Heaven: 'Forgotten' estate was home to Father Divine's Peace Mission flock for 46 years

The former Father Divine mansion on the Tarrytown estate the International Peace Movement founder called “Heaven” is pictured as it stands today about 500 yards east of South Broadway in south Tarrytown between Carriage Trail and Gracemere in the midst of what is now the tony Greystone-on-Hudson subdivision of multi-million dollar homes on extensive properties. The former Divine mansion remains in private hands today. (Google Street View)

An often overlooked tract of inaccessible land came into its own during the Great Depression, eventually becoming "Heaven" to the followers of African-American religious leader Reverend Major Jealous Divine, more commonly known as Father Divine. 

He called himself God.

The developer of the estate's mansion, Alexander Maximilian Bing, was an advocate for affordable housing working-class whites, especially immigrants, through his non-profit City Housing Corporation in Manhattan, of which he was president. 

However, in at least one letter he sent to NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois, Bing made it clear that blacks would not be included in City Housing's 1,200-acre Radburn community in Fair Lawn, Bergen County, N.J. He added to Du Bois that City Housing Corp. had "... in mind embarking shortly on a separate negro community." 

Bing, ironically, wound up opening the door to the integration of Tarrytown's "Millionaires Row," his family eventually selling the estate in 1939 to a quick succession of three investment entities, the last flipping it in 1940 to Divine's predominantly black flock over vehement local opposition.

For most of its existence the southern Tarrytown, N.Y., acreage to the immediate north of the Jay Gould family’s vast holdings east of South Broadway across from their Lyndhurst estate had little or no value except as an adjunct to the estates neighboring the property.

The 84-acre plot at bottom right of this west to east (left to right) map labeled Robert B. Dula is the property that would become home to the followers of Father Divine from 1939 to 1986. (George Washington Bromley, 1911. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection)

Access was non-existent to the 12 acres that lay in south Tarrytown or the easternmost 72 acres that lay in unincorporated Town of Greenburgh. The property had no rights of way from nearby roads -- Sheldon Avenue to the north or South Broadway to the west -- and was called worthless in decades of court battles and trust testimony.

The 84-acre property was originally part of  Philipsburg Manor and later owned by wealthy Manhattan merchant Joseph Woolley (J.W.) Corlies of the investment firm J.W. Corlies & Company, who died in 1860 and whose family sold the property to the investment firm Meyers & Johnson for $21,267 ($444,000 today) in 1868.

Or so everyone thought. Then the lawyers got involved. 

Meyers & Johnson’s title to the property was contested for the better part of 40 years. It seems one of the executors of the Corlies estate was in Europe at the time of the sale and didn’t sign the sale documents. Three other executors did sign, but the one omission left the property in limbo until 1907 with Corlies’ only two surviving children, daughters Cornelia Corlies Earnshaw and Emily Corlies Reese battling over its rights.

The cover of the International Peace Mission weekly publication "The New Day," shows Father Divine (center) and the Peace Mission taking over the Tarrytown estate "Heaven" in its Nov. 14, 1940 edition. Note the luxury car in front of the main door (top photo). Father Divine was known for riding in chauffeured luxury automobiles -- Rolls Royces, Cadillacs and Duesenbergs were in the fleet which were owned by his followers but used by him.

Louis Stern, co-founder of the prominent Stern Brothers department store chain, paid $4,000 in 1901 to the Corlies estate to buy the property as an adjunct to his just-purchased 100-acre Greystone estate next door. 

Stern later paid the Corlies sisters an additional $500 each in 1907 after the previous sale was nullified because of the title problem.

William M. Hoyt, a Tarrytown real estate agent described the property in a deposition for the New York State Court of Appeals: “It is a rough uncultivated tract, poorly fenced and in a rundown condition; about half of it in small timber, balances bushes and pasture: a small portion commands good views.

“The property has no front on any highway or road or right of way to get to a road, therefore, it is entirely cut off from approach to or from the property which practically takes away the market value, except to the adjoining owners. ... The market value would not be more than $5,000.”

Pictured is the tower side entry to the Alexander M. Bing mansion in Tarrytown, ca. 1930. (From "Construction by Collett," A monograph illustrating the work of the Collett Construction Corporation, Engineers & Builders, Scarsdale in Westchester County, New York. 1931)

As the owner of an adjoining property, Stern had access to the unimproved property. He promptly sold the combined properties to Robert B. Dula (1849-1926) encompassing about 184 acres, 100 acres on the previous Stern estate Greystone -- Dula promptly renamed it Hibriten -- bounded by Sheldon Avenue to the north and South Broadway to the west.

Robert Dula was an executive with James Buchanan Duke's American Tobacco Co.

