Images of, and Information About, Pelham Bay Park Mansions in 1896

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As New York City began to assemble land northeast of the city to create new parks during the 1880s, little thought was given to the maintenance, use, and preservation of the many structures including grand, historic mansions, located within the new park lands.  Instead, once the parklands were assembled, the corrupt Tammany Machine of the city worked with local bureacrats and park officials to allow favored cronies to live in many of the properties either rent free or for nominal payments, many of which were never made.  Repeatedly there were waves of progressive angst and media investigations that led to repeated promises that the city would do a better job of maintaining the properties and renting them for fair market value to support necessary repairs to the properties.  Repeatedly the city failed at keeping those promises.

In 1896, the city made yet another effort to "reform as a landlord."  An article published in the New York Herald on April 26, 1896 noted that the "fine old mansions in suburban parks are going to decay for lack of attention," but the city had promised that it would manage the seventy park residences it owned to produce "greater revenue."  

The article is significant because, among other reasons, it included sketches of a number of the structures located in Pelham Bay Park.  Among those sketches was one that depicted the Gouverneur Morris, Jr., residence at Bartow.  That sketch is the only image of the Gouverneur Morris Jr. residence I have ever been able to locate.  I have written before about Gourverneur Morris Jr. and his residence in Bartow-on-the-Sound.  See Thu., Aug. 28, 2014:  Gouverneur Morris Jr. Lived His Later Years, and Died, in Bartow-on-the-Sound in the Town of Pelham.

The text of the New York Herald article and several of the sketches included with it appear below and provide yet another window into the repeated failures of New York City to protect the grand historic assets it inherited when it assembled the lands that became city parks including today's Pelham Bay Park.

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"GOUVERNEUR MORRIS HOUSE PELHAM BAY PARK"

Source:  CITY TO REFORM AS A LANDLORD, N.Y. Herald,

Apr. 26, 1896, Sixth Section, p. 13, cols. 2-5.

NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

"OLD STONE MANSION -- PELHAM BAY PARK"

[Today's Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum on Shore Road]

Source:  CITY TO REFORM AS A LANDLORD, N.Y. Herald,

Apr. 26, 1896, Sixth Section, p. 13, cols. 2-5.

NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

"CORNER OF THE FISH HOUSE."  [On Twin Island]

Source:  CITY TO REFORM AS A LANDLORD, N.Y. Herald,

Apr. 26, 1896, Sixth Section, p. 13, cols. 2-5.

NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

"STATELIEST OF THE PARK HOUSES"

[The Marshall Mansion that Later Became the Colonial Inn]

Source:  CITY TO REFORM AS A LANDLORD, N.Y. Herald,

Apr. 26, 1896, Sixth Section, p. 13, cols. 2-5.

NOTE:  Click on Image to Enlarge.

"CITY TO REFORM AS A LANDLORD.
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The Seventy Residences It Owns Are, After May 1, to Produce Greater Revenue.
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WILL MAKE NO REPAIRS.
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Fine Old Mansions in Suburban Parks Going to Decay for Lack of Attention.
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NO MORE HOUSES RENT FREE.
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Reform has taken hold of the administration of the Park Department's business as a landlord, and after May 1 a new system will be enforced.  The department has had for more than a dozen years the renting of between sixty and seventy houses, some of them laborers' cottages, others stately mansions, once the property of rich New Yorkers or of old Westchester county families.  There are nearly fifty houses in Pelham Bay Park, eight in Bronx Park, four in St. Mary's, four in Van Cortlandt, two in Claremont, one in Cedar and one in Crotona.  There are, besides, two in Central Park, one a lovely gray gabled structure of granite, opening on the transverse road that runs between the upper and lower reservoir; the other a neglected wooden cottage set high on a picturesque mound, near the upper end of the Park.  The first of these is occupied by the superintendent of the reservoir, while the second is not to be rented, though the superintendent of gardeners, for whom it was intended, has not used it in many years.

When the city became owner of the great suburban parks and of the several smaller parks in the annexed district, it found them dotted with houses, some of them long cherished homesteads, some the summer homes of New York business memn.  Many of the owners pocketed the award for their homes, taken to make a pleasure place for New York's mmillions, and sought shelter elsewhere, but others remained as tenants of the city and have lived on undisturbed by the change of ownership, and secure amid beautiful surroundings.

A POOR LANDLORD.

