The Lost William Bayard House - 82 Jane Street

By the time this etching was made row houses had crowed in around the former country home, and the hip roof was updated to a peaked roof.  from the collection of the New York Public Library

The Bayard family had deep roots in America.  The first arrival was Ann Stuyvesant Bayard, sister of Director-General Peter Stuyvesant.  She landed in New Amsterdam in 1647, approximately the same year her husband, Samuel Bayard, died.

Nicholas Bayard owned thousands of acres of land outside of Manhattan by the end of the 17th century.  He established an estate near what would become Greenwich Village around 1691 and erected a fine home there.  The farm was acquired by William Bayard sometime before 1770.

William Bayard, who was born in 1729, was married to Catharine McEvers.  The couple had three children, Samuel Vetch, William Jr., and Mary.  The family used the three-acre farm overlooking the Hudson River as their "country seat."  Most wealthy New Yorkers maintained summer estates, sometimes called farms, where they could escape the stifling heat and smells of the city. 

The Bayard farm abutted the Ludlow estate.  Jane Street, a country lane running essentially east-west which lead to the Jayne Farm, separated the two properties—Bayard’s being to the north and Ludlow’s on the south.

The clapboard house Nicholas Bayard had constructed was fronted--as were nearly all country homes--by a long porch, or veranda, where cooling breezes could be enjoyed.  A hipped roof, typical of Dutch design, provided an ample attic level.

from Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Family History of New York, 1907 (copyright expired)

The sumptuous nature of Bayard’s home was hinted at when newspapers reported on a lightning strike to the residence on June 10, 1775:  

Last Sunday week the House of William Bayard, Esq., at Greenwick [sic], was struck by Lightning, which occasioned considerable damage.  In several apartments large Pier glasses were broken, and a quantity of silver plate contained in a chest was pierced and otherwise affected without doing the least injury to the chest.

It may have been at this time that the house was given a sensitive Georgian makeover.  The Dutch roof was replaced with a peaked version, with a classic gable and dormers.  Otherwise it kept its original appearance, including the welcoming veranda.

Bayard had been elected to the 1765 Stamp Act Congress and he served on the committee that drafted a protect to Parliament against taxation without representation.  But  his passion for colonists' rights did not extend so far as rebellion.  When the American Revolution broke out he remained a Loyalist--to the point that in 1776 he aided the British soldiers who occupied New York.

Whether history brands one a hero or a scoundrel depends on which side wins the war.  In Bayard's case it did not go well.  On March 6, 1777 the Provincial Congress appointed Commissioners to "take into their custody & possession all the personal property" of loyalists with ten days' notice.  The families were allowed to keep their clothing, a few pieces of furniture and three months' provisions.  Everything else was sold at public auction.  

The Bayard farm was confiscated and sold to Dr. Charles McKnight.   And then, according to historian William Smith Pelletreau in his cumbersomely titled 1907 book Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Family History of New York, "It was probably purchased from him by William Bayard, Jr., and it was his country seat."

William had remained in New York during the Revolution when the rest of his family had fled.  Educated as an attorney, he co-founded the mercantile firm of LeRoy, Bayard & McEvers.  In 1783 he had married Elizabeth Cornell and the couple had seven children.

That the Loyalist stain on the Bayard name had been erased was evident in William's close personal relationship with Alexander Hamilton--one of the country's founding fathers and a member of Washington's first Cabinet.

At dawn on July 11, 1804 Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr faced off in a duel with pistols on the bank of the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey.  On the dock on the Manhattan side William Bayard, Jr. waited for news and to provide any necessary aid.  Eventually, he saw a boat approaching from the other side.  In it was the paralyzed Hamilton, shot in the spine.

Hamilton was brought to the Bayard house.  Family and friends streamed in over the next 31 hours, during which Hamilton reportedly suffered greatly.  He died in the Bayard house at 2:00 on the afternoon of July 12.

The Burr-Hamilton duel as depicted by J. Mund. from Beacon Lights of History, 1902 (copyright expired)

Catharine Bayard died in 1814, followed by William Bayard, Jr. in 1826.  In 1833, according to William Smith Pelletreau, "the heirs of William Bayard, Jr. sold the house and land to Francis B. Cutting for about $50,000."  (That amount would be just over $1.5 million today.)  

Two years later Cutting divided the estate into 125 lots which were then sold at auction.   The venerable Bayard house survived for only a few more years, its approximate site occupied by the house at 82 Jane Street today.  (Interestingly, it is directly opposite the house at 83 Jane Street erected by William Bayard, Jr.'s son, Robert, in 1853.  The house is repeatedly, and incorrectly, touted as the spot where Alexander Hamilton died.)

photo via brodsky.com

LaptrinhX.com has no authorization to reuse the content of this blog

The 1854 Robert Bayard House -- No. 83 Jane Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1804 much of the rural countryside north of New York City was taken up by sprawling country estates of British officers and wealthy townspeople.   Two such properties, the Bayard and Ludlow estates, abutted one another near Greenwich Village.    Jane Street, a country lane running essentially east-west which lead to the Jayne Farm, separated the two estates—Bayard’s being to the north and Ludlow’s on the south.

