Items
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Topographic Map of the Esopus Property
A topographic map showing the topography of the 200 acre parcel of land purchased to build the Marist Preparatory School upon. -
West side -- tract C (near West Park Road--now Floyd Ackert Road)
liber 1198 pp 987 – 992 May 2, 1967 filed 17 May 1967 Grantor: Wiltwyck School for Boys, Inc., 260 Park Ave South, NYC Grantee: Walrus, Inc, 254 Fair Street, Kingston, New York conveys land known as parcel C west of route 9-W liber 1220 pp 451 - 453 5 Nov 1968 filed 8 Nov 1968 Grantor: Walrus, Inc., 254 Fair Street, Kingston, New York Grantees: Philip P. Hellriegel and James R Shields, both of P O Box 92 Esopus, Ulster County as tenants in common sale of parcel C west of route 9-W and railroad liber 1438 pp 88 - 92 29 October 1980 Grantor: US Small Business Administration Grantee: Peter Brill, Watergate Villas, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands sale of Wildwycke Village property liber 1559 pp 318 - 321 25 November 1985 Grantor: Peter Brill, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands Grantee: Charles P Bolton, of Cleveland, Ohio remainder of Payne land west of 9W -
West side -- tract B (employee cottages)
Liber 1198 pp 983 - 986 2 May 1067 Wiltwyck School to Walrus Liber 1218 pp 485 - 487 11 September 1968 Walrus to McLaren Liber 1240 pp 910 - 913 26 September 1969 McLaren to Conley, Petersen & Kelly Libers 1295 & 1297 dec 1972 to April 1973 Conley, Petersen & Kelly deeds to Black Creek Realty Liber 1366 pp 1059 circa 1976 Black Creek Realty to Fred Lafko -
West side -- tract A (barn buildings)
Liber 1198 pp 978-982 2 May 1967 Wiltwyck School to Walrus Inc Liber 1220 pp 448 - 450 5 Nov 1968 Walrus Inc to Hellriegel -
Logical View of the Payne Properties
These sections are not geographically correct. They are intended to describe the properties when Fuller purchased them for Oliver Hazard Payne. A: South section between Hudson River and route 9W - sold by Brothers in 1985 B: North section between Hudson River and route 9W - now Marist Brothers C: South section between route 9W and Floyd Ackert Road D: North section Beavers to Pell to Pratt to Payne E: Gravel hill located west of Floyd Ackert Road -
Official Payne Survey of 1910
liber 420 pp 376 - 379 January 5, 1909 recorded Sept 27, 1909 Grantor: Williamson W. Fuller and Annie M. Fuller his wife, city, county & state of New York Grantee: Oliver H. Payne, city, county & State of New York transfer of Neidlinger land to Payne liber 416 pp 267 – 270 29 December 1908 Grantor: Louise Neidlinger, George F. Neidlinger and Rudolf G. Neidlinger, as Executrix & Executors and Trustees under the last will and testament of Adam Neidlinger, late of West Park, Ulster County Grantee: Williamson W. Fuller, city of New York lot # 11 land from River to West Park-Dashville road and gravel hill liber 416 pp 270 - 273 28 December 1908 Grantees: Louise Neidlinger, widow of Adam Neidlinger, Elisabeth Weber, George P. Neidlinger, Emma Louise von Bernuth, Henry T Neidlinger and Emily Neidlinger and Rudolf G Neidlinger, children and heirs at law of said Adam Neidlinger, deceased Grantee: Williamson W. Fuller confirms previous grant -
Payne Property -- North Section
liber 420 pp 297 - 298 August 12, 1909 recorded September 18, 1909 Grantors: Anna T. Pratt and Elizabeth Comtesse de Gasquet James Of Dinard, France Granted: Williamson W. Fuller, city, county and state of New York transfer of entire Pratt land to Fuller liber 421 page 438 - 439 October 20, 1909 Grantor: Williamson W. Fuller and Annie M. Fuller, his wife, City, county & State of New York Grantee: Oliver H Payne, city, county & State of New York transfer of entire Pratt land to Payne -
Payne Estate - Southern Slice
liber 420 pp 376 - 379 January 5, 1909 recorded Sept 27, 1909 Grantor: Williamson W. Fuller and Annie M. Fuller his wife, city, county & state of New York Grantee: Oliver H. Payne, city, county & State of New York transfer of Neidlinger land to Payne liber 416 pp 267 – 270 29 December 1908 Grantor: Louise Neidlinger, George F. Neidlinger and Rudolf G. Neidlinger, as Executrix & Executors and Trustees under the last will and testament of Adam Neidlinger, late of West Park, Ulster County Grantee: Williamson W. Fuller, city of New York lot # 11 land from River to West Park-Dashville road and gravel hill liber 416 pp 270 - 273 28 December 1908 Grantees: Louise Neidlinger, widow of Adam Neidlinger, Elisabeth Weber, George P. Neidlinger, Emma Louise von Bernuth, Henry T Neidlinger and Emily Neidlinger and Rudolf G Neidlinger, children and heirs at law of said Adam Neidlinger, deceased Grantee: Williamson W. Fuller -
Barringer Service Station located on west side of 9W, just north of Black Creek Road
