Midway through October, entry to
many of the city’s most important historic buildings was free to the general
public as part of Open House New York.
I took the opportunity to visit
the Morris-Jumel Mansion – Manhattan’s only remaining Colonial residence,
situated off 160th Street. The mansion’s museum is open throughout
the year, Tuesday-Sunday, with admission at $10 for adults, but, in honour of
Open House weekend, fees were waived and there were additional tours.
Built in 1765, the villa served
as George Washington’s headquarters during the Battle of Harlem Heights in 1776
and was also the location for a dinner party attended by Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Henry Knox in
1790.
It was this link to the
Revolutionary period that guaranteed the building’s survival, with the
Daughters of the American Revolution playing a vital role in the mansion’s
conservation in the early twentieth century - including some questionable
choices in restoration.
In the museum’s current
iteration, however, its custodians are looking to move away from the house’s
political significance and deck it out as it would have looked in the
nineteenth century, when it served as a family home to French wine merchant
Stephen Jumel and his formidable American wife, Eliza.
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| 'Washington's headquarters' |
Learning about Eliza Jumel is one
of the biggest draws for going to the mansion and taking a tour. Born Eliza
Bowen into a working class Irish Catholic family in 1775, she worked as a
domestic servant and an actress before going on to become one of the richest
American socialites of the nineteenth century.
She married Jumel in 1804 and the
pair bought the Morris Mansion in 1810. They were Bonapartists who claimed
(probably falsely) that several of the trappings still visible in the house
were gifts from Napoleon acquired during their trip to France in 1815.
After the death of her first
husband in 1832, Eliza quickly married former Vice President (and killer of
Alexander Hamilton) Aaron Burr. The pair soon separated, but, in a plot
straight from a Victorian novel, their divorce came through on the date of
Burr’s death in 1836 leading to legal wrangling over whether Eliza should be
treated as his ex-wife or widow.
Eliza’s own death – at age 90 in
1865 – was also followed by litigation, as there was a 17-year battle over her
sizeable estate. A portrait of Eliza along with the two claimants hangs on the
upper landing of the house, although one half of the painting was covered by a
curtain to hide the disowned party, during the later years of Eliza’s life.
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| The garden |
It’s a little strange to visit a
historical house where the interest is more often in possibilities than
certainties. The Morris-Jumel Mansion – fittingly given its great age for New
York - has become the centre point for a range of apocryphal stories, many
focused on Eliza.
The rooms are beautiful and will
look even better when they are further rearranged to reflect the Jumel era and
the anachronistic wallpaper in the mansion’s famous octagonal drawing room is
stripped away. If you find yourself that far uptown and looking for a slice of
truly old New York then take a tour of the Georgian country house – you won’t be
disappointed.
Where else in New York should the
Secret Victorianist visit? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by
tweeting @SVictorianist.
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