A hand-drawn 1911 map shows Dula's estate featuring a main stone mansion known as Greystone Castle, gate lodges at entrances off Sheldon Avenue and South Broadway, a small lake, a reservoir for drinking water, a barn with a pair of service buildings, a large stone stables/carriage house with accompanying service building and an ice house which would have stored ice carved in winter out of the property's lake and the nearby Hudson River.

The “less desirable” eastern 84 acre showed no buildings or man-made improvements in that 1911 map.

This is a view of the Hudson River from the dining room of the Alexander M. Bing mansion in Tarrytown, ca. 1930. (From "Construction by Collett," A monograph illustrating the work of the Collett Construction Corporation, Engineers & Builders, Scarsdale in Westchester County, New York. 1931)

The Dulas sold off the northwestern chunk of their property between Gracemere and Sheldon Avenue (part of which was developed as today's Glenwolde Park Historic District in 1926), then separately sold the Greystone Castle segment between Gracemere and Carriage Trail and its surrounding 25 acres to surgeon Joseph Augustus Blake and his wife in 1915. The Blakes renamed the estate Fortoiseau. William S. Burrows bought the castle and its 25 acres in 1925. Bing, a Manhattan real estate mogul, purchased the 84 unused eastern acres in June 1929 from the estate of Dula's widow. 

Alexander Mortimer Bing, who doubled as an artist, built a 25-room turreted stone mansion on the property and by 1932 transferred ownership to his brother Leo S. Bing -- his partner in the Manhattan real estate firm Bing & Bing -- through a corporate intermediary.

The transfer may have been prompted by legal issues. A.M. Bing's City Housing Corporation was swimming in debt and would declare bankruptcy two years later. Housing sales were plummeting and loan defaults soaring for City Housing's Sunnyside affordable housing development in Long Island City, Queens and the newer Radburn.

Bing & Bing has been described as having a reputation for building "stately, spacious apartments in elegantly detailed buildings that often had Art Deco touches." Bing & Bing buildings, famous in Manhattan, were built for the luxury market, often featuring multiple setbacks with private terraces.

Leo Bing transferred the Tarrytown property to the Santee Guarantee Corporation in March 1939. It was transferred to the Guaranty Liquidating Corporation in June 1940. On Sept. 28, 1940, Guaranty Liquidating sold the property to William Evers and a month later, Evers transferred the property to a group of followers of Father Divine -- Father Divine never put his name on church property of any kind.

This is the living room terrace of the Alexander M. Bing mansion in Tarrytown, ca. 1930. (From "Construction by Collett," A monograph illustrating the work of the Collett Construction Corporation, Engineers & Builders, Scarsdale in Westchester County, New York. 1931)

Father Divine’s race provoked local outrage when it was learned his followers were looking at the estate. In a racially charged 1940 editorial, The Irvington Gazette newspaper urged the estate owners to refuse to sell their properties to Divine’s group because of his race. It pointed out that government couldn’t ban such sales, but private landowners could. (Author's note: At the time, discrimination was not illegal in New York State).

Time magazine reported on the transaction in its Oct. 28, 1940 edition: “Negro Cultist Major J. ("Father") Divine ... bought a new "heaven," the $500,000, 21-room Tudor mansion once the property of Manhattan Realtor Leo S. Bing, in wealthy Tarrytown, N. Y. Assessed at $169,000, last sold for $27,000, Divine got it for $36,000 … (He) will enjoy as one of his nearest neighbors the Duchesse de Talleyrand, formerly Anna Gould …”

Divine did not actually live in the estates he called his “Heavens” (there were more than 100 of them at one time), but he was known to visit each on occasion. His main residence was Woodmont, a 72-acre estate with stone mansion in Gladwyne, Pa., a Philadelphia suburb. It remains the home of what's left of Divine's International Peace Mission today.

Each of Divine's Heavens was dedicated to the housing and feeding of his followers who would pay token fees for room and board, around $2 per week in 1930. The followers were expected to work outside the estate either in Peace Mission businesses or as domestic help for wealthy families and turned over their earnings to the Peace Mission.

Not much is known about the origins of Father Divine. His birth name was said to have been George Baker Jr., but no documentation has been found to prove it. Some researches believe he was born in Maryland, others at Hutchinson Island, Ga., between 1876 and 1880, just over a decade after the end of the Civil War.

Father Divine (left) and Mother Divine (right) are shown on a balcony at the Tarrytown "Heaven," sometime after their 1947 marriage when he was 70 and she, his former secretary, was 21. The woman at right is not identified. (International Peace Movement photo)

Harlem World magazine in 2017 reported in a long expose on the man that Father Divine’s parents were likely freed slaves.