Liber 1409 of Deeds pages 997 - 998 22 September 1977 Lafko, Kelly & Levine to Fred Lafko Liber 1245 of Deeds page 1030 - 1031 3 June 1970 McLaren to Lafko, Kelly & Levine Liber 1237 pp 734-735 16 December 1969 Grantors: Lawrence Mascetti, Mary Mascetti and Robert McClean, of Manhattan, New York Grantee Lewis F. McLaren, of Esopus, New York Liber 1127 of Deeds pages 665 - 666 26 October 1961 Grantor Lawrence Henriques Grantees Lawrence Mascetti and Mary Mascetti and Robert McClean -
Lands conveyed to Nature Conservancy by Peter Brill
- liber 1459 pp 880 - 882 28 December 1981 Grantor Peter Brill Grantee: Nature Conservancy transfers 50 acres near Floyd Ackert Road - liber 1475 pp 1149 - 1151 15 December 1982 Grantor: Peter Brill Grantee: The Nature Conservancy conveys second 50 acres of land near Floyd Ackert Road parcels carved from western section near West Park Road, now called Floyd Ackert Road -
The Zabik Property
Liber 1283 of Deeds pp 101 - 104 31 July 1972 Wildwycke Villiage to Alexander and Fumiko Zabik Liber 1528 of Deeds pp 709 - 711 22 April 1985 Alexander and Fumiko Zabik to Andre Dionne -
Renovations to the Payne buildings
The Brothers made many renovations to the Payne buildings, but their major work was construction of the addition to the English Village in 1949-1954. They poured the foundations, and worked to supply the bricklayers as the cinder block and brick walls were erected. Two of the workers, Arnie Orlofsky and Armand ??? worked year round and acted as foremen for any cement work. Brother Augustine Landry took over the electric work; he was a Navy Veteran of World War II and had used his GI Bill to attend electrician school in Chicago. Professionals installed the steel; many of them were Mohawk Indians who walked fearlessly on the beams. -
Land
The lands from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries ought to be viewed as deriving their principal means of transportation from the Hudson River, not from the roads located at or near the current 9-W. Access to materials and supplies was through landings along the river, with supply boats stopping at each landing when signaled by the land owner. Recall also that there were two separate properties, so that the current river road did not exist until Payne purchased the properties. -
Patents
The only patent I could find for the area during the 1610-1664 was for Fox Hall, a small rectangle on the Hudson River, for which I have not been able to determine how it started nor how it passed out of existence. During the early British times, patents were granted for New-Paltz and Kingston, and later patents were granted for Hurley, Marbletown, and Rochester. Contra to the usual practice of granting huge acreage to favorites, these patents were granted to trustees who later distributed the lands to yeoman-type settlers who were determined not to become mere leasers from lords of manors. -
Martin Curtin
Martin Curtin (the grandson of Michael and Margaret Curtin, who lived in the gatehouse for many years. 4 February 2003. Marty visited his grandparents often). Enclosed is a picture of my grandfather, Michael Curtin, that my uncle sent us. It was taken in the living room at the gatehouse, at Esopus around 1969. With him is his grandson Tim. The pictures on the mantel are of his children: Bernard who became a Marist Brother; Viola who became a Sister of Charity, Sr. Miriam Therese; Michael, employee of American Airlines after his Air Force assignment; Claire (a reason my spelling of the county often gets messed up) who was a nurse; my father, Martin who worked for over 40 years for Pan American Airlines; and a son John who was a career serviceman and probably some of their kids. He brought some of them to my folks house when he moved in with them in the late 60's The gatehouse was quite a house. With its high ceilings, large pantry, large rooms, rooms in basement previously used for coal storage, and an old wringer used to get the water out of hand-washed clothes. It was a house that amazed. For one used to a Levitt house on Long Island, the gatehouse was a mansion. The gatehouse had four or five bedrooms upstairs with a bathroom and five or six rooms on the first floor. With an enormous basement, with several rooms there was ample place in the gatehouse to play hide and seek. The hallways were as large as small rooms. It had pushbutton electric switches, a manually lit gas stove, no washer or dryer. It was located within feet of Route 9W. At night you could image the trucks driving through the house. My grandfather maintained a garden off the back of the house. I think Br Felician must have provided him with the plants. -
Brother Mary Anthony
