Though it has never been acknowledged as such, Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site is the earliest surviving example of a type of elite countryside mansion that was wildly popular in the rural environs of New York City just before the American Revolution.[1] Often called Georgian or Anglo-Dutch country houses, these relatively massive (by eighteenth century standards) structures were built by early New York’s merchant-aristocrats in imitation of the lavish villas—and by extension the lavish lifestyles—of contemporary English nobility an ocean away.
Philipse Manor Hall assumes a fully Georgian character by about 1725,[2] when Frederick Philipse II and his wife Joanna Brockholst rebuilt the original structure put up by Frederick’s grandfather, Frederick I, some 40 years previous.[3] This rebuilding is represented today by the southern wing of the house facing onto Dock Street, the second of what were ultimately three building phases for the Hall. (Frederick I’s original building – now embedded in the western end of the wing – may also have had Georgian features but we cannot confirm this because it is too heavily obscured by the 1725 phase.)[4]
The importance of the Hall to the architectural history of the New York City region cannot be overstated. It seems to have had only a few precursors in the area—all now lost—located in Manhattan, much of which was still rural in the early 1700s with plenty of room for “country” estates and mansions.
Later Georgian mansions, by contrast, survive all over the greater New York City area. Examples include the Van Cortlandt and Valentine-Varian houses in the Bronx, a number in northern New Jersey and elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and, eventually, sophisticated instances like the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Upper Manhattan.[5] Together these structures comprise a highly distinct genre of colonial architecture that we might call “New York Georgian.”[6]
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Several typical features of the Georgian style are on display in the southern wing of the Philipse Manor Hall. These include the symmetrical arrangement of large windows disposed around an elaborate roofed entrance enclosure, which in this case features Neoclassical columns and a huge split or Dutch door. Also highly typical is the hipped or four-sided roof with its dormer windows, heavy cornice, and crowning balustrade.
Another feature present at the Hall that is peculiar to New York Georgian buildings is the use of stone blocks from top to bottom as the primary building material. This was a clear marker of the building’s elite status, since in nearly all other structures in Westchester in the era stone was limited to the foundations, the rest being made of wood. The blocks in this case are locally derived gneiss and granite which are fashioned into roughly-cut cubic units (i.e., ashlar) and laid in distinct courses.
Brick is used sparingly, as a framing element around the windows, and there are remnants in several areas of a stucco veneer.
Generally speaking, it is this use of roughly fashioned stone blocks over brick that tends to distinguish Georgian buildings in New York from those constructed in other parts of the country. Hence, much better-known structures like the Christopher Wren building in Williamsburg, Virginia, and several in Boston, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, are a ruddy red from top to bottom.[7] Only in the vicinity of Philadelphia do we find clear parallels for the quasi-ashlar masonry technique, used primarily after the construction of Philipse Manor Hall.[8] Nearly all of these are significantly later in date than Philipse Manor Hall, suggesting that the masonry style originated in New York before traveling south.[9]
Frederick Philipse II was a Dutchman living in what had become a thoroughly English world. This had not always been the case. For several years after the English conquest of New Amsterdam in 1664, Dutchmen continued to dominate the economy and politics of the colony. Hence, Frederick I, who had arrived from the Netherlands in 1649 when it was still New Amsterdam, became even wealthier and more powerful under the English than he had been under the Dutch, eventually taking the title of the colony’s richest man.
In time, however, the English began to consolidate their power and Dutchmen were increasingly nudged out of key trading positions and powerful political posts. Eventually violent clashes broke out between the two sides, such as the short-lived retaking of the city by Dutch forces in 1673. Even more consequential was Leisler’s Rebellion in 1689, when the city was taken over by local militia made up mostly of disgruntled Dutchmen, who under their leader Jacob Leisler proceeded to rule it for nearly two years.[10]
Following the Leisler affair, especially, powerful Dutchmen like the Philipses were under increased pressure to convince British authorities of their loyalty and willingness to accommodate all things English. This they did by crafting lucrative mercantile partnerships, embracing and helping to spread newly-introduced English customs and institutions, and repeatedly distancing themselves from anti-English factions in the Dutch community.[11] For their part, the English launched a multi-pronged campaign to replace or minimize the influence of key Dutch cultural institutions such as law courts, schools, houses of worship, and the Dutch language itself.[12]
The need by wealthy Dutch families to further English military, mercantile, and cultural interests was more important than ever in Frederick II’s day, when the city was experiencing a prolonged surge of economic growth, abetted in large measure by the proliferation of the slave trade.[13] In order to partake of this success, Dutch members of the elite had to adopt an English character as much as possible.
