The Morris-Jumel Mansion: Manhattan’s Oldest House, from Washington’s Headquarters to City Museum

By Solomon Rokowsky

Photograph by Beyond My Ken, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Manhattan's oldest surviving house stands on a rise in Washington Heights, far north of where the city once ended. The Morris-Jumel Mansion was built as a summer home, used as a general's headquarters, run as a tavern, and finally saved by the city as a museum.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission dates the house to about 1765 and says Colonel Roger Morris built it as a country residence. The Morris-Jumel Mansion museum says it was a summer house for Morris and his wife, Mary Philipse Morris, and that the family named it Mount Morris. At the time, the museum notes, the city ended at today's Chambers Street, about eleven miles south. The museum also says the house was possibly built by enslaved laborers, along with free Black workers, indentured servants and hired labor.

The commission calls the house a superb example of Georgian architecture. It describes a columned and pedimented portico, a Palladian window above the entrance, and a rear wing with an octagonal drawing room. The museum adds that the octagonal wing was among the first of its kind built in the colonies.

"Col. Roger Morris' house, Washington's headquarters Sep.r 1776," an illustration in Thomas Addis Emmet's 1880 volume. Scan by the New York Public Library, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Morris was a Loyalist. He left for London in 1775, and the museum says Mary Morris and their children left the house the next year. After the Battle of Long Island, General George Washington used the empty house as his headquarters. The commission dates his stay from September 14 to October 18, 1776. The museum says it began on September 15 and lasted about five weeks, and that Washington used the second floor of the octagonal room as his office. The Battle of Harlem Heights was fought on September 16 just to the south.

When the Americans left, the British took over. The commission says the house held General Sir Henry Clinton and his officers and, at times, Hessian troops. The museum says the Hessians were under Baron von Knyphausen, and that few buildings in the country housed soldiers from every side of the war.

After the war the house and land were confiscated and sold. The museum says Mary Morris was one of three women in New York accused of treason, and that the property was taken under the 1779 Act of Attainder. Between 1783 and 1810 the house served as a tavern, a stagecoach stop and an inn, and then sat largely abandoned. In July 1790 President Washington returned for a meal on the grounds with members of his future cabinet and their families. The museum's list of guests includes Thomas Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and Alexander and Eliza Hamilton.

The mansion in September 1936. Photograph by Arnold Moses for the Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

In 1810 Stephen Jumel, a French wine merchant, and his wife Eliza bought the house. The museum says they renovated it heavily, enlarging the porch, extending the balcony and adding the sidelights and fan window seen today. The commission says Eliza Jumel restored the house in the Napoleonic Empire style with Federal detail. The Historic House Trust says they returned from Paris in 1828 with crates of furniture and paintings, much of which they claimed had belonged to Napoleon.

Stephen Jumel died in 1832. The museum says Eliza married Aaron Burr, the former vice president, in the front parlor in 1833, filed for divorce four months later, and that Burr died on Staten Island on the day the divorce was to be finalized in 1836. Eliza stayed in the house until her death in 1865.

A court fight over her estate lasted 17 years, according to the museum, and the heirs sold the house in 1887. The museum says the French photographer and filmmaker Augustine Le Prince rented it from 1889 and disappeared in 1890. General Ferdinand Earle and his wife Lillie lived there from 1894 until his death in 1903. Lillie Earle campaigned to preserve the house, and the museum says the city bought the building and almost two acres for $235,000. The commission says a group of women petitioned the city to buy it, and that custodianship went to the Washington Headquarters Association, founded by the Daughters of the American Revolution, which restored it as a museum.

The commission designated the exterior a landmark on July 12, 1967. The museum says the interior was designated in 1975 and that the house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The same sources describe a house restored with period rooms from the Morris, Washington and Jumel eras.

The dining room. Photograph by CaptJayRuffins, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Who owns the Morris-Jumel Mansion today?

The city does. The Historic House Trust of New York City says the mansion is owned by the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and operated by Morris-Jumel Mansion Inc. The commission's 1967 report says the same about city ownership. The house is a member of the Historic House Trust and sits in Roger Morris Park, at 65 Jumel Terrace.

Sources

• NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, Morris-Jumel Mansion designation report (1967)
• Morris-Jumel Mansion, History of the House
• Morris-Jumel Mansion, About
• Historic House Trust of New York City, Morris-Jumel Mansion Museum
• 2014 Morris-Jumel Mansion from southeast.jpg (image: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Col. Roger Morris' house, Washington's headquarters Sep.r 1776 (NYPL Hades-255611-430639).jpg (image: Scan by NYPL, Public domain)
• Morris Jumel Mansion exterior HABS NY,31-NEYO,51-1.jpg (image: Arnold Moses, HABS photographer, Public domain)
• Aaron Burr Portrait (cropped).jpg (image: John Vanderlyn, Public domain)
• Historic American Buildings Survey, Arnold Moses, Photographer September 10, 1936, INTERIOR - HALL FROM FRONT ENTRANCE LOOKING INTO OCTAGONAL ROOM. - Morris-Jumel Mansion, HABS NY,31-NEYO,51-7.tif (image: , Public domain)
• Morris-Jumel Dining room.jpg (image: CaptJayRuffins, CC BY-SA 4.0)