The Chronicle

A Publication of FALL 2011

Even in the 1890s, tennis was popular in Bronxville.

Bronxville, New York

INSIDE
Field Trip Of Ideas Bryn Athyn tour a gift for the eyes and mind. Over There Is Now Over Here WWI poster collection at the Bronxville Public Library. GRRRRRRRRR! Two Charles R. Knight paintings on display at the Library. A Tradition That Keeps On Giving! Hudson Cruise to Boscobel one of the best. A Village Partnership The Conservancys continuing generosity at work. Out Of Print Is Back In Print: Building A Suburban Village, Again available and a perfect gift. Making Memorial Day More Memorable. Conservancy involvement a tradition. Bronxvilles Past Is Alive And Well. Local History Room Shines thanks to the Conservancy.

2011 Historic House Tour

By Dale Walker

n Sunday afternoon, November 6, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., the Bronxville Historical Conservancy is proud to host its 2011 Historic House Tour of 22 Elm Rock Road. This is a members-only event.

With the original structure strongly echoing the classic Greek Revival lines of Alexander Mastertons nearby Ridgecroft, this unique mid-nineteenth-century house boasts twentieth-century additions by Lewis Bowman and is set on one of the largest parcels of residential land in the village. Surrounded by old-growth trees and beautiful gardens, it is situated well back from the road that was carved through the woods by Masterton over 165 years ago. This well loved home provided comfortable living for its earliest recorded residents, the DeWitts, who arrived in 1855 and whose family owned extensive land in and around Bronxville. If walls could talk, one might hear stories of the California Gold Rush, Victorian poetry or the ever-unfolding history of todays owners who are celebrating their familys 50th year in this special place. Mysteries and delight await all who pass through the homes stately columns and into its welcoming halls. Please join us! RSVP by November 1to Dale Walker (738-3130) or at events@bronxvillehistoricalconservancy.org.
Following the House Tour, The Bronxville Historical Conservancys Annual Meeting/Reception will be held at 4:45 p.m. at the Bronxville Field Club. All Conservancy members are invited.

Photo credit: Nancy Vittorini

BrynAthynHistoricTour: ASuccessfulExchangeofIdeas

ATTIC TREASURES
Mark your calendars for a special evening featuring the Bronxville Public Librarys extensive World War I poster collection. Nine works have been carefully restored and framed under the direction of Sean Abbott, former Library Board president, and are on permanent view in the Yeager Room. The collection of about 80 pieces, rolled up in two dusty boxes, was discovered in the Library attic in 1999 when the building was dismantled for renovation and expansion. On November 10, the Conservancy
One of the WWI posters on view at the LIbrary

By Liz Folberth

n Saturday, May 7, 2011, forty Bronxville Historical Conservancy members traveled to beautiful, historic Bryn Athyn on the outskirts of Philadelphia, boyhood home of longtime Bronxville resident Brent Pendleton, and recently designated a National Historic Landmark. Guided tours were provided by the extraordinary Bryn Athyn education staff on a lovely spring day. Brent traveled with the group and provided insights into and anecdotes of his life there, making the day even more enjoyable. In a recent interview, Brent explained how important the Conservancy visit was, to him and to the Bryn Athyn staff. For me it was a very unusual event, an almost surreal feeling, said Brent. Ive lived in Bronxville for 40 years, so it was as if I were taking people from my Brent Pendleton accepting the Landmark Historic hometown to Designation for Bryn Athyn. meet people from my hometown. While being the interlocutor, alongside the tour guides, Id often forget that everybody didnt know everybody else! The group toured three of the buildings on the estate: Cairnwood (the original home of John Pitcairn, where Brent grew up), Glencairn (now a museum) and the

Bryn Athyn Cathedral (pictured below, the episcopal seat of a Christian denomination known as the New Church). As he listened to three different guides interpret Bryn Athyn history, Brent realized one of the benefits of the Conservancys visit.

will present a program that includes a talk by Sarah Lawrence College professor Fred Smoler on the significance of propaganda posters during the First World War, and a demonstration by Conservancy board member Jack Bierwirth of the contents of his grandfathers trunk containing war materiel. A reception will follow. Watch for details in the mail.