The Park Department has always been, in one sense, a bad landlord.  It makes no repairs.  This has been because the business of being a landlord was unwillingly accepted, and rentals were hardly enough to pay for repairs.  Renters are merely tenants at will, occupying their houses and grounds subject to the rights of the great public.  No gate may be shut against any person, and not even the vegetable gardens are fenced.  The rentals of park houses last year were only $10,500 although there are half a dozen places in Pelham Bay Park which, under ordinary conditions, would rent for $2,500 to $3,500 each.  Favoritism crept in.  Houses were given rent free to park employees, and some tenants were permitted to fall in arrears.  This is to be changed.  Every house that can be rented will be rented on the best terms the department can make.  Employees will pay rent.  Tenants will pay up or vacate.  There are a few persons occupying little houses in Bronx Park to whom leniency will be shown, because they are laboring people whose homes were condemned, and who could not go elsewhere without hardship.  Many, however, will go out, never to return.

TWO FINE OLD MANSIONS.

The department will be no better landlord than before, but an effort will be made to rent houses to persons who will keep them in condition.  Some of the finest old houses in Pelham Bay Park are going to ruin for lack of repairs.  Trustworthy persons who will take these houses and risk repairing them are likely to have a long and undisturbed occupancy, for the chances are that it will be many years before the houses will be needed for park purposes.  

The Tremper house, in Van Cortlandt Park, at the corner of the Grand and Mosholu avenues, whence it overlooks Van Cortlandt Lake, is occupied by  police sergeant and is likely to be for rent.  It is a great wooden structure, not beautiful, but comfortable, and surrounded by ample grounds, with orchard and garden.  The department would like to get $1,200 a year for it.  The great granite Zabriskie house, near the northern entrance to Claremont Park, is occupied by a park employee, and the department has not been sanguine of renting it, though it is one of the largest and best built houses in the parks.  It was built in 1859, though a stone in one end bears the date 1676, as a memorial of the earliest American Zabriskie.  The public tennis courts are close beside the house and the park at that point is a good deal used, reasons why it is difficult to rent the great house.

HISTORIC SPOTS NEAR CITY ISLAND.

Tenants of the best houses in Pelham Bay Park have long enjoyed low rents and essential privacy.  One of the noblest old mansions is just off the City Island road, and looks to the Sound across a great rolling lawn.  The former owner has remained as a tenant.  Not far away is the charming old Gouverneur MMorris house, high roofed and shingled, with dormer windows, charming verandas and great low studded rooms.  It has long been occupied by the same tenants.

The Hunter house, on Hunter's Island never lacks a tenant.  It was a famous mansion seventy years ago, when James Stuart, who had shot the son of Boswell, Dr. Johnson's biographer, in a duel, was travelling in this country.  Stuart, in his book on the United States, says Joseph Bonaparte was anxious to buy Hunter's Island and its mansion.  Connected with Hunter's Island by a causeway is Twin Island, with the great stone house that old James D. Fish built shortly before his fall and imprisonment.  It is now tenantless, though one of the most delightful of the park houses.  A tenant of the Fish house a few years since endeavored to exclude the public from the lawns and water front on the ground that a decision had been rendered guaranteeing him this privilege, but the Park Department disclaimed such arrangement, and tenants must take the place subject to the rights of the public.

LORILLARD MANSIONS.

Some of the finest places in Pelham Bay Park lie between the Pelham Bridge road and the Sound, toward the Westchester Country Club.  Here Pierre Lorillard built a rather gaunt, high pillared house and flanked it with four or five cottages for his children.  The house is now occupied by a member of the New York Stock Exchange and the cottages are all tenanted and in good repair.  Next below this former nest of Lorillards is a charming stone cottage fast going to decay, set amid wood enclosed lawns, as lovely a spot as one can imagine.

The Lorillard house above the gorge, in Bronx Park, will probably not be rented.  The region has an ill name for malaria.  The other houses in Bronx Park are a few little cottages, renting at from $5 to $8 per month.  The houses in St. Mary's Park are not in first rate repair, though one of them, a low cottage, set amid vines, and long occupied by old Captain Samuels, is charmingly situated.  Immediately opposite are the ruins of a fantastic pleasure house, in what was once the garden of a large dwelling hard by.  Both the ruin and the dwelling are now within the park.

A careful and thorough administration of the Park Department's business as a landlord ought, it is thought, to double at least the revenue from rentals.  Means of communication with New York have vastly improved since the city became owner of the great suburban parks, and there is hardly a house in any part of the park area that is now more than an hour and a half from the City Hall."

