Clik here to view.
A Gentleman on Long Island
This dangerous looking man - dangerous being in no way an understatement - is Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), coal and coke magnate, sometime Carnegie partner, underwriter of the Reading and Pennsylvania...
View ArticleClik here to view.
VACATION WEEK
"Big Old Houses" is taking a week off. I'll be back next Thursday with a nifty house in gritty Newburgh, NY.
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Fine Survivor in a Gritty Town
Chances are, you've never been to the Hudson Valley city of Newburgh. Indeed you may have barely heard of it; understandable considering the eclipse it's been in for, oh, fifty years. The vintage photo...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Easy to Call Him a Pasha
This is Morris (nee Musso) Schinasi (originally Ashkenazi), 1855-1929, photographed in Alexandria, Egypt in 1890. Reportedly illiterate until the day he died, Mr. Schinasi bootstrapped his way out of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
(Almost) Like New
Hearing that his friend Edith Wharton had bought a fancy car with the proceeds of a fat book contract, the eminent author Henry James observed, "With the proceeds of my last novel, I purchased a small...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Forget Gatsby
Shortly after the Civil War, Charles Pratt and Henry H. Rogers opened a kerosene refinery in Brooklyn called, rather poetically, the Astral Oil Works. In 1874, facing an all-out war with John D....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Civility in the Wild
Throughout the 17th and almost all of the 18th centuries, New York State was a Feudal society - and I mean Feudal with a capital "F." Our masters, first in Holland and later England, outsourced the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
This is What They Did
Last July, "Big Old Houses" made a visit to the Fletcher-Sinclair house, a Fifth Avenue chateau owned since 1955 by the Ukrainian Institute. The place was in the middle of a restoration project, in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Big Old House "Buffet"
This is Broadway, the widest street in Newburgh and the widest in all of New York. That's the Hudson River at its eastern end. When I went away to college in the mid-1960s, small river cities like...
View ArticleClik here to view.
But Would I Live Here?
Back in 1931, the Hutchinson River Parkway ended at Westchester Avenue, then a two-lane country road between White Plains and the chic Westchester suburb of Purchase. A mile or so west of this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Better Fate Than Many
Glenmere, the house behind these gates, was supposedly built by a doting husband for a wife who wanted to live in an Italian villa. Almost as soon as it was finished she sued him for divorce on grounds...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Voyage to Staten Island
When's the last time you went to Staten Island? Not recently, I'll bet. Back in 1894, island residents voted 5 to 1 to consolidate with New York City. That was then. A century later, in a non-binding...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Most Distinguished Rental
Ah, the Victorian house - alternately celebrated, despised, rehabilitated and/or altered beyond recognition. Holbrook Hall, seen in the image above, was built in 1843 on a bluff in Riverdale with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Center of Fashion, A Century Later
I often wonder, when I look at old street scenes, who those people on the sidewalks were. The view above was taken in 1909, probably in the early fall judging from the clothing. A group of pedestrians...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Glyndor
There are two big old houses on the famous Wave Hill estate in Riverdale. This is a story about the shy younger sister of the two, a house called Glyndor. It is a tale with mixed architectural...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brooklyn, Big Time
Many's the Manhattan provincial who goes to Brooklyn and is astonished by what he sees. Time passes, he returns and is astonished all over again. Streetscapes like the one above, at the corner of...
View ArticleChristmas is my Birthday
So no "Big Old House" this week. However, got a great one on deck for next week - huge, obscure and elaborate - just my kind of place. I hope all have had/are having an excellent holiday, and thank you...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Secret World in Lattingtown
John E. Aldred (1864-1945) and his wife, Jane (d. 1948), are seen here in 1914 at Wheatley Hills, Long Island, probably at some swank horse event. Not many people have heard of Mr. Aldred, whose...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I Love This House
Now here is a house with heft. Some men like their women big; I'm a man who feels the same way about houses. The one in the image above stands - or hunkers, really - on a densely wood hillside in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Because That's What it Cost
The answer to the question, "Why in the world did they call the house 'Pretty Penny?'" is, "Because that's what it cost." In 1932, with America reeling from the Depression, playwright Charles MacArthur...
View Article
![Raveena – Blissed Out – Single [iTunes Plus M4A]](http://i.imgur.com/03XzSQn.jpeg)
