Excerpts from Elizabeth Burroughs-Kelly "Esopus and West Park", in Town of Esopus History

for private viewing only ...  not to be published

Though Civil War Major General John E. Wool bought property at West Park, there is no record of his having lived here; however, four other high ranking Civil War officers did have homes here and all in an area beside the Hudson less than a mile long. They are Colonel George Watson Pratt, Brigadier General John Jacob Astor, Brigadier General Oliver Hazard Payne, and Major General Daniel Butterfield, Had Colonel Pratt not died in the early days of the War, it is most likely he too would have been a Brigadier General for he was a young man of great ability. The only son of Colonel Zadock Pratt, who had a distinguished career and founded Prattsville, N. Y., George Pratt was a brilliant scholar. He traveled and studied in Europe and the Holy Land and is said to have mastered sixteen languages including Arabic. Here in Ulster County he was widely known as the founder and first secretary of the Ulster County Historical Society. He began his military career as Captain in the 28th Militia, of which his father was Commander. He was soon promoted to Colonel and in 1853 was made Quartermaster of the State of New York. Five years later he became Colonel of the 20th New York State Militia and gave it the nickname "Ulster Guard" as this regiment was from Ulster and Greene Counties. When the War began, he bore with his regiment all the hardships of the campaign in Virginia. In the Unit's first major engagement at the second battle of Bull Run on August 30, 1862, he was mortally wounded and died twelve days later, only thirty-two years old. 

Colonel Pratt's father had the biggest tannery in the country and he had already taken over some of his father's business. In 1859 he and his wife, after having lived in Kingston for several years, bought 180 acres of land the Pells owned at West Park with the Federal Period house. For nearly half a century his widow made this her home. She was interested in the local children --  her only son died at the age of ten -- and used to give picnic parties for them on her property's boat landing. At her own expense she had the minister of the Esopus Methodist Church give them lessons in speech. In 1909, having moved to France to be near her daughter, who had married the Count de Gasquet James of Dinard, she sold her property to Colonel Payne.

When the Pratts came to West Park they had as their neighbors the John Jacob Astors.  Astor was the grandson of the founder of the family, who at the age of twenty-one had arrived on these shores penniless and when he died was the richest man in the United States.  Since it was at Waldorf in Germany that the founder was born, young Astor gave that name to his estate at West Park.  John Jacob Astor III was twenty-nine years old when he bought these 80 acres at West Park in 1851.  He had relatives living at Hyde Park since his grandfather, eleven years before, had bought the estate later purchased by Frederick W. Vanderbilt (1894) and now a National Historic Site, and had given it to Colonel Astor's aunt and her family. For many years it was the home of Astor's first cousin, Walter Langdon. This may be the reason Astor bought the place at West Park, less than a mile away (by boat) for his summer residence. Later Colonel and Mrs. Astor moved to the more fashionable Newport where they are said to have entertained lavishly. Their only son, who became American Ambassador to Italy, made his home in England, where members of this family still live.

Colonel Astor was a well-educated man who had studied at Columbia University and the Harvard Law School in this country and at Gottingen University in Germany. Since much of the family wealth was in real estate, his life had to be devoted to leases and lawsuits, buildings and rentals, and he once said that the only exciting years of his existence were those of the Civil War. When war broke out, Astor volunteered and became a full-fledged Colonel on Major General McClelland's staff in the Army of the Potomac. At the end of the War, Astor was brevetted a Brigadier General, but he preferred his Colonelcy. He died in 1890. Like his grandfather before him, he was the richest man in America, a super-millionaire.

For eighteen years, Waldorf at West Park was the Astors' summer home. It had belonged to the Pells, who once owned much land at West Park and Esopus. In 1840 it was purchased from the Pells by Archibald Russell, who had come to this country from Scotland four years before and settled in New York City. In the National Cyclopedia of American Biography he is listed as a lawyer and a philanthropist. An Episcopalian, he was one of the first vestrymen of the Ascension Church, which his mother-in-law, Mrs. Anna Rutherford Watts, paid to have built. His son, Archibald Douglas Russell, was a financier and a philanthropist also. When the Russells sold this place to the Astors,  with the boat landing which they had obtained the right to build,  they bought other land at West Park. This included a large tract of woodland in the Black Creek area known for some time as the Russell Woods and also the Glen Albyn estate already mentioned.