Source:  CITY TO REFORM AS A LANDLORD, N.Y. Herald, Apr. 26, 1896, Sixth Section, p. 13, cols. 2-5.  

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James D. Fish and the Mansion He Built that Once Stood on the Most Easterly of the Twin Islands in Pelham

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The Twin Islands are adjacent to Hunter's Island in today's Pelham Bay Park.  A magnificent mansion once stood on the most easterly of the Twin Islands with splendid views overlooking Long Island Sound and the shores of Long Island.  (Hunter's Island and West Twins Island were joined to Orchard Beach by landfill in 1947.)

The mansion was known at different times as the "Fish Mansion," the "Ogden Mansion," and the "Hoyt House" based on the names of various owners.  It was built of sandstone as a summer retreat in the 1880s by New York banker James D. Fish. 

"Ogden Mansion" circa 1910.

Source:  Gelatin Silver Print, 

Museum of the City of New York, X2010.11.6992

James D. Fish was the oldest son of Asa Fish and Prudence Dean Fish.  He was born in Mystic, Connecticut August 7, 1819, and died in Brooklyn, New York, on March 31, 1912.  He lived much of his life in Brooklyn and was a banker, merchant and shipping agent.  

James D. Fish came from a family whose members were "prominent in shipping in Mystic and New York City and were early settlers of Mystic, Connecticut.  According to one source:

"James had four brothers (a fifth died young) and three sisters. All but one of these siblings married and had children. He himself married three times. His first wife was Mary Ester Blodget whom he married on June 4, 1843. They had seven children. Mary Ester died on Jul 17, 1868. His second wife was Isabelle Rogers whom he married on March 18, 1872. They had one son named Paul Rogers, born in 1873. Isabelle died on Dec 20, 1879. His third wife was Sally Reber Laing whom he married on May 20, 1884. They had one daughter born February 24, 1885 named Alice Reber Fish. Sally died on March 10, 1885."

Source:   Mystic Seaport - Fish Family Papers (Coll. 211):  Biography of the Fish Family, available at <http://library.mysticseaport.org/manuscripts/coll/coll211.cfm#head46806520> (visited May 23, 2014).  

James Dean Fish in an Undated Photograph.

Source:  Ancestry.com.

The brief biography quoted above omits an important set of facts.  Not long after building the sandstone mansion on the most easterly of the Twins, James D. Fish was shipped off to jail although, eventually, he was granted clemency by President Grover Cleveland.  

Fish was imprisoned for fraud after two closely-related firms in which he was a partner (in each) collapsed, setting off the financial panic of 1884 that led to the failures of more than 10,000 smaller firms.  As one source notes, the "immediate cause" of the financial panic was the failure of Grant & Ward and also Marine National Bank of New York City. Fish was the President of the Marine National Bank at the time of its collapse and was a member of the investment firm known as "Grant & Ward" which many believed merely "traded on the name" of former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, a part owner of the firm.  These two firms were joined closely together precisely because James D. Fish was a partner in both.  When these two major firms collapsed, it had a ripple effect across Wall Street causing many firms to fail. 

Scene on Wall Street on the Morning of May 14, 1884

During the Financial Panic of 1884 as Depicted in the

May 24, 1884 Issue of Harper's Weekly.  Source:

Wikimedia Commons.

The obituary of James Dean Fish that appeared in the March 31, 1912 issue of The New York Times detailed the impact that the collapse of his firms and his imprisonment had on his life.  That obituary read in full as follows:

"J.D. FISH, EX-BANKER, BURIED

He Had Lived In Seclusion Since His Release from Prison.

James Dean Fish, President of the Marine Bank at the time of its crash in 1884 and a member of the ill-fated firm of Grant & Ward, which traded on the name and involved the fortunes of Gen. Grant, died at the age of 93 on last Sunday, and was buried in Mystic, Conn.  The quietness of the funeral was part of the rigid seclusion Mr. Fish maintained for many years at his home, 105 Felix Street, Brooklyn, where he lived with his daughters, and, in fact, ever since his release from Auburn Prison, to which he was sentenced for his part in the Wall Street crash.