The sumptuous nature of Bayard’s home was hinted at when newspapers reported on a lightning strike to the residence on June 10, 1775.  “Last Sunday week the House of William Bayard, Esq., at Greenwick [sic], was struck by Lightning, which occasioned considerable damage.  In several apartments large Pier glasses were broken, and a quantity of silver plate contained in a chest was pierced and otherwise affected without doing the least injury to the chest.”

While engaged in a particularly fierce political debate that year, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel.  Hamilton accepted.   The duel was fought in Weekawken, New Jersey and Hamilton was fatally wounded.  He was ferried across the Hudson River to the nearest house—that of his close friend William Bayard, where he died.

By the 1820s both the Bayard and Ludlow families were dissecting their estates into building plots as the development of Greenwich Village flourished.   Little Jane Street, a country road two decades earlier, was soon lined with brick-faced homes.  And by the middle of the Civil War, popular lore would insist that Alexander Hamilton died in William Bayard’s home at No. 82 Jane Street—an address that did not exist in 1804.

William Cullen Bryant later wrote “there is a prevalent error in regard to the house in which Hamilton died, which is worth correcting, if only to show how little tradition is to be trusted.”

The Bayard Farm had been established by Nicholas Bayard, a relative of Peter Stuyvesant, in the 17^th century.   He owned thousands of acres of land outside of Manhattan; but his estate here encompassed 200 acres.  By the time of Hamilton’s death, the country house was owned by William Bayard, Jr. and change was on the way.

In 1833 William Bayard’s heirs sold the family house and much of the land to Francis B. Cutting for about $50,000.  In April, two years later, Cutting divided his property into 175 lots which he sold at auction for $225,000.  The Bayard mansion was demolished.

In 1853 William’s youngest son, Robert, began construction of a fine four-story brick home at No. 83 Jane Street for himself and his wife, the former Elizabeth McEvers.  The house would sit opposite the fabled No. 22 (and on the Bayard side of the street).  The Bayards’ two daughters, Ruth Hunter and Elsie Justine, were both grown and married by now.  Son William had died a decade earlier at the age of 21.

photo by Alice Lum

Completed a year later, the Bayard house distinguished itself from the other homes on the street with a full-width cast iron balcony at the second floor and the noticeable absence of a steep stoop.   Designed in the up-to-the-minute Anglo-Italianate style, the entrance was essentially at sidewalk level.

Robert Bayard owned other lots on Jane Street, closer to the Hudson River (then called the North River) and in the decade prior to the Civil War leased three lots to the City of New York as a “corporation yard.”

Unlike its neighbors with raised parlor levels, No. 83 was accessed at street level -- photo by Alice Lum

Despite its relative proximity to the waterfront, the Jane Street block maintained its respectable status throughout the 19^th century.    In 1884 Jennie M. Campbell lived at No. 83.  She was a teacher in Primary School No. 9 across town at No. 42 First Street.

Five years later the house was home to Terrance Shields.  Shields was a “parkkeeper” who earned $2.75 per day from the City.   His salary today would translate to approximately $17,500 per year.

During the Great Depression the luxury of spacious private homes was unaffordable to nearly all but the wealthy.  In 1937 the house was converted to apartments—one per floor.   Later, in the mid-1950s into the 1960s, F. Thomas Heller lived here.  Heller was a nationally-known seller of rare and vintage books.

In the 1970s the house was converted to a duplex on the first two floors and two full-floor apartments above.  In 1998 the owners put it on the market for $2.6 million and sold it a year later for $2.45 million. 

In reporting the sale The New York Observer ran the headline “Alexander Hamilton’s Deathbed.”  Having caught the readers’ eye, however, the Observer clarified that “Alexander Hamilton was brought to this neck of the woods to die in 1804…”

The new buyers reconverted the handsome house to a single-family home. 

In the meantime, in 1936, across the street at No. 82 a plaque was affixed to the 1886 apartment building that replaced the former house there.  The bronze tablet—still there today--reads “82 Jane St.  Site of the William Bayard House where Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, died after his duel with Aaron burr, July 12, 1804.”

Although the Bayard mansion sat far back from the little country lane that divided his estate from Ludlow's, popular lore is cast in bronze on the Victorian building at No. 82 Jane Street -- photo by Alice Lum

In William Cullen Bryant’s words, the plaque is a wonderful example of “how little tradition is to be trusted.”

Alexander Hamilton's 1802 "The Grange"

photo NYPL Collection

In 1800, a year after John McComb, Jr. designed Archibald Gracie’s country house–which would become known in the 20th century as Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York–and three years before he received the commission for New York’s City Hall, the architect was hired by Alexander Hamilton to design his country estate.

