. Siegrist's parents were dead and she was being raised by her wealthy grandparents at the time. It was the Hopkinses who renamed the houses on the estate The Arcades and The Colonnades.

Vera was the granddaughter of Joseph J. Lawrence who, along with Jordan Wheat Lambert, invented Listerine in 1879. The famed mouthwash was actually invented as a surgical disinfectant, named after English surgeon Joseph Lister, believed to have been the first physician to perform surgery using an antiseptic 14 years before the invention of Listerine.

Russell Hopkins, appointed Panama's consul to the United States in 1905, was considered an eccentric. He established what was said to be the nation's largest private zoo at Veruselle.

This Bactrian camel, pictured with one of Russell F. Hopkins' 15 zookeepers a Veruselle ca. 1910, was part of the Hopkins menagerie from around 1909 to early 1911, when Hopkins sold all the animals to a circus. Hopkins, perhaps taking a page out of famed promoter P.T. Barnum's book, sold this camel as a "Sudanese three-humped camel" in a March 1911 newspaper interview. Such an animal doesn't exist.(Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

In his 2018 book, "Westchester: History of an Iconic Suburb," author Robert Marchant reported on Hopkins' zoo:

"The 88-acre parcel became a menagerie of almost Biblical proportions and Hopkins imported creatures that came from the world's forests, jungles, swamps and deserts ... The zoo housed elephants, lions, camels, pumas, panthers, ocelots, leopards, cougars, black bears, polar bears, moose, reindeer, alligators, giraffes and a Russian brown bear named Big Ben. There was also an ape and a blue-faced baboon, wild boars, badgers, raccoons, anteaters and foxes. An ostrich, a llama and a kangaroo lived at the estate and an artificial lake was constructed to harbor Hopkins' collection of waterfoul. An aviary housed a rare collection off birds, while an assembly of snakes lived in a collection of glass cages.

"... The initial cost of the menagerie was estimated at $25,000 ($731,000 in 2021); the cost  of maintaining it ran into the tens of thousands of dollars per year. Hopkins employed fifteen zookeepers to feed and care for the animals.

"... He had a special fondness for zebras. The young tycoon caused a sensation in 1907 when he drove a carriage pulled by the undomesticated animals -- or rather attempted to drive them -- down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. ... They rebelled within seconds, the demonstration over before if began."

Russell Hopkins identified this bear in his private zoo as a "Russian brown bear." In point of fact, the species is known as the Kamchatka or Far Eastern brown bear, a cousin of North America's grizzly bear, but Hopkins' tendency to exaggerate in his pursuit of self promotion may make the true identity of the bear -- which he named "Big Ben" -- debatable. A side note: People used to visiting zoos today likely won't recognize the condition in which zoo animals, like Big Ben, were kept through at least the first 60 years of the 20th century -- in cages behind bars. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Other reports indicated that his zoo was established in 1909 and was shuttered in 1911. It housed a baby hippopotamus for a year and we know he owned a tame, hand-fed Bengal tiger named Ackbar. A photo exists of what he called his "Sudanese three-humped camel," in reality just a two-humped Bactrian camel. While the zoo was private, Hopkins opened it to the public, primarily area children and their parents, on Sundays.

In April 1911, he announced that he had sold his entire menagerie to a circus.

Russell died of double pneumonia in 1919 at age 35, Vera in 1928 at age 36. Vera had remarried to neighbor Colonel John F. Daniell in 1920. She left the estate to the four children she had shared with Hopkins and they left it to decay. The Colonnades and the northernmost 17 acres of the Hopkins estate were purchased by stockbroker William R. Spratt Jr. in early March 1929. The Spratt family renamed The Colonnades Spratt House. Wolfert’s Dell/Arcades house on the southern portion of the estate was abandoned after the Hopkinses’ deaths and it burned -- some say by an arsonist's hand -- in 1963. Its remnants were removed in 1978.

The Wolfert's Dell/Arcades acreage was up for sale at the time of The Colonnades' purchase, but never found a buyer. It was abandoned by the Hopkinses' heirs after they failed to pay property taxes for three years. A real estate development firm ended up taking it over, but failed to bring off a redevelopment into single family homes over the opposition of vociferous locals intent on fighting development.

Village of Irvington Police Officer George E. Duggan, pictured in a photo that appeared in the March 8, 1929 edition of The Irvington Gazette, was shot and killed just after 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 3, 1929 near today’s Irvington Estates co-op apartments at 14 South Broadway. His killer, an ex-con from New York City, escaped on foot, winding up at the newly-purchased estate of stockbroker William R. Spratt Jr. The killer robbed Spratt at gunpoint in front of Spratt's wife and daughter and estate superintendent and carjacked Spratt’s automobile and chauffeur..(Irvington Gazette, March 8, 1929)

Spratt made his mark on his new estate early, visiting it on Sunday, March 3, 1929 and finding himself in the middle of a crime involving the first first fatal attack on an Irvington police officer.

