Gracie Mansion, Carl Schurz Park
89th Street & East End Avenue
New York, NY 10128
Gracie Mansion stands in Carl Schurz Park above Hell Gate, a roaring stretch of water where the Harlem and East Rivers meet. The 18th-century house, built by a man who made and lost his fortune at sea, is now the official residence of the Mayor of the City of New York. The Dutch West India Company deeded the land in 1646 to Sybout Claessen, who dubbed the jutting riverbank "Horn's Hook" in honor of his native village of Hoorn in Holland. The first house on the site was built around 1770 by Jacob Walton, a merchant and British Loyalist. Walton's house was seized by American rebels and all but destroyed. Archibald Gracie, a Scottish shipping magnate, bought the property in 1798 and built the mansion the following year; an addition was built in 1809. It remained his country retreat through 1823. The Federal-style mansion is notable for its three-sided porch and for the trellis railings that sweep around the house at the second-story and attic levels. Gracie, a prominent member of New York society, staged elegant parties that attracted Louis Philippe, later King of France; |
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President John Quincy Adams; Washington Irving; and Rufus King, ambassador to Britain. But Gracie never recovered from debts to shipping embargoes and unpaid claims during the War of 1812. He had to dissolve his firm and liquidate his assets in 1823. Six years later he died.
The Foulke and Wheaton families
owned the mansion over the next 60 years, a period
that saw the nearby farmland yield to urban development.
In the late 1880s, a sea wall and promenade were built
along Hell Gate. The property was then condemned and
seized by the City in 1896.
Early in this century, the house was used for children's
carpentry and home economics classes, as well as for
an ice-cream parlor. Gracie Mansion opened as the
first Museum of the City of New York in 1924, and
as a restored house museum in 1936.
Fiorello LaGuardia made it the official Mayor's residence six years later. A west wing for receptions was completed in 1966 under the guidance of Mayor Robert F. Wagner's wife, Susan.
The Mansion, restored in 1984 through gifts to the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, today presents the main floor to the public and is a showcase for art and antiques created by New York designers, cabinetmakers, painters and sculptors. Several pieces belonged to the Gracie family. At the center of the faux-marble entryway floor, a painted compass recalls the ships that built the Gracie fortune.