That summer Hamilton had purchased land eight miles north of the city where he would erect the first house he owned, an undertaking he called “my sweet project.” He chose a site near the estate of his friend, Gouverneur Morris, with astonishing uninterrupted views of the Hudson and Harlem Rivers roughly where 143rd Street and Convent Avenue is today.

print from the New York Public Library Collection

McComb an elegant two-story frame Federal residence with columned porches on all sides to catch the summer breezes. Completed in 1802, Hamilton named the 18-room mansion “the Grange,” after his ancestral home in Scotland.

Alexander Hamilton lived in the Grange only two years with his wife, the former Elizabeth Schuyler, their eight children and his mother, Rachel Faucett Lavien.  On July 11, 1804, he died in the infamous duel with Aaron Burr.

The Hamilton family lived on in the house for another three decades after which various families owned it as the Harlem neighborhood rapidly grew.  In 1889, the Greenwich Village parish of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church purchased land that included the Grange as it anticipated its northward relocation.   By now the area was becoming heavily populated and as city street construction commenced, the house occupied a site directly in the path of 143rd Street. The church moved the building 350 feet southeast to 287 Convent Avenue, where it was used for services while a permanent structure was planned.

John McComb’s elegant porches, the cornice and roof balustrade were stripped off.  The broad entrance steps were removed, the imposing entranceway was boarded shut, and an entry was cut into the side, which now faced the street.

The Grange, sitting sideways, with the new St. Luke's Episcopal Church encroaching -- photo New York Public Library Collection

The parish began construction of its new church in 1892. When the attractive Romanesque church was completed in 1895, it came within feet of the Grange.  A few decades later a six-story apartment building rose on the opposite side, cramping Hamilton’s house between.  The once-elegant residence which had sat among 32 acres of lawns and gardens was unrecognizable in its claustrophobic setting.

The Grange, squeezed in between its new neighbors -- photo New York Public Library Collection

At a time when historic homes and buildings were given little importance, the Grange began attracting attention.  On May 6, 1908, an act authorizing the City of New York to purchase the mansion and move it “to a site in St. Nicholas Park, formerly constituting a part of the Alexander Hamilton farm” was passed by the State Legislature.

When the city failed to act, a frustrated reader wrote to the editor of The New York Times on October 9, 1913 saying, “For some reason there is a halt, either from indifference of overwhelming politics.”

“The Grange,” the writer continued, “…was built by Alexander Hamilton from timber grown on the Albany estate of his father-in-law, General Philip Schuyler.  It is of white oak and hand hewn.  From the porch steps of this house Hamilton went for the last time to fight the duel with Aaron Burr on the west shore of the Hudson River.”

Despite the push by the State and public outcry, Hamilton’s Grange sat squashed and unrestored.  In October of 1929, The New York Times criticized city authorities “for alleged indifference in the matter of the acquisition of the Colonial home of Alexander Hamilton.”

Four years later the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society purchased the house and, nearly a decade after that, in 1933, opened it as a museum.  The Crescent Athletic-Hamilton Club presented the Grange in June of 1936 with the 30-foot bronze statue of Hamilton which had stood before the Brooklyn Heights club since 1892.

Despite the relatively shoddy treatment of the house, finally on May 2, 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed the bill that designated it a national monument.  The New York Times said that Kennedy “did more than enhance the memory of the eminent statesman, a founder of this nation.  He also preserved one of the all too few examples of an exquisite style of American architecture, the ‘Federal,’ so light, so decorative and yet so noble.”

Two weeks later, the Kennedy Administration passed a resolution to acquire and preserve the Hamilton Grange as a national shrine under the ownership and management of The National Parks Service.  At long last, in 1967, the City of New York Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house a landmark.

In designating the mansion, the Commission noted that “as the building is now situated, the Grange cannot be made to reflect either its architect’s conception or its condition when it was Alexander Hamilton’s residence.”

On June 25, 1999, State Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright requested perpetual easements for a portion of St. Nicholas Park for use as a site for the Hamilton Grange national Memorial.  Within four years the Park Service had set aside $11 million to move and restore the house.

The news was not received favorably by everyone.  Many residents felt the house should stay.  The vicar of St. Luke’s, William M. Savoy, said “It’s here, and it’s been here, and why not leave well enough alone?”  Yet another local, Sam Pittman, told The New York Times he was in favor of the move. “Oh, it’s a nice house. But the thing is in sideways!”

photo by Schwartz - New York Daily News

In early May 2008, the Grange was gradually jacked up 35 feet off the ground–a process that took two weeks to accomplish.  Lowered onto rollers, it was cautiously inched a block and a half down Convent Avenue to the park–part of Hamilton’s original estate.  Of the $8.4 million earmarked for restoration, the move accounted for approximately 40 percent.

photo by Joshua Bright for The New York Times

The National Park Service initiated studies to determine precisely how the house looked in 1802 in order to fully restore the exterior.  The Grange was reopened to the public in September 2011.  Its new site in St. Nicholas Park allows the visitor, once again, to fully appreciate the house in a suitable setting.