Was the Waldorf house the Russells' with Astor additions, or was it built by the Astors? It was an imposing brick and stone mansion which had twenty-three rooms, with six in the servants' wing. The columns both at the entrance and on the porch on the north side had Corinthian capitals of the Late Greek Revival Period. The marble pillars in the high-ceilinged hall as seen in an old photograph of the interior of the house had Corinthian capitals also. Other photographs show the large drawing-rooms with the rosewood and plush furniture in fashion at that time and the elegant decor.  In 1910 when the mansion was razed these furnishings were moved to another house as will be explained later. The only building on the estate that remains from this period is the stone reservoir, of several thousand barrels' capacity, that resembles a fort. The driveways and garden paths do date from this period as well as some of the old trees such as the copper beeches.

In 1869 Colonel Astor sold Waldorf for $40,000, a large sum for those days. The new owner was Alexander Holland, a wealthy New York businessman. Fifteen years later it was bought by Adam Neidlinger, another mufti-millionaire, who had come to New York from Germany when he was twenty years old. His brother, who invented the flat-sided sewing-machine needle, made a fortune in the Singer Sewing Machine Company; he made his from the malting industry, of which he became the recognized leader in the country, and from his four big icehouses, one of which was situated at Rondout. Mr. Neidlinger, a friendly, neighborly man, was highly esteemed by all who knew him. A considerable amount of money had already been spent on the place he bought at West Park. He added 216 acres to it and spent many thousands of dollars more on improving it with more gardens, paths, and landscaping. It was surely one of the most beautiful in the area, with its gardens, pavilions, lawns, and terraces, and its views of the river.

The Waldorf of the Astors in 1909 became the property of another Civil War Veteran and a multi-millionaire, Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne. Unlike Colonel Astor he did not inherit a great fortune. Colonel Payne's father was a United States senator from Ohio, who set him up in business, and all the millions Colonel Payne had he made through his own efforts. He was twenty-one years old and at Yale University when the Civil War began and he left college to join the Union Army. He entered as a First Lieutenant in the 124th Infantry and rose rapidly to the rank of Colonel. At the close of the War he was brevetted Brigadier General, but like Astor, he preferred his Colonelcy.

After the War he returned to his home in Cleveland and began to engage in extensive activities in both the iron industry and the pioneer field of oil refining. A company he formed in partnership with two others was the chief competitor of the Standard Oil Company, organized by John D. Rockefeller. When his firm became consolidated with Standard Oil, he was made treasurer of the latter and remained in that capacity for a dozen years. He had financial interests in other corporations and was one of ten men who owned the controlling interests of the American Tobacco Company. Having made a fortune at an early age, Colonel Payne turned his attention to philanthropy and gave away large sums to several universities, the New York Public Library, and other Institutions. In his later years he had a town house at 852 Fifth Avenue in New York and an estate at Thomasville, Georgia, where he spent the winter months. In 1898 he built the yacht Aphrodite, on which he took trips to Europe. The largest American steam yacht at the time, it was also America's most beautiful yacht with its graceful lines and clipper bow and its staterooms designed by Stanford White, one of New York's foremost architects. After the Colonel bought his place at West Park it was a familiar and lovely sight on the Hudson.