Brother Mary Anthony, called "Herbie" because of his resemblance to Herbert Hoover, was the jack of all trades. He was expected to keep all the systems going. This meant monitoring the water supply, drawn from the river and stored in a water tower north of the English Village. More importantly, he had to keep the furnaces going for heat and hot water. This meant transporting coal to the mansion, the English Village, the super's house, the gardener's cottage, and the gatehouse. In this he was assisted by the biggest boys in the group, which included my brother Peter and Jimmy Bree and others. Peter remembers delivering coal to the mansion through a chute in the yard behind the mansion. One time the coal in the bin suffered spontaneous combustion and the boys had to tote the coal out of the cellar to spread it out on the ground until the fire was completely out. Peter also remembers that we got the coal from a railroad car, but he was not one of the lucky ones to be sent out to the railroad to unload it. The usual means of transportation was Molly, an old dump truck, which broke down about as often as it ran. Brother Anthony was the mechanic and the plumber. To supplement the coal, we used wood from the many trees felled on the property. These were fat logs. Here again Brother Anthony was aided by the stronger young men among us, including my brother. Years afterward, Brother confided to me how difficult it had been. The lads would often miss the wedge with their sledgehammer, which resulted in a broken handle. New handles were impossible to purchase, so Brother Anthony would fashion them out of the limbs of fallen trees. Sometimes three or four handles would get broken in an afternoon's work period. One other fire supplement deserves mention. We inherited a Protestant Bible from the former owners. This book was larger than an unabridged dictionary. Out of reverence for the word of God, the boys were told to burn it in the furnace. Instead of tearing it up into little pieces, they threw the entire book in at once. During the night it put out the entire fire, and the dorms were extremely cold the following morning. -
Brother George Robert
Brother George Robert is a bit of a mystery to me. I don't remember him the first year, but he did teach us history in my second and third years. I think he was not well in 1942-1943 and we didn't see much of him. -
Brother Marie Feliciani
Brother Marie Feliciani was the gardener. He was a small man, who also had come over from rural southern France shortly after 1905. He governed the greenhouse, which at that time consisted of two bays of the original greenhouse. The center dome bay and the two western bays were gone. He tended flowers but mostly vegetables, which were destined for growing in the field across the road from the greenhouse. We also grew potatoes in the field where the pool is now situated, but Brother Anthony took care of that field. -
Brother John Patrick
Brother John Patrick was our prefect, which meant he was in charge of us whenever we were not at prayer or class or study. He ruled our recreation and dormitory and employment activities. He had grown up on the lower East Side of New York City. Baseball was his passion. As a teenager he had played semi-pro ball for several teams in several leagues, and this love carried over to us once we had ball fields. Today a lot of instruction involves teaching mechanics of batting, fielding and pitching. Brother John concentrated on the mental aspects of the game. If you were sitting on the bench, he never gave you a rest. Depending on the number of men on base and the number of outs, he would quiz you: what should the shortstop do if the ball is hit to his left? to his right? what does the third baseman do on a bunt? No time for daydreaming. -
Brother James Bernard
Brother James Bernard taught me freshman algebra. He was very quiet and we enjoyed a relaxed atmosphere. He may also have taught history. One week Brother Vincent Dominic, Brother Linus' blood brother, came to Esopus and taught the algebra class. Vincent was the diametric opposite of James: loud, excitable, demanding, but exciting. We learned a lot during that week, probably because we saw the same things from different perspective. -
Brother Kieran Thomas
Brother Kieran Thomas appeared on the scene with Brother James Bernard at lunch time when we were still eating in the super's house. He had a fierce look for his slight build. Probably he and James Bernard were furious and dismayed at being exiled to the Juniorate from a regular high school, but they were part of Linus' drive for young, superior teachers. He taught English to all three classes, and coached us for reading in the dining room, making us practice beforehand so that we knew the words and could pronounce them and hopefully read them aloud intelligently. He also acted as the basketball coach. -
Brother Edmund Alphonse
