Long Meadow: Hollywood stars Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones shine where 'Sugar King' reigned

Franz Otto Matthiessen purchased the 12-acre Long Meadow estate west of North Broadway between the Hudson River and the Old Croton Aqueduct in 1865 and built this mansion overlooking the river. Pictured is the rear of the house ca. 1900. Matthiessen died in 1901 a widower whose children had both died young, leaving the estate to relatives. In 1929, a series of renovations took place including a simplification of the roof line and the addition of wings with brick exteriors on either side of the original yellow stone center. (From Irvington 'Then & Now', 2009, by Judith Doolin Spikes and Anne Marie Leone)

Long Meadow, the iconic estate that is home today to Hollywood royalty Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, was once part of the 62-acre Matthiessen Park estate, an amalgam of the estates of the historic , Dunham and Matthiessen families of Irvington, New York.Tiffany

Franz Otto Matthiessen, an immigrant sugar magnate known as “The Sugar King,” originally purchased his 12-acre estate to the immediate north of neighboring Tiffany Park in 1865, just two years after Tiffany & Co. founder Charles Lewis Tiffany had established that estate.

Matthiessen, an immigrant from Schleswig-Holstein, then part of Denmark, now Germany, made a fortune as a sugar refiner. He founded F.O. Matthiessen & Wiechers Sugar Refining Co., with William Alfred Wiechers in 1863. The company had offices on Wall Street and a refinery in Jersey City, N.J., and in 1887 rolled his company into the “Sugar Trust,” the American Sugar Refining Company that assured his wealth.

The Matthiessen & Wiechers Sugar Refining Co. works in Jersey City, N.J., that made Franz Otto Matthiessen a wealthy man, are shown in an 1879 illustration. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Franz and wife Emma had two children who both died young and childless. Franz's brothers, Erard Adolph and Frederick W., did have children and the Matthiessen family would go on to own Long Meadow after Franz's death in 1901. His estate was appraised at $5.2 million, $163 million today.

Erard was a sugar refiner and banker. Frederick played a key role in the development of the U.S. zinc industry and later reorganized a bankrupt clock manufacturing company as the Western Clock Manufacturing Company, later Westclox.

In 1888, Erard’s son Conrad Henry married Frederick’s daughter Eda Wilhelmina. Like his relatives, Conrad H. was in the sugar business, serving as president of the Chicago Sugar Refining Co. and Chicago’s Glucose Sugar Refining Co. as well as the Corn Products Refining Co. in Jersey City.

This hand-drawn 1872 map -- the year of Irvington's incorporation as a village -- gives a good look at the early split of the Franz Otto Matthiessen estate to the north of Tiffany Park and the Dunham family estate Harmony next to the northern streets off Main Street. The Tiffanys and Dunhams were related by marriage and parts of their estates are already combined as noted by the "T&D" to the right and "Tiffany & Dunham" to the left where today's public Matthiessen Park is located. Attorney J.A. Bryan's Dernier Resort estate is where Madame C.J. Walker's historic Villa Lewaro stands today. Dernier means "last" in French. (J.B. Beers, 1872. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection)

Conrad Matthiessen purchased 50-acre Tiffany Park from the estate of late Tiffany & Company founder Charles Lewis Tiffany -- father of famed artist, designer, jeweler Louis Comfort Tiffany -- in 1902 and within months added to it by buying Franz’s 12-acre estate to its north.

Tiffany himself had earlier absorbed the Dunham estate of his in-laws to the south of his own estate into a conjoined Tiffany Park. The property lay to the immediate north of the north side of Irvington's northern streets off Main Street

The combined estates featured C.L.Tiffany's former mansion on the site of the old Dutcher family homestead and two Dunham mansions facing each other on a circular drive just north of the north ends of North Cottenet and North Dutcher streets in what is today's Matthiessen Park, a luxury residential area inland of the Metro North railroad tracks.

This hand-drawn 1911 map shows the C.H. Matthiessen estate at its ultimate, encompassing the former Charles Lewis Tiffany estate Tiffany Park and the former Franz Otto Matthiessen estate Long Meadow. Long Meadow, 2 Fargo Lane, is to the right and below the Daniel McElroy estate which is the site of today's Madame C.J. Walker historic Villa Lewaro off North Broadway. The Long Meadow mansion is next to the C in C.H. Matthiessen off the circular drive directly below the McElroy property. The former Tiffany Park is located to the right of the Long Meadow property between North Broadway and the Hudson River. The two former Dunham family houses facing each other on the former Harmony estate are noted on the circular drive to the right just left of North D (Dutcher) and North C (Cottenet) streets. They were later absorbed by C.L. Tiffany into Tiffany Park. The main mansion on the estate, first of Tiffany, then of the Matthiessens, is at the bottom of the circle to the immediate left of the facing Dunham houses. (George Washington Brumley, 1911. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection)

The Dunhams were related to the Tiffanys by marriage and their part of what became Tiffany Park was originally called Harmony.

In July 1945, Ralph H. Matthiessen, Charles’ son, donated the land that became Matthiessen Park to the Village of Irvington.