As Colonel Payne also bought the adjoining Pratt property along with Neidlinger's he had over 400 acres of land here. Besides the two mansions, there were various service buildings and cottages on what had been two big estates. He rebuilt some and added others, using stone quarried on the place. Among these were the new boat house with its handsome grille work, the buildings of the chicken farm, and the large barns, for all of which Julian Burroughs was the architect. Planning these and watching the construction gave Colonel Payne new interest and pleasure in his last years. The original Waldorf mansion was razed and replaced by a white building for which the architect was Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings of New York, a firm which also designed the Frick Museum and the New York Public Library. Unfortunately, for Colonel Payne's mansion they used imported limestone which does not weather well in this climate. In a book about the Hudson, Carl Carmer calls this house Victorian but Victorian hardly describes it nor are the grounds statue-strewn as he says, for there is no ornamentation anywhere to mar the natural beauty of the setting. The white limestone building is two stories high, with a red tile roof, and has balustrades and balconies and a piazza with columns on the east side and a columned entrance at the north.

Like the Italian palace from which it was copied, this house is built around a large open court with green shrubs and tile paving and a fountain in the center. On the walls of the court were painted frescoes, one of which showed a medieval garden where ladies were strolling; on another, the winged horse of the Muses with a youth beside a pool. The name of the artist has been lost. In the mansion's spacious rooms much Circassian walnut, richly carved, was used for wall panels, doors and trim. The dining room, on the sunny south side, had walls of teak-wood, also carved. The music room, on the southeast corner, was paneled in ebony with gold tracery. Here were paintings by Turner and a display of Ming porcelains, some white, some apple-green. The long drawing room across the front, with marble pillars at each end, had French windows opening on the piazza and terrace. On the opposite wall were hung two large paintings: Rubens'  "Venus and Adonis" and Courbet's  "Les Demoiselles de Village". The former is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the latter, in the City Art Gallery, Leeds, England. In this room was a Della Robbia, and in the library, a bust by Houdon.   There were also paintings by other artists. None of the other mansions along the Hudson had such a valuable art collection, not even Vanderbilt's across the river. The twelve fireplaces in the mansion are of different kinds of imported marble. The stairs and some of the floors are also marble. Other floors are tile or parquet. The ceilings on the ground floor are fifteen feet high and are of intricately molded plaster. In the library the walls above the bookcases are covered with leather panels. This room has a ceiling with walnut beams. Of all the houses built by millionaires on the Hudson, this was the most luxurious. It was also the last of its kind.

The house on the Pratt property was kept for the home of his superintendent. Most of the furnishings of the Neidlinger house, the Waldorf of the Astors, were saved and were placed in the Pratt house. When the Colonel's first superintendent, Andrew Mason, died as the result of an automobile accident and in 1913 Julian Burroughs became superintendent, Burroughs and his wife and three children moved from their Riverby home to this house on Colonel Payne's estate. For the maintenance of so big a place and for all the construction that was going on, a large staff of craftsmen, mechanics, gardeners, and skilled laborers was required. The estate gave employment to many people and thus was a boon for the community. These were good days for West Park and Esopus.

The Colonel never married and at his death in 1917 the estate went to one of his nephews, Harry Payne Bingham. Mr. Bingham in 1933 turned it over to the City Mission Society of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York. Charles Osberg, who had been with Colonel Payne, was left in charge. Some of the buildings were used as convalescent homes for men and women, and what had been known as the English Village, a group of stone cottages for employees on the site of Mrs. Pratt's estate manager's house, ultimately became a school. At first, for several years the Mission had a summer camp here for boys, a new group every two weeks. The boys built wigwams in the woods and swam in Black Creek. Marshall Field III of Chicago and his sister gave $60,000 for a gym and for accommodations for the camp counselors at the stone buildings of the Colonel's chicken farm. The big stone barns were used as a dormitory. The school was begun in 1937 under the Mission as a shelter for neglected and delinquent Black Protestant boys, eight to twelve years of age, for whom there were no programs other than the State Training Schools. Twenty such boys sent here to an experimental camp the preceding year had responded so well to a healthy, happy summer of activity and friendly guidance that it was decided to operate an all-year school at West Park for such children. A new heating plant for these buildings on the former Colonel Payne estate provided by the Altman Foundation made this possible.

