Heatherdell Farm: Home to philanthropist Lewisohn, lover of music, art, literature

Adolph Lewisohn's Heatherdell Farm manor house in Ardsley is shown in a ca. 1900 photo. The text superimposed on the photo reads: "Country Seat Adolph Lewishon (sic)." (Ardsley Historical Society)

German immigrant Adolph Lewisohn won hearts and minds throughout early 20th century America with his philanthropy, but operating from the base of his 356-acre Ardsley estate Heatherdell he established a web of relationships through the nearby Hudson Valley villages of Irvington and Tarrytown and into the Town of Mount Pleasant.

Lewisohn saw his son Sam marry Margaret V. Seligmann, daughter of financier Isaac Newton Seligman whose Hudson Valley estates, the former Willowbrook (once part of today's Shadowbrook) and one-third of the former Lindenholm, spanned northernmost Irvington and southernmost Tarrytown on either side of West Sunnyside Lane. Seligman's Willowbrook abutted the east side of author Washington Irving's acclaimed Sunnyside.

Lewisohn's daughter, Adele, likewise married into the Lehman family of financial services -- Lehman Brothers -- fame. Her brother-in-law, Sigmund Lehman, and his sons, Allan and Harold, owned three adjoining estates immediately north of Lyndhurst: Willow Pond, Millbrook and Elmbrook.

Adolph Lewisohn is shown in a photo
ca. 1930. (Museum of the City of New York)

Lewisohn was also involved, financially and personally, in a renowned orphanage for Jewish children 14 and younger in the nearby Town of Mount Pleasant, the landmark Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society's Pleasantville Cottage School.

A German-Jewish immigrant, Lewisohn emigrated from Hamburg at age 18 in August 1867, having already established himself in his father Samuel's mercantile business in Hamburg in 1864. In New York, he and his older brothers Julius and Leonard, sent by their father three years earlier, formed Lewisohn Brothers, an import-export company specializing in ostrich feathers, which were in much demand to fill women's fashion demands of the era.

After meeting a young Thomas Edison likely in 1878 or 1879 when Edison formed his Edison Electric Light Co. and when Edison filed for the patent on the electric lamp, respectively, Lewisohn's fortunes took flight. Lewisohn saw the investment potential of copper, an undervalued and underutilized metal at the time that would become key to the fledgling electric industry because of its conductivity properties.

A look at the formal gardens at Heatherdell Farm, ca. 1920. (Ardsley Historical Society)

Lewisohn Brothers, and later Adolph Lewisohn & Son under Adolph's presidency, promptly invested in fabulously successful copper mines in Butte, Montana. The company would go on to develop Tennessee Copper and Chemical Corporation, General Development Co., Miami Copper Company of Arizona and the South American Gold and Platinum Company of Colombia. Adolph also founded United Metals Selling Co. with, among others, William Rockefeller Jr. of Rockwood Hall in Mount Pleasant.

Adolph, Julius and Leonard soon became known as the "Copper Kings" because of the payoffs on their investments. One mine alone paid $35 million ($1.02 billion today) in dividends annually in the early 1890s.

This undated photo shows the morning room on the first floor of the Heatherdell Farm mansion of Adolph Lewisohn. (Ardsley Historical Society)

With cash pouring in, Adolph began focusing on enjoying his wealth, investing in fine art from the Barbizon and Impressionist schools, historical artifacts and classical music, in particular opera -- he was an amateur opera singer who annually entertained his birthday guests with personal operatic performances.

He also indulged himself with the establishment of fine homes of his design in Manhattan (first 9 West 57th Street, after 1915 881 Fifth Avenue), Prospect Point at Upper Saranac Lake after 1903 and finally his Town of Greenburgh estate Heatherdell Farm in Ardsley after 1906.