Brother Edmund Alphonse was a model of propriety. He was always well dressed, and when he drove off campus was dressed in his clergy suit with never a hair out of place. He drove a large black auto which had been donated by Archambeault, the undertaker in Lowell, Mass, who was very friendly with the Brothers. Gasoline being at a premium during the war, trips were made only when necessary: every day to pick up the priest from Mt St Alphonsus for Mass, and otherwise to purchase groceries and other items needed to run the place. Brother Edmund was the treasurer who had to run the place on a very limited funds, so we considered him a pinchpenny. He was also a fine organist, and taught us singing. We had singing in the oratory, the room in the southeast corner of the mansion which had lost its character (I later found out because the fine woodwork had been ordered painted over by Harry Payne Bingham's wife.) We would prepare the singing for Sunday's High Mass, and special items for Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, and other feast days. He lived in the mansion, with a large room in the northeast section of the second floor. The room was so big he used it to store non-food items; occasionally we would be sent there to pick up a can of cleanser or a mop and we would marvel at the size of the room. -
Brother Linus William
Brother Linus William came to us from the house of studies at Catholic University, where he studied for a masters in mathematics. He had a flair for the dramatic, and a temper to match. But he was also genuinely considerate of us all. He had grown up in the Irish section of Harlem and well understood the backgrounds of lower middle class boys like ourselves. Brother Linus' room was in the southeast corner of the second floor, probably Payne's master bedroom. Linus had set up a bedroom but a small office there. Usually you weren't called to meet him there, because that almost always meant you were in trouble... -
Magic Lantern
A stereopticon or magic lantern was discovered in the attic of the main house after the Marist Brothers purchased the property. -
The great hall at Whitehall.
The great hall at Whitehall. -
Whitehall
Whitehall, in Palm Beach, Florida, built for Henry Flagler by Carr�re and Hastings in 1902. -
Presbyterian Church
Flagler also commissioned Carr�re & Hastings to design the Presbyterian Church, built in 1889. A find example of Venetian Renaissance Architecture, the dome is more than one hundred feet high and is topped by a Greek cross that rises twenty feet above the dome. -
Ponce de Leon Hotel
Based on their work for the Ponce de Leon Hotel, Henry Flagler commissioned Carr�re & Hastings to design the Alcazar Hotel, now the Lightner Hotel and City Hall. -
The Ponce de Leon
Built in 1888, the Ponce de Leon now houses Flagler College, founded in 1968. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is acclaimed as one of the finest examples of Spanish Renaissance Architecture in America -
The Ponce de Leon Hotel
The Ponce de Leon Hotel in Saint Augustine Florida was the first major work of Carr�re & Hastings after they broke away from McKim, Mead and White. -
Townhouse at 690 Park Avenue
Harry Payne Bingham owned the townhouse at 690 Park Avenue, just opposite Hunter College The townhouse now serves as the Italian Consulate. -
The corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street
Oliver Payne purchased and gave the Stetson townhouse on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street currently occupied by Bulgari, to his favorite sister, Flora Payne Whitney. This cross street is now the most expensive rental for retail space in New York City. Bergdoff-Goodman, Bulgari and Tiffany occupy three of the corners; new construction is in progress on the fourth -
Temple Emmanuel
Temple Emmanuel now occupies the space along Fifth Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets once occupied by the townhouse of John Jacob Astor. The townhouse was designed by Carr�re & Hastings -
Oliver Payne gave Payne Whitney the land along Fifth Avenue near 79th street for his own residence. The building was designed by McKim,
Oliver Payne gave Payne Whitney the land along Fifth Avenue near 79th street for his own residence. The building was designed by McKim, Mead and White. Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company designed the grand staircase. Click on photo for more details. -
This place houses the delegation from Serbia and Montenegro.
The tiny townhouse between the Ryan and Payne sites gives a glimpse of what they may have looked like. This now houses the delegation from Serbia and Montenegro. Note police kiosk on sidewalk. Payne paid $1,528.98 to the Park Department for the land occupied by the projecting bay of his house on Fifth Avenue.