Edgewater (Barrytown, New York)

The history of Edgewater dates back to December 23, 1819, when Bishop Hobart of New York City married "Lowndes Brown, esq. of Charleston S.C. and Miss Margaretta Livingston, daughter of John R. Livingston, esq."[6] The groom, Rawlins Lowndes Brown (1792–1852), was a graduate of Yale College, class of 1806, and had been (as recently as September 1819 when he resigned his commission) Captain Lowndes Brown in charge of Company G stationed on Governors Island.[7]

In 1824, possibly as a belated wedding gift, John R. Livingston (1755-1851) gave the 250-acre Edgewater property to his daughter and son-in-law, and the house may have been built about that time.[8]

After the death of her father in 1851 and her husband in 1852, Margaret Livingston sold Edgewater to Robert Donaldson, after which she moved to London to live with her daughter.

Robert Donaldson (portrayed by Charles R. Leslie) and his wife, Susan Gaston Donaldson (portrayed by George Cooke) lived at Edgewater from 1853 until her death in 1866 and his in 1872.

The New York financier and aesthete Robert Donaldson Jr. (1800–1872) bought Edgewater in 1853.[9] Donaldson engaged the architect Alexander Jackson Davis (1803–1892) to add an octagonal library wing, and to clad the brick house with stucco textured to resemble brownstone.[10] Davis also designed two gatehouses.[11]

Robert Donaldson died in 1872, and as of 1880, his son, William (1842-1906), and his daughters Elizabeth (1842-1897) and Isabel (1846-1931) were living in the house with Isabella's husband (and cousin), Robert D. Bronson (1845-1912), and five servants.

In his 1894 guide to the Hudson River, Wallace Bruce wrote that Edgewater, "formerly the Donaldson home," was now owned by Edward Clark Goodwin,[12] but Goodwin must have been renting the house, for in 1902, the executor of the Donaldson estate sold the house and south gatehouse to Elizabeth Chapman (1866–1937).[13][14]

Elizabeth Chapman (portrayed by John Singer Sargent) bought Edgewater in 1902.

Elizabeth Chapman was the second wife of the essayist John Jay Chapman. Born Elizabeth Astor Winthrop Chanler, the daughter of John Winthrop Chanler and Margaret Astor Ward, she grew up at Rokeby, a nearby house. Although Elizabeth Chapman never occupied Edgewater, her husband used it as a retreat during the winters of 1903-04 and 1904-05. In 1905, they moved into a new house designed by the architect Charles A. Platt, built on the hill above Edgewater and known as Sylvania.[15] They used Edgewater as a guest house for family. In July 1906, her brother, the artist Robert Winthrop Chanler, was living there when lightning struck a nearby elm tree, causing a fire within the house that was quickly extinguished.[16] Chapman's mother-in-law, Eleanor Jay Chapman (1839–1921), a great-granddaughter of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, lived at Edgewater from 1910 until at least 1914.[17][18]

Conrad Chapman’s 1921 passport photo, four years after he assumed ownership of Edgewater.

On March 3, 1917, Elizabeth Chapman recorded the deed by which she sold Edgewater (not including either gate house) to her stepson Conrad Chapman (1896–1989) for $1.00.[19] It is unlikely, however, that he spent much time there during the next twenty years: The day before the sale, Chapman left Harvard College in order to join the Navy, in which he served until at least April 1920.[20][21] According to Chapman's son, Geoffrey W. Chapman:

My father...had served in the Navy in World War I, had returned to Harvard afterwards to get his degree, and had then gone on to Oxford for a couple of years, where his roommate at Oxford was Lester Pearson, who was later Prime Minister of Canada. He went on to get a doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris in Byzantine history, and then became a headmaster of a school in France at a school for the sons of American diplomats and businessmen living in Europe. The school folded after a couple of years so he founded another school of his own, which didn’t last very long either. He came back to this country in the late ‘30s and had a series of jobs, although no real profession, apart from that of a scholar generally, because there was a lot of family money on both sides.[22][23]

In England, on August 25, 1937, Chapman married Judith Daphne Kemp (1906-1999),[24][25] who according to their son:

...was English-born and had been what the English call a governess in her early adult years. She married my father after they had known each other for just a few months in 1937, and then came to this country.[22]

The couple traveled to America on the SS Bremen, leaving Southampton and arriving in New York on October 7.[26] By 1940, Chapman and his wife were living in Boston,[27] According to Chapman's son, "We had a nice townhouse on Beacon Hill in Boston, smack in the middle of the city; one block below the famous Louisburg Square."[22][28]

After they returned to America, the Chapmans were said to have spent time at Edgewater and to have made several improvements to the house, including the addition of an upstairs bathroom.

In 1946, Conrad Chapman sold Edgewater to Laura M. Taylor for $1.00. He died in Boston in 1989.

Laura Scantlin married Robert Kirby Taylor at Pittsburg in 1907,[29] and as of 1940, they were living at 444 East 58th Street in New York City, where Robert Taylor worked as a "woolen merchant."[30] In November 1944, they were in Cold Spring, New York, when their son's house was destroyed by fire.[31] Sometime later, they leased Edgewater where Robert Taylor died in June 1946.[32] One month later, Laura Taylor bought Edgewater, holding it until 1950 when she sold to the writer Gore Vidal.[33]

Gore Vidal (photographed by Carl Van Vechten) in 1948, two years before he bought Edgewater.

Gore Vidal (1925-2012) bought Edgewater at the recommendation of his friend, Alice Astor Bouverie.[34] In 1960, he ran as the Democratic candidate for Congress for the 29th Congressional District of New York State, using Edgewater as his campaign headquarters. He lost to the Republican candidate J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent.[35] Among Vidal's supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, all of whom spoke on his behalf.[36]

In November 1966, Vidal, now living in Italy, rented Edgewater to William vanden Heuvel (1930–2021), a lawyer, aide to Robert F. Kennedy, and husband of the writer Jean Stein (1934-2017).[37] In 1969, Vidal sold Edgewater to New York financier Richard Jenrette for $125,000.

When Richard Jenrette (1929–2018) bought Edgewater in 1969, the house sat on only 2.69 acres.[38] During his tenure, Jenrette completed a restoration of the house, located and returned to the house much of its original furniture and art, and bought back much of the acreage (although not the two gate houses). He also built two new buildings, a classical pavilion (1997) and a pool house (1997). Jenrette wrote about these additions in his memoir, Adventures with Old Houses:

In recent years, I've begun making more of my own architectural imprint on the Edgewater property. This past year I added a small neo-classical guest house, built on a point of land across the lagoon to the north of Edgewater—far enough away not to compete with the main house. Designed by Michael Dwyer of New York, the guest house is a small Grecian temple with four columns of the Doric order framing a large porch looking downriver. Viewed from the front porch of Edgewater across the lagoon, the new structure serves as an architectural folly extending the sweep of the landscape to the north.

Michael Dwyer also relocated the swimming pool and added a charming pool house, again in classical style with four Doric columns along the side of the pool. The effect is quite Roman—rather like a small corner of Hadrian's Villa. From guest house to pool house and back to the main house provides a scenic one-mile roundabout walk, mostly along the winding riverbank.[39]

Edgewater is currently owned by the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust, a foundation created by Richard Jenrette.