A flock of sheep grazes at Heatherdell Farm, ca. 1920. (Ardsley Historical Society)

Heatherdell was one of Westchester County's premier dairy farms under the 19th century ownership of Captain John G. Peene, who served as a Union volunteer with the 5th New York Infantry, known as Duryee's Zouaves, in the Civil War. The twice-married Peene served as harbormaster of the Port of New York and ran Peene Transportation Company, a successful transport business between Yonkers and New York that he and his brothers had inherited from their father. He served two terms as mayor of Yonkers before his sudden death in 1905.

Lewisohn purchased Heatherdell Farm and its 220 acres from Peene's estate after Peene's death and added another 136 acres from surrounding properties. Lewisohn hired the architectural firm Coulter & Westhoff, which had designed his massive mansion and 28-structure Saranac summer camp three years earlier, to build his 40-room Ardsley mansion, the centerpiece of his new estate. Landscape architect James Leal Greenleaf, who designed the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial, designed the Heatherdell acreage, which included 14 greenhouses, a dairy barn, chicken houses, tennis courts and a private golf course.

The mansion itself cost $1.13 million in 1906, $33 million today adjusted for inflation.

Pictured is the Heatherdell Farm mansion and its associated rose garden shown around 1920. (Ardsley Historical Society)

Flowers -- roses in particular -- were a passion of Lewisohn, who hired Ernest Grunwald as head gardener in 1908 to make Heatherdell a horticultural showplace.

With his homes, businesses and hobbies humming along, Lewisohn turned his eye to philanthropy. It was in 1903 that he became fully engaged with the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society, making a large donation to its building fund which became crucial after a massive influx of Jewish refugees from Imperial Russia after a series of pogroms from 1903 to 1906 targeted Jews in Russia's Pale of Settlement, resulting in thousands of deaths.

Lewisohn got involved because of the death of his brother Leonard who had just agreed to join the society as its treasurer in 1902. Dead less than a year later, Adolph took up the cause and quickly became society president.

Pictured are cottages and other buildings of the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society's Pleasantville Cottage School, ca. 1920. (Westchester County Historical Society)

By 1912, the society had completed construction of its Pleasantville Cottage School campus, housing up to 500 orphans and children of indigent families. The campus included 25 cottages each housing 25 to 30 students. It was heavily subsidized by the Lewisohn family, Adolph contributing $150,000, his relatives another $150,000 or a total of $9 million adjusted for inflation. A total of $750,000 was donated ($22 million today.)

Interestingly, the former Jewish orphanage was once the Home of the Orphan Children of the Soldiers and Sailors of the Civil War at 150th Street and Broadway in Washington Heights, New York, originally the "country" home of Cyrus Field, whose later country home and estate in Irvington -- Ardsley -- were the namesake of the Village of Ardsley and were not far west of Heatherdell Farm.

A partial view of library bookshelves (left) and foyer with stairwell at Heatherdell Farm, ca. 1920, decorated with flowers, likely from the estate's renowned gardens or 14 greenhouses. (Ardsley Historical Society)

Children resided at Pleasantville Cottage School up to age 14 -- the recognized working age of that era -- and to accommodate that limitation, Lewisohn was key to compacting the traditional 12-year academic schedule for grades 1 through 12 into a nine-year schedule that allowed high school graduation at age 14. The students also sat for religious training, participated in the campus farm projects and maintained their personal cottages, each with a designated adult female leader. The school had an outstanding faculty of male teachers -- to complement the female influence in the cottages -- each of whom was required to own a college degree, something unheard of at the time.

Lewisohn remained a strong supporter of PCS until his death in 1938 and his son Sam continued the family's support afterwards.

The Pleasantville Cottage School has changed its focus since Lewisohn's time, but remains in operation today, treating emotionally troubled boys and girls ages 7 to 16 on a residential basis.

Lewisohn's love of classical music, indeed music of all kinds, led to his next major donation, Lewisohn Stadium at the City College of New York between Amsterdam and Convent avenues and 136th and 138th streets in Hamilton Heights section of Harlem, three blocks north of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton's estate "The Grange," which has since been moved.