The firm of Grant & Ward, which usually had large deposits in the Marine Bank, was first composed of Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., and Mr. Fish.  Then Gen. Grant bought a seventh interest in the business, and a subsequent purchase of a fifty-thousand-dollar share by Mrs. Grant and his son, Jess, put the ex-President on an equal footing with the other pratners.  When the crash came the despair of thousands of investors whom Gen. Grant's name had been sufficient to draw to the firm was mingled with the pity of the entire country that he should have been involved in such finance.

Ferdinand  Ward and Fish were sent to prison, the latter sentenced to a term of ten years:  but this was commuted by Gov. Cleveland [sic] and he was released before he had served four years.  His daughter, Anna Fish, never wavered in her devotion, living in the prison town until her father left.  For a while Fish lived in seclusion in the library of his house in West Thirty-fourth Street.

In the days of his prosperity Fish was an inveterate first-nighter at the theatres, and not long before the failure of his bank he took for his third wife Sally Reber, an opera singer and a daughter of Judge Reber of Sandusky, Ohio.  A daughter was born on the day Fish was sentenced to Auburn, and five weeks later his young wife died."

Source:  J. D. FISH, EX-BANKER, BURIED, N.Y. Times, Mar. 31, 1912.  

After the financial troubles that sent James D. Fish to jail, the mansion he built passed through the hands of several additional owners until the Twin Islands became part of Pelham Bay Park in 1888 when New York City was acquiring lands for park development.  Beginning in the early 1900s, the mansion saw use as a children's summer retreat overseen by the Jacob Riis Foundation.

New York City reportedly demolished the mansion in 1937 citing an inability to maintain the property.

Immediately below are transcriptions of various resources that reference James D. Fish, members of his family, or the mansion he built on the easterly Twin Island.

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"The Twin Island house is pictured here at the turn of the century.  Twin and Hunter Islands became part of Pelham Bay Park in 1888, when New York City began acquiring land for park development.  The house was known as the Fish Mansion, Ogden Mansion, and Hoyt House, depending on who lived there at the time.  The city demolished the structure in 1917 because it could not maintain the property."

Source:  Scott, Catherine A., Images of America:  City Island and Orchard Beach, p. 101 (Charleston, SC:  Arcadia Publishing 1999). 

"The parks department leased the Twin Island House beginning in the early 1900s to the Jacob Riis Foundation for a children's summer retreat.  Approximately 86 underprivileged youths lived here each summer and participated in recreational activities under the Riis Settlement House Program."  

Source:  Scott, Catherine A., Images of America:  City Island and Orchard Beach, p. 101 (Charleston, SC:  Arcadia Publishing 1999). 

"The women in this c. 1904 photograph were involved with the Jacob Riis Foundation at Twin Island.  Prior to 1911, people traveled to Twin Island by boat or canoe.  When the city built a concrete-reinforced pedestrian bridge connecting Twin to Hunter Island, people could walk here.  They crossed over a causeway situated along the Shore Road, entered Hunter Island, and then used the pedestrian walkway between the two islands."  

Source:  Scott, Catherine A., Images of America:  City Island and Orchard Beach, p. 102 (Charleston, SC:  Arcadia Publishing 1999). 

"A group of campers who paddled to Twin Island from the Throggs Neck area of the Bronx sit in the Twin Island house, c. 1920.  The city government issued camping permits to various organizations for sites on Twin and Hunter Islands.  In 1914 the Working Girls' Association maintained two tents on Twin Island.  Parks supplied running water to the camp after discovering that the existing well water was polluted.  Members of the DeLasalle Institute regularly surveyed the Twin Island coastline."  

Source:  Scott, Catherine A., Images of America:  City Island and Orchard Beach, p. 102 (Charleston, SC:  Arcadia Publishing 1999).  

"PARK BOARD PROCEEDINGS.
*     *     *

The Grand View Hotel, in Pelham Bay Park, is to be removed, but a hotel will be opened in the Ogden mansion, near by. . . . "

Source:  PARK BOARD PROCEEDINGS, N.Y. Times, Nov. 30, 1893.  

 "CLEMENCY FOR JAMES D. FISH.