This is the mansion that graces the Long Meadow estate today. It was rebuilt in about 1929 for then-owner Erard Matthiessen, son of Conrad Henry Matthiessen, and is on part of an estate that has been the property of private owners dating back to the dawn of the Village of Dearman/Irvington, 1850, at least. Franz O. Matthiessen, the so-called “Sugar King,” had his original mansion on the same site.

Ralph Matthiessen was the founder of General Time Corp., once the country’s top maker of alarm and wall clocks under the brand names Westclox, Seth Thomas and Spartus.

The public Matthiessen Park property donated by Ralph Matthiessen and commonly known as "The Beach," to Irvington residents ever after, is located on largely reclaimed land on the river side of the tracks north of the Metro North train station on the Hudson River shoreline. It was dedicated on Sept. 9, 1945, exactly one week after the Japanese Empire surrendered to the Allied forces represented by U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

The park donation by the Matthiessens was commonly perceived as a bow to reality. The park was known to locals as “The Shore” since the original east-west Main Street and north-south A through G (Astor through Grinnell) streets had been carved out of the southern half of the historic Barent Dutcher farm to form Dearman in 1850. In 1854 the name was changed to Irvington to honor Washington Irving whose Sunnyside estate straddled West Sunnyside Lane.

The northern half of the Dutcher farm would include the later Matthiessen estates, Tiffany Park, Harmony and Long Meadow.

Academy Award-winning actors Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas are pictured at a 2012 Vanity Fair magazine party for the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan. The couple has owned Long Meadow since 2019. (Photo by David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons)

As “The Shore,” the beachfront area had been used for recreation by Irvington residents with the tacit permission of a succession of landowners since Dearman’s formation. The first improvements to “The Shore” were made by Conrad Matthiessen when he bought the land from the Tiffany family, but Matthiessen, annoyed by acts of vandalism, closed the property to the public for several years, reopening it only in June 1917 on a test basis and on an annual lease basis to the Village of Irvington.

After most of the Matthiessen estate was broken up and sold to various owners in the late 1940s and early 1950s, 12 acres and the original Long Meadow mansion, which had been almost completely rebuilt in 1929 remained.

This aerial view of Long Meadow lends perspective to the 12-acre property and mansion overlooking the Hudson River.

The Matthiessen family sold Long Meadow in 1941 to Capt. John H. Jones, formerly of Dobbs Ferry, who held on to the property until about 1955. The mansion and its 12 acres remained in private hands, most recently by Pamela Yablon, the widow of retired Forbes Inc. chief financial officer Leonard Yablon, who sold it to Academy Award-winning husband and wife actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones for $4.5 million in 2019. That was half the original asking price.

Douglas won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1987 for his performance as Gordon Gekko in the film “Wall Street.” Wales-born Zeta-Jones was named Best Supporting Actress for her work as Velma Kelly in the musical “Chicago” in 2002.

The couple moved to Irvington after selling their estate in Bedford Corners, N.Y. The couple in July 2021 listed their Manhattan penthouse overlooking Central Park West for $21.5 million.

Long Meadow's almost 12,000-square-foot mansion is sited off a private gated drive among acres of landscaped lawns and trees overlooking the Hudson River. 

The updated luxury home features 22 rooms -- eight bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, a solarium, a 45-foot indoor lap pool with views of the Hudson River, a two-story paneled library, a 2,500-square-foot master wing, tennis court, four-car garage, guest cottage and 80-foot terrace overlooking the river with views of the Palisades and the Tappan Zee Bridge. 

The property is located off Fargo Lane below the Old Croton Aqueduct State Historic Park, almost directly behind Madam C.J. Walker’s historic Villa Lewaro mansion on the river side of North Broadway.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Acreage amounts mentioned above regarding the properties discussed in this story reflect the best estimates available. Estimates vary with some sources including rights to acreage covered by the Hudson River. Long Meadow was historically referred to as encompassing 18 or 19 acres, while more recently it's been referred to as 12 acres The estimates in this story include only actual land, not land involving water rights. ...

... For another look at the Tiffany/Dunham/Matthiessen estates and the accomplished families that made them possible, I strongly recommend the following video presentation made in 2020 for the Irvington Historical Society by Irvington attorney and village history researcher Chet Kerr. ...

... The family of  writer and former Irvington resident PJ Manney once owned Long Meadow and made many of the renovations to the mansion seen today. She commented on a previous story I posted about the estate: "My parents, Richard and Gloria Manney, owned the property from 1983 to 1997(?). They built the front portico and extension to the 3rd floor, the extension to the south wing with the new master bedroom and library, and the pool inside the basement facing the river. Before my parents moved in while they were in later construction and decorating, a dozen of my friends and I would come up from work in NYC and camp in the house over the weekends. We called it Camp Manney. ... I was married there in 1989." ...

This is a contemporary look at the rear of Long Meadow taken from a real estate listing, ca. 2019. This is the side that looks out on the river. The mansion's pool runs inside the grey stone area on the bottom of the building. 

... Catherine Zeta-Jones (@catherinezetajones) regularly posts photos and videos of Long Meadow and her family and pets on Instagram for her nearly four million followers if you're interested in seeing more. ...