The economic boom of the early1700’s helped to generate the city’s first truly substantial upper class or “aristocracy”, an elite that consisted mostly of English and newly-arrived French (Huguenot) families, and savvy Dutch clans such as the Van Cortlandts, the Bayards, and, of course, the Philipses.[14] These merchant-aristocrats, ever eager to measure up to the nobility of England, were in turn the clientele for the many Georgian country homes on the order like Philipse Manor Hall that began to crop up in the rural environs of Manhattan circa 1700. Both the outward appearance of these houses and the very custom of countryside villa building were manifestly English.[15]
Frederick II had been immersed in English culture from a very young age and would have been thoroughly inculcated by the time he reached adulthood.[16] After the premature deaths of his parents, Philip Philipse and Maria Sparkes, he was raised by his step-grandmother Catherine Van Cortlandt (second wife of Frederick I) who, unlike the previous generation, had lived under the English all her life and was herself heavily Anglicized.[17] She ensured that Frederick II became properly indoctrinated. Frederick I had stipulated in his will that his grandson should receive “the best possible education and learning these parts of the world will afford him” and for Catherine, this meant an education in England.
Frederick II was whisked abroad at the tender age of 7 or 8, where he spent several formative years attending school and eventually training to be lawyer under Catherine’s watchful eye. When he came into his inheritance–consisting of the Hall and the lower half of Philipse Manor – in 1716 at the age of 21, he had only just returned from England. Armed with his newly acquired degree and cultivated English manner, along with his famous surname and the family’s still-astronomical wealth, Frederick quickly became one of the powerful men in the city. In time he would go on to hold a variety of high government offices (Alderman of the Second Ward several times, New York Assembly member, Chief Justice of the colonial Supreme Court, Baron of the Exchequer, etc.).
It was also shortly after his return that he met his wife, Joanna Brockholst, who, though born in New York, was very much an Englishwoman. Her father, the English aristocrat and émigré Anthony Brockholst, had served the Crown as the Governor of New York and Commander-in-Chief of the provincial military, and had been an associate of Frederick I.[18] Though they no doubt lived in the city at first, Frederick II and Joanna made a plan early on to rebuild the Hall, completing it circa 1725. The extent of Joanna’s role in the Georgian renovation is not known but it may have been significant given her English heritage and taste for all things European.
In many ways, Frederick II acted as an agent of Anglicization in New York. As both a lawyer and a Supreme Court judge practicing English Common Law, for instance, he helped to replace New York’s long-entrenched Dutch legal system with the English one. On the religious front, he stipulated in his will that his son, Frederick III, should construct a grand Anglican Church in Westchester (today’s St. John’s Episcopal Church in Yonkers, very near the Hall, completed shortly after Frederick II’s death in 1752).[19] Though the church has been much enlarged since the Philipse’s day, the original would have been quite sizable by colonial standards, and would have dwarfed the Old Dutch Church put up by his grandfather in Sleepy Hollow 50 years previous.
The dynamic between the two buildings would have been similar to that in Manhattan between the enormous Trinity Church, built circa 1698, and smaller preceding Dutch churches. In both cases, architecture became a symbolic expression of the primacy of English culture.
It is no wonder that Frederick II, with his staunchly pro-English orientation and apparent willingness to use architecture as an expression of culture, created a manifestly English-looking villa in the city’s hinterland.
The Philipses had long been on the cutting edge of new architectural trends. They were, after all, a family of builders, and had been from the beginning. Frederick I, before coming to New Amsterdam in 1649, had been trained in the Netherlands in carpentry and would likely have been familiar with the design and craftsmanship of the sort of monumental homes that inspired the Hall.[20] In New Amsterdam, he served as the Dutch West India Company’s master carpenter and became a personal favorite of its most infamous director, Peter Stuyvesant (he of the peg leg).[21] It is likely that he was involved in the design and construction of Stuyvesant’s own grand home, built on the former WIC director’s bouwerie (farm) a few miles north of the Wall, probably shortly after the English takeover. It appears to have been Manhattan’s first such home, although whether or not it was “Georgian” stylistically we cannot yet say.
