User:Epicgenius/sandbox/draft10


 * Mount Vernon Hotel Museum/Abigail Adams Smith House
 * https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_NY/73001223.pdf
 * http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0426.pdf
 * ((("mount vernon hotel" or "mt vernon hotel" or "adams house") and ("upper east" or "sutton place" or "61st" or "sixty-first" or "manhattan")) or (("adams smith" or "stephens smith" or "abigail adams") and ("house" or "mansion" or "museum" or "stable")) or ("colonial dames" and ("61st" or "sixty-first")) or "421 east 61st" or "421 east sixty-first" or "421 e. 61st" or "421 e. sixty-first") AND ("Manhattan" OR "New York") NOT ("Classified Ad" OR "Display Ad" OR "Spare Times" or "white house")

The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden, formerly the Abigail Adams Smith Museum, is a historic antebellum building at 421 East 61st Street, near the East River, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is open to the public as a museum. As of June 2023, the museum is open for tours on selected weekdays.

Site
The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden is located at 421 East 61st Street, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It occupies the northern side of the street between First Avenue to the west and York Avenue to the east. The building predates the Manhattan street grid, which was laid out as part of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, and is thus set at an angle from 61st Street. The house is also raised significantly above 61st Street. The lot measures 125 by.

The first European to own the building's site was Jacobus Fabricius, who received 60 acre as part of a land grant from New York colonial governor Edmund Andros in 1676. The land passed successively to the Wouterse, Roll, and Van Zandt families. The Van Zandts had a farmhouse with six fireplaces, which was rented to other people and also served as a tavern around 1750. Although the area was rural at the time, the house was near both the Eastern Post Road and a cove on the East River.

Early residential use
In March 1795, William Stephens Smith and his wife Abigail Adams Smith (the daughter of U.S. Founding Father John Adams) bought 23 acre from Peter Praa Van Zandt, paying $12,500. The site occupied the western portion of the city block between First Avenue, 61st Street, York Avenue, and 60th Street. On that land, the Smiths planned to develop an estate named Mount Vernon as a homage to the Virginia estate of Continental Army general George Washington. The two-story main house would have been on the south side of 61st Street, measuring 76 by. It was to comprise two wings laid around a connecting hall. There would have been kitchens and servants' rooms in the cellar; a dining room, drawing room, and bedrooms on the first floor; additional bedrooms on the second floor; and a rooftop promenade. The design was heavily influenced by another design devised by British architect Christopher Wren.

William Stephens Smith was experiencing financial issues by 1796 and never finished the building. After first mortgaging his farm for $10,000, he sold the site in October 1796. The site was often called "Smith's Folly", either because of Smith's financial failure or because the house was then 4.5 mi from the rest of New York City. An advertisement for Mount Vernon appeared in local newspapers in September 1798, indicating that only the frame of the Mount Vernon estate had been completed.

William T. Robinson obtained the land in December 1798. Robinson is most likely responsible for Mount Vernon's combination carriage house and stable, which was completed in 1799. The stable, which became the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum, was one of Manhattan's eight remaining 18th-century buildings by the 1990s. As built, the stable measured 64 by across and had six horse stalls, a cattle shelter, a carriage house above, and a hay loft. The hay loft was capable of storing 3 ST of hay, and the carriage house could fit two stagecoaches. The estate also had an orchard with a variety of trees, in addition to two docks near what is now 61st Street. According to a New York Times article from 1924, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were rumored to have met in the house prior to the Burr–Hamilton duel of 1804. Robinson lived in the main mansion only until 1808.

Use as hotel
Robert Dyde, who managed the London Hotel on Park Row, leased the Mount Vernon estate in April 1808 and converted it into the Mount Vernon Hotel. The hotel provided horse stables, salt water bathing, fishing, and shooting; in addition, guests were served turtle soup, which was made from turtles caught in the East River. A 1 mi race track was also built near the hotel and was first used in late 1808. The hotel's mortgage went into foreclosure in August 1809. Thomas C. Pearsall, who owned the adjacent farm to the south, bought the estate the same year. Pearsall, who lived near what is now 58th Street, never moved onto Mount Vernon. The main mansion continued to be leased out to numerous tenants and was used variously as a hotel and a school. A woman known only as Mrs. Brenton, who operated a school in Upper Manhattan, occupied the estate by 1815. Ezra Caldwell had leased the estate by early 1818 and reopened it as a hotel that May. Pearsall, the mansion's owner, bequeathed Mount Vernon to his children after his death in 1820.