Divine founded what he called his International Peace Mission movement and saw it grow from a small predominantly black congregation into a multiracial international church during the Great Depression in Harlem.

He won adherents -- estimates range from a miminum of 20,000 to 30,000 in New York State to 2 million or more nationally at the movement's peak around 1939-- with a variety of social help programs including feeding, housing and employing large numbers of poor Harlem residents during the Depression. He built a Peace Mission business community that provided high-quality goods and services at reasonable cost and offered jobs to his followers at a time jobs were almost non-existent.

In an era of racial segregation, Divine denied the existence of race. He married a black woman he called Sister Penny, decades his senior, likely between 1914 and 1917. After Sister Penny died in 1943, the 70-year-old Divine married 21-year-old white follower Edna Rose Ritchings whom he renamed Sweet Angel in 1946. She was later known (as was his first wife) as Mother Divine. She outlived him by 42 years, dying in 2017, at Woodmont.

Explaining his second marriage to a flock that hadn’t been told of his first wife’s death, Divine said Sweet Angel and Sister Penny were in fact one in the same. He introduced his new wife as the “Spotless Virgin Bride” and said the marriage -- just like his first -- would not be consummated since “God is not married.”

His religious movement banned sexual relations, including by married couples among his flock. His followers lived in gender-separated areas of the “Heaven” estates.

Among other acts, Divine's followers bought a hotel near Atlantic City so blacks could access New Jersey beaches that were barred to black visitors at the time.

According to a PBS story, “Father Divine’s Peace Mission,” Sayville, Long Island officials arrested Divine and dozens of his disciples in 1931 for "invading the county with his religious practices," which included black men and white women living in the same house together. Divine was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail by an evidently racially biased judge, Lewis J. Smith, who had earlier revoked Divine's bail. 

Three days after imposing the sentence, the judge, 55, dropped dead. When a reporter asked the jailed preacher for a comment, Divine replied, "I hated to do it."

On appeal, Divine's conviction and sentence were overturned.

Divine, who stood under 5 feet tall, called his Tarrytown property “Heaven,” just as he had named other residential properties the church owned, three in Westchester County alone.

He continued until he died on Sept. 10, 1965 at around age 88.

Father Divine's organization declined steadily after the purchase of the Tarrytown estate since new recruits were scarce and children of his followers were unknown because of the movement's celibacy requirements. Within about 20 years of his Sept. 10 1965 death at around age 88, his followers had retreated almost entirely to Woodmont. As of 2015 only 15 of the followers remained, all living at Woodmont.

The Peace Mission held on to the Tarrytown estate until 1986.
The mansion was sold to a private owner and remains in private hands today, located about 500 yards east of South Broadway.

Much of the property surrounding it was sold and now hosts some 21 private multi-million dollar houses on lots of two to five acres in the Greystone-on-Hudson subdivision.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Below is a link to a 33-minute recording of Father Divine speaking to his flock in Philadelphia on Jan. 13, 1952. Father Divine was believed to be 74 at the time. ...

... You might be more familiar with the Bing family than you suspect. Leo S. Bing's grandson, Stephen Leo Bing, was a major Democratic Party donor and friend of President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton during and after Clinton's terms in  office and Hillary's failed run for president in 2016. He donated upwards of $15 million to the Clinton Foundation and at one point was paying Bill Clinton $2.5 million per year as a personal adviser.

Steve Bing inherited $600 million from his grandfather's estate at age 18 in 1983. He fathered out-of-wedlock son Damian with actress/model Elizabeth Hurley and out-of-wedlock daughter Kira with ex-tennis pro Lisa Bonder, wife of billionaire Kirk Kirkorian.

Bing's parentage of Damian was disputed by him, but proved by DNA testing demanded by Bing. Kira's parentage was proven by a DNA test ordered by Kirkorian, who had hired a private investigator to get Bing's DNA via a strand of dental floss.

Steve Bing committed suicide on June 22, 2020 at age 55 by jumping from the 27th floor of his condominium building in Los Angeles. At the time of his death, his wealth was nearly gone. His estate was said to total $300,000. ...

... Jim Jones, the cult leader of the fully integrated Peoples Temple of Indianapolis from 1955 to 1965, later San Francisco and Guyana, responsible for the mass suicide/murder of 918 of his followers and others in 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana, set his sights on merging his and Father Divine's movements after DIvine's death in 1965.

Jones met Divine several times in the early 1960s and continued visiting the Peace Mission at  Woodmont through June 1971 when he attempted to take over the Peace Mission but was thrown out of Woodmont in the middle of the night by Mother Divine and told never to return.

Here's a link to the Jones-Divine story from San Diego State University. And below is a video about the relationship.