A colonnaded amphitheatre and athletics stadium which opened in 1915 -- CCNY played varsity football in the 6,000-seat stadium from 1920 through 1950 -- Lewisohn Stadium was to play host to a famed public summer concert series in New York with nominal admission charged thanks to Lewisohn's support. Lewisohn wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the classics and admission began at 25 or 50 cents through most of the stadium's musical run and $1.25 in its final years.

The stadium was the summer home of the New York Philharmonic symphony orchestra from 1922 through 1964, seven summer nights a week during the 1920s, '30s and into the late '40s, four or five nights a week thereafter. Also performing on the Lewisohn Stadium stage was the Metropolitan Opera and popular musicians including Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra and George Gershwin among many others.

A 1950s staple each Independence Day was a concert by Armstrong followed by a fireworks display.

This photo shows a Greek tragedy performed at the opening of Lewisohn Stadium at Convent Avenue and 136th Street in New York on May 29, 1915. (Wikimedia Commons)

The dilapidated stadium made its final appearance, as a backdrop to actor Al Pacino in the film "Serpico," in 1973. It was razed shortly after.

Lewisohn, who counted a large number of U.S. presidents, from Ulysses S. Grant to Franklin D. Roosevelt, among his acquaintances, hosted President William Howard Taft at Heatherdell Farm on Nov. 16, 1912. The visit came 11 days after Taft finished third in his re-election bid behind President-elect Woodrow Wilson and runner-up and former President Theodore Roosevelt, who finished second running on the Progressive Party (Bull Moose) line.

The mansion at Heatherdell Farm is shown in an undated photo, likely from around 1915. (Ardsley Historical Society)

Most of the land that comprised Heatherdell Farm was redeveloped into single family housing beginning in the 1950s The mansion itself burned in November 1956 while it was being used as a health spa. Nineteen people, including nine customers and 10 staff members were evacuated safely. Officials blamed the early 20th century electrical wiring for causing the blaze. The town bought the Washington Hill mansion site and built a new Ardsley High School on it. The school opened in 1958.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: To see an enlargeable diagram of the first floor of Heatherdell Farm at the time of its construction click here. ...

To see a complete real estate sales brochure of Huntley Estates at Ardsley single-family homes development on the former Heatherdell Farm site, click here. ...

This undated photo is of the Captain John G. Peene house, built ca. 1890, that was once the centerpiece of Heatherdell Farm under Peene's ownership. The house and estate were sold by Peene's heirs to Adolph Lewisohn in 1906 and the house was used by the estate's superintendent, Scotland-born John Canning, until his death in April 1940. Canning emigrated to the U.S. in 1906 at age 32 and was renowned in floral circles throughout the nation. The completely renovated 5,100-square-foot house and 1.3-acre property at 220 Heatherdell Road, Ardsley, was offered for sale around 2015 for more than $1 million but didn't find a buyer because of property taxes and other costs related to maintaining such an old house. It was purchased by the Village of Ardsley in 2020 with plans to eventually raze it and build a parking lot for village vehicles. (Ardsley Historical Society)

Capt. John G. Peene, the Republican owner of Heatherdell Farm from at least 1890 to 1905, defeated Democrat John Kendrick Bangs, a humorist and novelist, for Yonkers mayor in 1894 by 207 votes. Bangs wrote a thinly-veiled account of his experience of the campaign from the time of his nomination on March 7 through election day, March 8 called "Three Weeks in Politics." A popular book in its time, it's now in the public domain. To read it for free, click here. ...

Jonathan Stern, a City University of New York student, wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Lewisohn summer concert series: "Music for the (American) People: The Concerts at Lewisohn Stadium, 1922-1964." It is available free online. For access to it, click here. ...

Confused about Heatherdell Farm's location? To see an interactive 1908 map of Greenburgh that includes Ardsley and the Heatherdell estate, click here.

On a more personal note, many thanks to Ardsley Historical Society President Peter Marcus, without whose help procuring historic Heatherdell Farm photos and providing other information, particularly on the John Peene House, this story would not have been nearly as complete. ...