Even after the British takeover–by which time Frederick I had pivoted from surveying and construction to the slave trade and landowning as his primary sources of income – he continued to supervise major projects in Manhattan and Westchester, such as the Kingsbridge over the Harlem River and the Old Dutch Church in Sleepy Hollow.[22]
Subsequently his grandson Frederick II often used his great political power to promote vital infrastructural projects both in Manhattan and Westchester. He was instrumental in realizing the Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan in 1733 and, in Westchester, extending Broadway northward through the county.[23] In this light it is interesting to note that in the 1750 portrait by John Wollaston, Frederick II is shown holding a drafting compass over a map, suggesting that he wished to be remembered less for his legal accomplishments and more for his infrastructural initiatives (or perhaps navigational knowledge).
It is even possible that Frederick II designed the Georgian rebuild of the house himself. “Gentleman architects” – that is, upper class men in the vein of Thomas Jefferson for whom architecture was a sort of hobby – were quite common in the America of his day, where professional architects were practically unheard of. These men relied on a combination of imported English pattern books and building manuals and their own firsthand experience of the aristocratic architecture of Europe, since most would, like Frederick II, have been well-traveled (a virtual prerequisite for membership in aristocratic circles at the time).[24]
That’s it for Part 1! In the next installment we will explore just how New York aristocrats like Frederick II and Joanna Brockholst went about recreating an English life of luxury in what most Europeans would have regarded as a wilderness. Which European models might they have been looking at specifically and how did they manage to approximate them with the very limited materials and crafts people available to them? Also, what domestic precursors, in Manhattan or further afield in places like Philadelphia, might have influenced their choices? These questions and more will be addressed and contemplated.
Keith Doherty is a Westchester County native who grew up along the Old Croton Aqueduct. He was a Professor of Art History for twelve years at Boston University and has in recent years been researching the infrastructure and early history of Westchester. He is currently a museum interpreter for Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site.
[1] Although some have pointed out its apparent significance and recommended further study. See e.g., Reynolds, Helen Wilkinson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley before 1776. New York: Dover (1928), 307. More recently, Mark Reinberger and Elizabeth McLean wrote that the Hall is “…a very precocious house and deserves far more attention in the history of colonial architecture than it has received.” (Reinberger, Mark and Elizabeth McLean. The Philadelphia Country House. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins (2015), 356 n.6). Monographic treatments of the building are available through the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation (OPRHP): Facca, Amy. Philipse Manor Hall: Historic Structure Report. (2006); Garrison, J. Ritchie. Philipse Manor Hall: A Historical Architectural Context and Stylistic Analysis. OPRHP (2005); Selden, Ruth. Draft Historic Structure Report. Typescript in OPRHP BHS files (1974). See also: Sanchis, Frank. American Architecture: Westchester County. Harrison, NY: Harbor Hill Books (1977), 31-34; Morrison, Hugh. Early American Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press (1952), 556-60; Reynolds, Helen. Dutch Houses in the Hudson Valley Before 1776. New York: Dover (1928), 299-307; Hagaman Hall, Edward. Philipse Manor Hall at Yonkers, N.Y. New York, NY: The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society (1912), esp. 208-47.
[2] The date is largely based on documentary evidence, together with a few stylistic and built features of the house. Frederick II assumed control of the lower part of the manor in 1716 on his 21st birthday and shortly thereafter married Johanna Brockholst. Though he was clearly living in Manhattan initially, where he served a variety of important roles in city government, by 1723 he had been appointed Commissioner of Highways for Westchester County. That same year he sold the contents of one of his homes in the city. Later he became the representative for Westchester in the New York Assembly. We surmise from this that by 1723 or so Frederick was spending a great deal of his time in Westchester, if not living here, and that he probably anticipated this shift shortly after receiving his inheritance and marrying (Selden 1974, 15-20). Hence, it is likely that his renovations began around 1720. On the stylistic and other built evidence for the date in the house itself, see Garrison 2005, 18-26; Facca 2006, 9-11.