Officer George E. Duggan, a four-year member of the Irvington Police Department, was astride his motorcycle near the Gordon L. Harris estate Hillcrest at 30 South Broadway, chatting with local siblings Fred, Charles and Walter Schreiber at just after 4 o’clock that Sunday afternoon.

Edward Horan, a New York City ex-con who’d done time at Sing Sing Prison, approached the men on the sidewalk and without warning pulled a gun and shot Duggan in the side of the head, killing him instantly. He also fired at Fred Schreiber who fell to the ground, but missed.

Moses Hicks Grinnell is shown in an 1869 engraving. (Emmet
Collection, New York Public Library)

Horan fled through the Harris property, reaching what is now the Old Croton Aqueduct State Park trail, heading through Home Place, South Ferris Street and North Eckar Street through Matthiessen Park. He continued heading north on the aqueduct before crossing West Sunnyside Lane and hitting Spratt’s property.

He robbed Spratt at gunpoint, then carjacked Spratt’s chauffeur, Arthur Williams, taking driver and car on a desperate escape flight. Horan let Williams go near Briarcliff, but kept the car. The car was later found abandoned at the Woodlawn Station of the Jerome Avenue Subway line in the Bronx.

Horan escaped days later to Harrisburg, Pa., where he was recognized by a hotel clerk who notified police. Horan committed suicide as law enforcement closed in.

Railroad magnate Jay Gould’s daughter, Anna, the Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord, eventually bought the Spratt estate next to the magnificent Lyndhurst property she’d taken over from her late sister Helen in 1938.

Anna Miller Gould married titled men twice. At 19, she married French nobleman Marie Ernest Paul Boniface de Castellane, who went by “Boni” and was styled “Comte de Castellane” (later Marquis de Castellane). They had five children together, but Anna divorced him in 1906 after the profligate adulterer went through $11 million of the $15 million her late father had left her.

That $11 million is the equivalent of $342 million today.

The Colonnades under the ownership of Anna, Duchess de Talleyrand, as it appeared from the Hudson River in 1943. (Library of Congress, Gottscho-Schleisner, Inc., photographer)

Two years later, Anna married her ex-husband’s cousin, Marie Pierre Louis Hélie de Talleyrand-Perigord, eventually 5th Duke of Talleyrand and Dino and Duke of Sagan and was thereafter known as Anna, Duchess of Talleyrand-Perigord.

Anna loaned Spratt House to detective Raymond C. Schindler, who lived there until his death in 1959. Schindler formed his own Schindler Bureau of Investigation agency in New York City in 1912 and was considered the nation’s leading private eye for about half a century.

Schindler was also known as a bon vivant, enjoying private reserved tables at the Stork Club and 21 Club. He was president of the famed Adventurers Club and International Investigators and was a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the British Detectives Association and the American Polar Society.

He was the subject of “The Complete Detective: The Life and Strange and Exciting Cases of Raymond Schindler, Master Detective,” a 1950 book by Rupert Hughes about Schindler and his most interesting cases.

After Anna Gould’s death in 1961, Lyndhurst was donated to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and became a living museum, much like nearby Sunnyside.

The Veruselle/Colonnades decaying mansion did have one last moment in the spotlight in the late 1960s. It was used for exterior shots in the vampire-related daytime television Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows” that ran on ABC TV from 1966 to 1971 as “The Old House.”

A fire claimed the 1851 “Wolfert’s Dell” house (pictured) of Moses H. Grinnell in 1963 and the ruins decayed further over the following decade. This photo shows the ruins in 1974. The building was razed and removed no later than 1978. (Photo by Thom Loughman, Hudson River Museum)

The Colonnades mansion burned in 1969 and both Wolfert’s Dell/The Arcades and The Colonnades estates were sold to the Unification Church, owner of neighboring Belvedere, in the mid-1970s. The church failed in a 1998 bid to develop single family homes on the properties and the National Trust for Historic Preservation got involved and Westchester County eventually bought both properties. The county is making the 37-acre property part of a greenway county park linking riverfront historic sites Lyndhurst and Sunnyside.

That would be just what Washington Irving and Moses Grinnell would have wanted. In their lifetimes, Irvington’s founding fathers had eliminated all boundaries between their estates and made their garden and river paths link seamlessly for easy walking, sightseeing and visiting.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Washington Irving's "Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies" is available free online. To read the collection of short stories, click here ... 

... For more information on the proposed riverfront park linking Lyndhurst and Sunnyside, click here. For a map of the current park, click here.