I know most of the guides, but I dont regularly go on tours, said Brent, so I learned a lot from them and they learned something from me. Theyre young people so they asked me about my memories from the 40s and 50s, playing in the tower, being a teenager in a small cloistered community. I watched the last towers, annexes and cloisters built. I remember the chink of stone hammers, the roar of pneumatic drills and the clop of Belgian horses, pulling large stones from the quarry. I thought all that was normal! Over the past 15 years, Cairnwood has recovered from a time of neglect. Now, as a non-profit organization owned by the Academy of the New Church, it has blossomed into a sustainable and even profitable enterprise. With a small professional staff and a Board of volunteers (chaired by Brent), Cairnwood works with the other buildings in the Historic District to open windows to this small Swedenborgian community. The Conservancys visit was a learning experience on both sides, said Brent. They gave us good feedback on how to do things better, expanding our outreach to the world around us. It was a good learning curve for folks in Bryn Athyn and really juiced up their enthusiasm.
Cairnwood, the original home of John Pitcairn, where Brent Pendleton grew up,

MORE TREASURES
Beginning November 15, two large paintings by former Bronxville artist Charles R. Knight will be on view in the Bronxville Public Librarys Yeager Room. The works are on extended loan from Rhoda Knight Kalt, the artists granddaughter. In March of next year, the Conservancy is planning a program to coincide with the long-awaited publication of Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time (Abrams 2012) by Richard Milner. Watch for details.

Thursday, November 10 7:00-8:30 p.m. Yeager Room Bronxville Public Library

Hudson Cruise To Boscobel A Big Success

By Bill Dowling
Benjamin West Frazier and a grant of $500,000 from Lila Acheson Wallace, co-founder of the Readers Digest. The newly restored house was opened to the public in 1961.The building, which has been authentically restored under the guidance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, contains an important collection of decorative arts from the Federal period with furniture by Duncan Phyfe and other well recognized New York cabinet makers. The staff of Boscobel was very professional and extremely knowledgeable and created a quality experience for Conservancy members. Many considered this cruise to be one of the best of the Conservancys 11 boat trips and the weather, which had been forecast as rain, was bright and sunny, creating a perfect day. Many thanks to our Boat Cruise Committee, Judy Unis, Bob Riggs and Marilynn Hill, for their time and effort to make this years cruise one of the best.

n September 25, the Conservancys fall cruise again took us north on the Hudson River for a private tour of Boscobel House and Gardens in Garrison, NY. We departed from the Yonkers pier at 11:30 a.m. on the Seastreak, sailed past West Point, circled around Bannermans Castle and arrived at the dock in Cold Spring at 1:00 p.m. A lovely lunch and dinner were served on our round trip, catered by Tuzzios, who has provided quality food service for all 11 of the Conservancys cruises. The Boscobel house and gardens are on 68 acres on the east bank of the Hudson overlooking West Point. Considered one of the nations leading historic house museums, Boscobel is a neoclassical mansion begun in 1804 by States Morris Dyckman and completed by his widow Elisabeth Corne Dyckman in 1808. The house was almost destroyed in the 1950s and was moved from its original location to its present one and fully restored thanks to the vision of

Photos by Bill Dowling

A VILLAGE PARTNERSHIP
By Marilynn Hill and Nancy Vittorini
hen the Bronxville Historical Conservancy was created in 1998 and its mission statement was written, the Conservancy articulated the many ways it hoped to inspire and assist local history lovers to be engaged with Bronxvilles history. Among those was encouraging and advancing the work of the Village Historian.

Building A Suburban Village Reprinted

Bronxvilles Popular 352-Page History Is Once Again Available.

This years one-time grant of $2500 to fund the Village Historians position during a tight village budget year when its funds have been eliminated altogether is only one of many grants over the past 13 years that have been given to the Local History Room, contributions that have been a central part of our partnership with the Village Historian in advancing the appreciation and understanding of local history. One of the first acts of the Conservancy at its founding was to give to the Local History Room (LHR) the income from the sale of the remaining inventory of the 1998 first printing of the Centennials Building A Suburban Village. This became part of a special fund that has allowed the Historian to make purchases for and upgrade aspects of the archives beyond what the village budget would have permitted even in its best years. Among the special funds 2004 purchases were a Dell computer and a flat screen monitor which allowed the Historian to create indexes, view CDs, and do online searches and other business necessary to the office. In 2003 additional BHC funds assisted with the costs of a photo project of black and white streetscape images, including those taken by Fielding Bowman, son of noted Bronxville architect Lewis Bowman.

The largest grant ever underwritten by the Conservancy for the LHR was a 2005 color photography project that took a couple of years to complete. Using the talents of a professional architectural photographer, hundreds of images of the village were taken throughout the year to capture the life and extraordinary physical form of Photo by Judith Watts Wilson Bronxville in the new century. The final portfolio of approximately 300 photographs complements earlier collections by noted photographers from the late-19th and early-20th centuries. As a follow-up project, selections from the 2005 portfolio were enlarged and framed to provide a permanent public exhibition of contemporary village images on the lower floor of Village Hall. In 2006, the BHC funded a pilot newspaper indexing grant to enable the Village Historian to hire a summer intern who spent hundreds of hours on a software program creating a 180-page newspaper computer index for a year-long period in the 1920s. Other projects the Conservancy has financed for the LHR include: the reframing of a painting by former Bronxille artist Anna Winegar that is owned by and hangs in the history room; the purchase of important books whose bookplates recognize major Conservancy donors; and the funding of equipment necessary to convert to DVD format 15 years of the television program, A Living History of Bronxville. The most recent gift to the LHR was a year of funding to print an archival hard copy of the weekly editions of the on-line newspaper Myhometownbronxville.com. These are now available in the LHR newspaper collection for future reference. The grant also provided for the weekly printing of a second copy for use in the library's reference room.

he Bronxville Historical Conservancy's long-awaited reprinted edition of the critically acclaimed Building A Suburban Village is now available for purchase. Originally produced to mark the village's centennial year in 1998, this meticulously researched and documented history details the development of Bronxville, neighborhood by neighborhood, from a sparsely settled nineteenth-century farm community to one of the nation's premiere metropolitan suburbs.