The restaurateur William Niblo took over Mount Vernon in May 1821 and renamed it Kensington House. Niblo planned to market the estate to social clubs, including "turtle clubs". To attract visitors, he operated a stagecoach service thrice daily to and from his Bank Coffee House in Lower Manhattan; this service attracted visitors to Kensington House throughout the year. Niblo also launched a steamboat service to Fulton Street, and he hosted events such as an agricultural show in 1821. Kensington House lasted for less than two years, as G. W. Hall founded a youth academy in the house in early 1823. This in turn, was replaced by an academy operated by William Wagstaff. The estate itself was sold multiple times between 1824 and 1826, when Philip Brasher took title to Mount Vernon. On March 26, 1826, the main mansion burned to the ground; everything was destroyed except for its chimneys. Afterward, Brasher split up the estate into multiple lots. The main mansion's site was sold in two pieces to Jason M. Bass and Samuel Norsworthy. Joseph Coleman Hart bought the stable across the street, as he liked the appearance of the stable.

Having bought the stable, Hart converted the carriage house structure back into a hotel. Mount Vernon was still far removed from the developed parts of New York City, and what is now Midtown Manhattan retained its rural character. Hart may have planned to give the hotel to his younger brother Monmouth, although there is no evidence that Monmouth Hart ever operated Mount Vernon. Instead, Joseph W. Rogers leased the hotel in May 1827 and operated a stagecoach and steamboat service to Lower Manhattan. Afterward, James Woodhull began operating the hotel in April 1829. The Scottish diarist James Stuart, who visited the house after Woodhull began operating it, recorded his stay at the Mount Vernon Hotel in his book Three Years in North America (1833). Stuart's book is one of the few sources of information about the hotel; according to Stuart, the hotel had a horse track, and most activity at the hotel ceased after sundown. The Chatham Fire Insurance Company took over the house in 1830 as part of a Court of Chancery proceeding.

Return to private residence
City surveyor Jeremiah Towle acquired the building in 1830 and converted it to a private residence, which his family used for nearly eight decades. It became known as the Jeremiah Towle House. One reporter wrote in 1903 that "the beautiful garden...has gone forever and the house itself will probably soon meet the same fate". His daughters continued to live in the house. Towle's granddaughter, Alice Towle Smith, was born in the house at an unknown date.

The Standard Gas Light Company bought the house in 1905 and erected gas tanks nearby. Gas tanks flanked the house on one end, while tenements occupied the surrounding lots. The house itself was used as a shelter for laborers.

Jane Teller Robinson rented the house in 1919. The banker Lewis B. Gautrey removed some of the fireplaces just before Teller was to move in. Teller converted 421 East 61st Street into a store for her handcrafts business. While renovating the house, Teller found skeletal remains on the second floor; police estimated that the bones had been in the house for up to half a century, as no crime had been recorded in the house for 35 years. The New York Times wrote that no explanation for the skeleton's presence was ever ascertained. Teller hosted weaving and spinning programs for working-class people, teaching 40 women to spin and then paying them 1 $/lb to weave items at home. She also auctioned off a wide variety of objects. In 1922, for example, Teller is recorded as having auctioned off nearly 1,000 products, such as spinning wheels, tables, lamps, bedspreads, and kitchen appliances.

The house served as a soup kitchen for the Salvation Army in 1924. The Colonial Dames of America purchased the site in September 1924 and initially planned to convert the house into a museum. The Colonial Dames were recorded as having paid $45,000 or $49,000 for the lot. Numerous members of the group opposed the purchase, saying that the organization might not be able to afford the purchase. The Colonial Dames' president and secretary resigned shortly after the group moved into the house in early 1925, although the Colonial Dames rejected its retiring president's offer to buy back the house. In its first few years at the house, the Colonial Dames hosted events such as tree-planting ceremonies, weddings, and its annual meetings. By the mid-20th century, the house was one of two remaining late-18th-century dwellings on the Upper East Side near the East River, the other being Gracie Mansion.