[3] Garrison 2005, 56; Facca 2006, 50-52.
[4] ibid. The relatively sophisticated stonework and very large windows of the first floor are certainly original and are both key features of the New York Georgian style (see below).
[5] Sometimes called “manors” today, they would have been referred to as “mansions” or simply “houses” in the Colonial Period (the word “manor” referred to the massive tracts of land surrounding the home). cf. Frederick III’s memorial to the British government reproduced in East, Robert A. and Jacob Judd 1975. The Loyalist Americans. Tarrytown, NY: Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 126.
[6] Short overviews appear in Morrison and Reinberger-McLean (Morrison 1952, 549-64; Reinberger and McLean 2015, 33ff.). In 1928, Helen Wilkinson Reynolds wrote: “These several handsome dwellings…should be studied as a group quite as much as singly” (Reynolds 1928,307).
[7] As Hugh Morrison wrote in 1952, “...the great building material of Georgian architecture was brick.” (Morrison, Hugh. Early American Architecture. New York: Dover (1952), 293. General overviews of Georgian architecture in the U.S. – all of which minimize or ignore New York – include: Morrison 1952; Pierson, William. American Buildings and Their Architecture: The Colonial and Neo-Classical Styles. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press (1976); Tatum, George. Philadelphia Georgian: The City House of Samuel Powell and some of its Eighteenth-Century neighbors. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press (1976). Unfortunately all of these tend to minimize or ignore New York.
[8] For example Cliveden (1763) and Mount Pleasant (1761). See Reinberger and McLean 2015.
[9] Reinberger and McLean 2015, 33-34.
[10] Archdeacon 1976, 107-22; Goodfriend 2017, 30-44.
[11] Goodfriend 2017, 11-44, esp. 40ff. Hence, Frederick Philipse I became a close associate of an English Governor of New York, Edmund Andros, in the 1670’s (one contemporary observer described them as “inseparable”). Later he would serve with Anthony Brockholst (father of his future granddaughter-in-law, Joanna Brockholst) on an advisory board to the Dominion of New England, which New York was forced into by the English in order to dilute the power of the city’s still-Dutch majority (Kammen 1975, 106). Later Adolph Philipse, Frederick II’s uncle, would lead a pro-English political party in the New York Assembly colloquially known as the “Courts” (Kammen 1975, 202-04).
[12] Goodfriend 2017; Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York. New York: Oxford University Press (1975). 161-90; Archdeacon, Thomas J. New York City, 1664-1710. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1976), 32-52.
[13] Saffold Maskiell, Nicole. Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (2022), 123-39; Russell Hodges, Graham. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (1999), 77-82, 100-07; Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2003).
[14] Goodfriend, Joyce. Who Should Rule at Home? Confronting the Elite in British New York City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (2017), 11-44; Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York. New York: Oxford University Press (1975), 25ff.; Archdeacon, Thomas J. New York City, 1664-1710. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1976), 32-52.
[15] Goodfriend 2017, 3-5; Archdeacon 1976, 48-57; Kammen 1975,278-90; Singleton, Esther. Social New York Under the Georges. New York: D. Appleton (1902), 53ff.
[16] On Frederick II’s English upbringing see esp. Zimmerman, Jean. The Women of the House. New York: Harcourt, Inc. (2006), 201-07.
[17] PMH Staff. “The Philipse Family.” Philipse Manor Hall Virtual Wing. www.philipsemanorhall.org.
[18] Zimmerman 2006, 222ff.
[19] Lucas, David C. “A History of St. John’s Church in Yonkers.” Philipse Manor Hall Blog. www.philipsemanorhall.org (April 2024).
[20] e.g., structures like the Mauritshuis and the Christopher Huygens House in the Hague and others like it, which were in turn a major influence on the English country houses (see Garrison 2005, 8-12).
[21] Selden 1974, 6-9, 88-89.
[22] ibid.
[23] Wassberg Johnson, Sarah. “Frederick Philipse and the Bowling Green.” Philipse Manor Hall Blog. Philipse Manor Hall (May 2023).
[24] Garrison 2006.