HIS TERM OF IMPRISONMENT COMMUTED TO EXPIRE IN MAY NEXT.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28. -- The President has commuted the sentence of Banker Fish so that he will be released from confinement in May.  He has had the case long before him for consideration and has listened to many arguments in Fish's behalf.  His reasons for extending Executive clemency are given in a memorandum issued to-day, but that does not carry the names of the petitioners who recommended that Fish be pardoned.  There never was a petition stronger in names than that laid before the President in this case.  Among the signers were the following:  Ex-Gov. Alonzo B. Cornell, Charles Parsons, Oliver Bryan, George S. Coe, William R. Booth, Daniel Drake Smith, Joseph A. Parsons, Charles B. Foote, D. B. Match, R. Bayles, J.P. Paulison, A. Foster Higgins, D. Underhill, Joseph W. Dreyfus, J. D. Vermilye, W.H. Cox, A. W. Tenney, George H. Potts, H.H. Boody, W.A. Camp, John H. Mott, Richard Kelly, William A. Walker, William B. Hilton, G.D.S. Trask, Nathaniel Niles, E. F. Winslow, W. P. Shearman, Theodore L. Cuyler, J. Seligman, Ambrose Snow, C. H. Van Brunt, Isaac Phillips, C. Meyer, T. C. Platt, D. C. Robbins, Waldo Hutchinson, A. F. Jenkies, Peter Notman, Edmund D. Riggs, Henry J. Van Dyke, J. A. MacDonald, W. B. Dana, H. K. Thurber, C. H. Mallory, David M. Stone, Peter Moller, D. L. Moody, E. C. Patterson.  There were many others equally familiar.  The President's memorandum indorsed on the petition is as follows:

'This convict is 69 years of age.  Prior to his conviction he was trusted and respected by all who knew him and all his dealings and intercourse with his fellow-men both in business and social life had been such as to secure their confidence and esteem.  In the view I take of the application for his pardon there is no occasion to refer to the nature of his offense nor to comment upon the evidence upon which his conviction rests, further than to suggest that this is a case in which the actual and willful intent to defraud depend upon influences somewhat uncertain.  I have rarely, if ever, seen a petition for Executive clemency signed so numerously as the one presented in this case by citizens of great respectability and business standing.

'The prisoner since his conviction has aided the administration of the criminal law by giving vainable testimony upon the trial of another offender.  He has endured his imprisonment thus far with all the fortitude and resignation possible, and has bee scrupulously obedient to all prison rules and regulations.  Medical proof produced before me fully establishes the fact that with advanced age and serious disabilities, and by reason of his confinement, he is physically and mentally fast failing, and I am satisfied that he will not survive his imprisonment if much longer extended.  Every object sought to be obtained by the punishment of crime will be accomplished, in my opinion, by a commutation of the convict's sentence to imprisonment for a term of five years and six months, with allowance of deductions for good conduct.  Such commutation is therefore granted.'

AUBURN, N. Y., Jan. 28.--When James D. Fish was called into Waren Durston's private office this afternoon and informed that President Cleveland had commuted his sentence the old man was not surprised in the least.  To reporters who tried to question him, he said:  'I have nothing to say.'  His daughter, Miss Anna Fish, has resided here ever since her father came to the prison and has been devoted in her attention to him.

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A petition asking for a full pardon for James D. Fish was sent to the President from this city about a year ago.  It was gotten up and circulated chiefly by Mr. Fish's sons, who secured a large number of weighty signatures.  They made special efforts to get the signatures of bank Presidents and were very successful in that direction.  A lawyer who saw the paper before it went to Washington said yesterday that he had never before seen so many names of conservative and influential business men attached to a petition for clemency in a criminal case.

The term of five years and six months to which the imprisonment of James D. Fish is limited by the President's action will be reduced by the allowance for good behaior one year seven months and fifteen days.  That will liberate Mr. Fish about the 12th of May, 1889.  He will then have been in prison just three years ten months and fifteen days.  

The news of the President's action was an agreeable surprise to the sons of the aged prisoner.  John D., Irving, and Dean Fish are in business together at 15 State-Street, this city.  They have waited so long for a response to the petition that they had begun to fear that the weary red tape of the official departments at Washington would not enable it to reach the present Executive.  They were greatly pleased with the wording of President Cleveland's indorsement on the petition.  It is expected that James D. Fish will retire to a quite home somewhere in the interior of this State soon after his release."

Source:  CLEMENCY FOR JAMES D. FISH - HIS TERM OF IMPRISONMENT COMMUTED TO EXPIRE IN MAY NEXT, N.Y. Times, Jan. 29, 1889.  

"Ex-Banker FISH Released.

Auburn, N. Y., May 11

James D. FISH, ex-president of the Marine Bank, was released from prison this morning, and in company with his two daughters started for New York.  He is in the best of health and refuses to be interviewed."

Source:  Ex-Banker FISH Released, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1889. 

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