Use as museum
The Abigail Adams Smith Museum was established at the house in 1939, in conjunction with the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair in Queens. When it opened, the house displayed artifacts relating to the early history of the United States and the Smith family. The house continued to host events in the 1940s, such as meetings and luncheons, and there was also a garden on the property. The New York Times wrote in 1946 that the house "has been carefully restored and has been cherished by the Dames". By the mid-1950s, the Colonial Dames met in the house every month, and the top story was used as an apartment for the house's gardener. The museum hired landscape designer Mary Deputy Cattell to design a formal garden around the house, which was dedicated in mid-1955.

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house as a city landmark in early 1967.

In the early 2000s, there was an unsuccessful attempt to rebrand the area around the museum as "Mount Vernon". At the time, the surrounding blocks were not given a specific name (unlike other parts of the Upper East Side), and much of the former Mount Vernon estate had been demolished to make way for the Queensboro Bridge, which had opened in 1908. This area is considered part of the Upper East Side or Lenox Hill.

Architecture
The modern day museum building was Mount Vernon's carriage house. It is not known who designed the house.

Grounds and exterior
Mary Deputy Cattell designed an 18th-century garden around the house in 1955. Cattell's garden included a white fence and brick walks to the east; Oriental trees to the north; and a rock garden to the west. This was replaced by a garden planted by Alice Recknagel Ireys in 1972. After Ireys's redesign, there were tubs of geraniums and geometric beds of Impatiens on the east side of the house, while daylilies, mock-oranges, and a circular herb garden occupied the west side of the site. Plane trees and circular English ivy beds were planted on the northern edge of the property, and there was also a rock outcropping.

Interior
The interior has six fireplaces, which date to when the house served as a hotel. The interiors were decorated with plaster cornices and French doors.

Operation
The museum is currently owned and operated by the Colonial Dames of America.

Exhibits
In the mid-20th century, the house displayed colonial-style artifacts such as a crib, portraits, chandeliers, a four-poster bed, and 18th-century clothing. By the 1990s, the museum featured objects such as the diary of James Stuart, who stayed in the hotel back in 1829.

Public programs
The museum tells the story of New York City's growth following the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, one year before the Mount Vernon Hotel opened. Tours, public programs, and other educational programs are offered.

The museum is open to the public 11 am to 4 pm six days of the week. The museum provides school field trips and hosts an average of 35 programs throughout the year, including monthly Lunchtime Lectures, Children's Storytime, summer concerts, and History Weeks for school-aged children. Annual events include the George Washington's Birthday Ball, Halloween Murder Mystery, and Candlelight Holiday Tours.

Over the years, the museum has also hosted interactive events. These have included the late-1990s play Fare for All at the Mount Vernon Hotel, a reenactment of 19th-century life at the inn, as well as a 1999 exhibit about the history of the house itself.

Ongoing research
Each summer, Hearst Fellows conduct original research on aspects of New York history and daily life, including trade, travel, leisure, education, urban development, popular music, and gender and race relationships of the 1820s–30s.

Critical reception
Before the building became a museum, The Christian Science Monitor described the house in 1919 as "a quaint stone dwelling about which a cloud of dream and romance hovers". The building was described in 1921 as "one of the best preserved old houses on Manhattan Island". A 1927 account from the New-York Historical Society described the current building as "beautiful" and "ornamental" and wrote that the structure was always mentioned in advertisements for the Mount Vernon estate. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 1938 that the building was an "enchanting old mansion, with its lovely garden stretching down to the river".

In 1953, the Christian Science Monitor described the house as a "remnant of bygone days tucked in among the ugly buildings of a new run-down section of town", surrounded by garages and the Queensboro Bridge.

A reviewer for The Washington Post described the house as "one of the prettiest surprises in the city" in 1992.