Early in the history of the school the Agency helped to secure local legislation to end discrimination against Black children and then opened its doors to children without regard to race, color, or religion. The name chosen for the school was Wiltwyck, the old Dutch name of Kingston. Floyd Patterson, the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion in 1960-1962, had been at this school; so the building in the city used by the school as a half-way house for boys returning to New York from West Park has been named for him. In May, 1942, the Wiltwyck School for Boys was incorporated with the approval of the State Department of Social Welfare. As reorganized, it was administered by an interracial and nonsectarian Board of Directors. The staff at the School was also interracial and the School was successfully integrated. Religious instruction for the Catholic children in the School was given by the Marist Brothers at West Park. Commencing in 1953 the School began to care exclusively for emotionally disturbed children and the program was now reorganized to provide individual case work and direct therapy where needed.  But the location of Wiltwyck, eighty miles from New York City, added to the difficulty of recruiting and holding properly qualified staff so a search was begun for a new location. In 1962 by the unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals a zoning restriction was removed to permit the School to move to a 112 acre site at Yorktown Heights. The transfer was made in 1966. The new campus was named for Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, who took an active part in the leadership of the School after its reorganization in 1942 and served as Campaign Chairman of a Building and Development fund for the new campus. For financial reasons, it was necessary to close this campus in 1977, but the School is still operating the Centers it established in the South Bronx, Harlem, and Brownsville.

In 1968, the School sold the 244 acres it had owned of Colonel Payne's estate on the west side of the highway to Philip Hellreigel, who operated here the complex of shops and restaurant that he called Wildwycke Village. Four years later Lieutenant Colonel A. J. Zabik, retired from the Air Force, bought the 13 acres in the southeast corner. What had been Colonel Payne's chicken farm with its stone buildings then became Medrex Limited.  This is a firm which provides microfilming service to hospitals in the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. It employs approximately fifty-five of the local citizens. Currently, the Colonel's barns are owned by the Government, and a caretaker and his wife live in what was Mr. and Mrs. Hellreigel's apartment. There have been three other schools in these school buildings: the Esopus Preparatory, which moved to New York after one year, the McLaren School, and the Mill Stream School, of brief duration.

In 1942 all that part of the estate at West Park owned by the Episcopal City Mission which lay between the public highway and the Hudson was bought by the Marist Brothers. For twenty years they had a Preparatory School here. At first, when there were about 65 students, they used the mansion, now converted into a Religious House, for the classrooms, dining room, and chapel, and the complex of stone buildings, where some of the employees had lived, for the dormitories. For ten years the superintendent's house was also used. The engine room in the complex was made into a gym and the meadows below the Pratt house were cleared and leveled for playing fields for hockey, baseball, and tennis.  When in 1952 it was decided to enlarge the school to accommodate 150 students, the east side of the complex was renovated and a new building was added to it with dormitory facilities, private rooms for the faculty, a recreational room, and a large gym. The original gym then became the chapel. What had been Colonel Payne's garage was converted into the kitchen, and the carriage house, into the dining room. The Brothers themselves did most of the manual work of construction. A few years ago, a swimming pool was built near the complex. In 1963 the Preparatory School was moved to Cold Spring and this property became the Novitiate until 1967. It then became a House of Studies for high school graduates who attended the neighboring colleges and lived a community life here.

Since 1971 there have been no students here and the property has been converted into a Retreat Center. Since the summer of 1973 the facilities have been used for various recreational programs. During the months of June and July the buildings of the former school are use for underprivileged handicapped boys and girls who come from City schools, about 80 or 90 each week. This is the only place in the State with a camp for deaf children.  They are cared for by teenage volunteers who act as counselors. During August there is a sports camp for boys co-sponsored by college basketball coaches.  Throughout the year the mansion is used as a Retreat House.  The Brothers in residence maintain the buildings and grounds and some teach in neighboring schools.  About twenty years ago a cemetery was built here where all Marist Brothers in the United States are buried.

References:
Elizabeth Burroughs Kelley,  Town of Esopus Story 3000 BC - 1978 AD, "Esopus and West Park", pp 109 - 148    Excerpts concerning the Payne property,  pp 134-138, copyright 1979 by Town of Esopus Bicentennial Commission.

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