The 352-page volume, researched and written by 33 local historians, including editor and Village Historian Eloise Morgan, features essays on each neighborhood as well as nearly 300 new and vintage photographs. A dozen custom designed maps show the decade in which every Bronxville residence was completed. This beautiful and informative reprinted edition was commissioned by the Bronxville Historical Conservancy and is available for purchase on our website, www.bronxvillehistoricalconservancy.org, or at Womrath's Bookstore. It makes a great gift for anyone interested in Bronxville history.

A Memorable Memorial Day

Memorial Day Weekend in Bronxville has always been an important opportunity for family, friends and neighbors to enjoy the village at its best. The year 2011 was no exception. There is always a lot to see and do, thanks, in part, to the Bronxville Historical Conservancy. As we have for years, we helped lead the annual parade through the village and assembled a stunning array of antique automobiles that gave young and old a fascinating glimpse into the past. During the post-parade ceremony at the Bronxville school, BHC co-chair Robert Wein represented our organization in placing a wreath at the base of the flagpole. While these activities traditionally have been part of our village festivities, in 2011, for the second year, we sponsored the Cues and Clues Scavenger Hunt for children K-5. Kids were challenged to find the selected historic paintings that hang in the Bronxville Public Library and then to do their own "prize winning" drawings. In addition, we are proud to have co-sponsored the Bronxville Veterans Memorial and the Hero Next Door Exhibits. For the first time, these exhibits were displayed in the Bronxville School and were visited by generations of Bronxville families.

Photograph by Fielding Bowman

The Conservancys work with the Village Historian is only one way in which the BHC has tried to fulfill its mission of furthering the understanding and appreciation of the villages architectural, artistic, and cultural heritage. Through our many other programs, publications, lectures and public events, we also hope we are helping to make local history as well as preserve and appreciate it.

CONSERVANCY SUPPORTS LOCAL HISTORY ROOM

By Eloise L. Morgan, Village Historian

When budget woes led the Village of Bronxville to eliminate funding for its Local History Room this year, the Bronxville Historical Conservancy came to the rescue. A one-time $2,500 grant from the Conservancy has allowed the History Room, operated by Village Historian Eloise L. Morgan, to continue its acquisition and preservation activities. Among the new acquisitions made with the grant is the 1890s cabinet card photo of Bronxville tennis players shown at right. This sepia-toned image was photographed by Frederick Sprenger, a Bronxville resident who took some of the earliest pictures of the village. It is similar to a photograph of a tennis team posed outside of the old Dusenberry-Masterton House at 90 White Plains

Road, which has been part of the History Room archives for decades. The tennis players in that photo include members of several of the villages earliest familiesthe Dusenberrys, Underhills, Mastertons, Smiths and Bacons. This newly-acquired image was photographed at a different location and, although it also features distinctive striped tennis costumes, seems to depict only a few of the same individuals. Other purchases supported by the Conservancy grant include a 1916-17 Directory of Bronxville and other towns along the Harlem Railroad, and a copy of the 1925 New York State census of Bronxville. The Directory lists village residents alphabetically, with street addresses and occupations. It is the earliest comprehensive village directory owned by the History Room (another in the collection dates from 1929-30). Together with the 1925 census records, it significantly expands the History Rooms resources on early village residents. The History Room, located at the Bronxville Library, is open by appointment. To contact the Village Historian with inquiries, email rcmelm@aol.com.

The Chronicle
Fall 2011
Editors: Liz Folberth, Bob Scott Designer: Ken Gudaitis Contributing Editors: Liz Folberth, Marilynn Hill, Jayne Warman, Eloise Morgan, Dale Walker, Bill Dowling Contributing Photographers: Nancy Vittorini, Jayne Warman, Bill Dowling, Marilynn Hill Submissions welcome!

P. O. Box 989 Bronxville, NY 10708 The Bronxville Historical Conservancy was founded in 1998 to further the understanding and appreciation of the history and current life of the Village of Bronxville, New York. The Conservancy furthers its mission through the presentation of programs, publications, lectures and special events that foster an awareness of the villages architectural, artistic and cultural heritage and lends its support for projects designed to strengthen and preserve those legacies.