Woody Crest: Where a Gilded Age heiress treated wounded soldiers, ill children

Helen Miller Gould’s Woody Crest estate (pictured in 1905) hosted disabled and convalescent children from New York City. It lay northeast of her summer home Lyndhurst, just south of Sheldon Avenue in what is now the Taxter Ridge Park Preserve, a 200-acre park property purchased by New York State, Westchester County and the Town of Greenburgh in 2004. (Library of Congress)

The Woody Crest estate of Helen Miller Gould in Tarrytown included 17 acres dedicated to helping recuperating soldiers after the Spanish-American War and thereafter helping sick children.

In addition to the Lyndhurst estate that Gould inherited from her father, railroad magnate and robber baron financier Jason “Jay” Gould in 1892, Helen owned this property in Pennybridge about a mile east of South Broadway on the south side of  Sheldon Avenue that she opened to disabled and convalescing children from New York City.

Five boys in a variety of costumes are pictured with toys in front of a decorated Christmas tree at Woody Crest, Helen Miller Gould’s Pennybridge estate dedicated to the care and convalescence of children with physical disabilities and illness, in Tarrytown, N.Y., in this 1905 photo. (Library of Congress)

Woody Crest featured farm fields and orchards on landscaped acreage with Hudson River and forest vistas. The house on the estate accommodated 15 to 17 children year-round -- usually for two weeks at a time -- and they had the opportunity to try their hands at rural pastimes like gardening and carpentry, learning from the extensive staff that took care of Lyndhurst.

Gould, a first-time bride at age 45, married 46-year-old Finley Johnson Shepard in 1913. She was a renowned philanthropist who donated extensively to children’s causes and the YMCA and YWCA.

Woody Crest child residents are taught the basics of gardening at the estate in this photo taken sometime around 1900. Helen Miller Gould is believed to be the woman dressed in white wearing the large hat in the center of the photo. (Westchester County Historical Society)

Gould purchased Woody Crest in 1893 and its first philanthropic use was as a home for convalescing American soldiers wounded in the Spanish-American War in 1898. She opened its doors to children from 1900 to about 1920.

She was a brilliant investor. After inheriting $10 million ($288 million today) on her father’s death in 1892 when she was 24, Gould was estimated to have tripled her net worth within 20 years, that despite giving magnanimously to a variety of charitable endeavors.

This 1900 hand-drawn map shows the extensive Gould family holdings east and west of South Broadway. The property marked Helen M. Gould halfway up the left (west) side of the map is today’s Lyndhurst. Her Woody Crest  property is on the right (east) side of the map under (south) of Sheldon Road, today's Sheldon Avenue. Note the other properties on the map marked Jay Gould Estate, Jay Gould Est. and J. Gould Est. Those are all noted as the property of Jay Gould, Helen’s father, who had died eight years earlier. Those properties all eventually wound up in Helen Gould’s name as well. (Map by George Washington Beers, 1900. David Rumsey Historic Map Collection)

After marrying, she and her husband adopted three children in addition to taking in a foster child. One of the children was a 3-year-old boy found abandoned on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan in 1914. He was named Finley Jay after Helen’s husband and father. Their adopted daughters were Helen Anna and Olivia Margaret and the foster son was Joseph Seton.

The couple also helped raise the twin daughters of Helen’s brother Frank Jay Gould by his first wife, Helen Margaret Kelly, Helen Margaret and Dorothy, who were born in 1904. Frank Jay Gould was the first of four husbands for Helen Kelly, known later as Princess Vlora of Albania, after her third husband, Albanian Prince Nuredin bey Vlora. Gould and Kelly divorced in 1908 after seven years of marriage.

Frank Jay Gould’s house is familiar to many Rivertown residents as today’s Ardsley Country Club clubhouse.

The Woody Crest property now makes up a small portion of the 200-acre Taxter Ridge Park Preserve that crosses eastern Tarrytown and Irvington. It was purchased by New York State, Westchester County and the Town of Greenburgh in 2004 and is operated by the Town of Greenburgh.

Helen Miller Gould Shepard is pictured in 1915 at 47, two years after marrying Finley Johnson Shepard. Mrs. Shepard was one of the nation’s leading philanthropists. (Wikimedia Commons)

It features miles of popular trails used by hikers and is only open during daylight hours.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: For more on the woods that today make up the Taxter Ridge Park Preserve, blogger Rob Yasinsac's Hudson Valley Ruins (HV-Rob) has a highly recommended take. Click here to take a look. ... I also highly recommend the the blog Hudson Valley Ruins on which Mr. Yasinsac collaborates with Tom Rinaldi for anyone interested in taking a further look at similar topics.

Woody Crest is pictured ca. 1910. All that remains of the house today are portions of the foundation in the Taxter Ridge State Park Preserve. See the video from Taxter Park (above) for more on the remains of Woody Crest.