1861.
1905: Mount Morris overlooking the Polo Grounds.
If 18th century upper Manhattan was the Hamptons of of the day, partly consisting of landed estates with stately country houses, the most elegant surely was "Mount Morris".
Indisputably Manhattan's oldest surviving house, it is also among the most aesthetically important and innovatory. With a facade of flush boards between beveled quoins, temple-fronted, Mount Morris, was one of America's first houses boasting a colossal, tetra-style, or four columned, portico. The example here, with attenuated Tuscan columns, predates Hoban's at the White House by a full two decades. The great dwelling it graces, so representative of Great Britain's burgeoning imperial realm, meant in all things to mirror the glories that were Rome, was built by army officer Col. Roger Morris in 1765. And, on account of the fact that the builder's father, also Roger Morris, was an accomplished designer, whose cousin was an even more acclaimed architect, Robert Morris, it reflects the neo-Palliadian mode dominant in England during the start of the second quarter of the eighteenth-century.
Centered on a triumphal arch gateway, Madame Jumel's colonnaded entry to Mount Morris, inspired by Robert Adams' entrance to Syon House, also terminated in a pair of lodges
The picket fence of Mount Morris along the Bloomingdale Road, today's St. Nicholas Avenue, as imagined by a late 19th century watercolorist.
Removed from its origional position on the Kingsbidge Highway, which became a part of St. Nicholas Avenue, Madame Jumel's triumphal arch gate with paired columns upholding large urns,sat at Jumel Place by 1895.
Accompanied by a retinue including her sister Mary and her children, Eliza Jumel Chase and William Inglis Chase, who she would adopt, Madame Jumel was an inveterate traveler. in social circles in Europe and upstate New York with
In Saratoga Springs, where she summered, Madame Jumel admired the handiwork of the acclaimed African American cook Ann Northup. Mrs. Solomon Northup, was working at the United States Hotel in 1841. Her husband, a free man, had been shanghaied and sold South into slavery. Madame Jumel gave Mrs. Northup and her childern a home by engaging her as a cook who remained in her employ until 1843.
Durring this time the Northup's daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, and their son Alonzo all gained a place as esteemed members of Madame Jumel's household. Alonzo, for instance, trained as an apprentice to Madame Jumel's coachman.
Madame Jumel died in 1865. Was she 90 or 92, no one knew for certain. and her estate remained suspended in litigation for 16 years. The enormous property was parceled off and her fortune was disputed in lawsuits filed by George Washington Bowen, who claimed to be the illegitimate son she left behind in Providence.
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