This article is about the manor house in the village of Sleepy Hollow. For the English land grant, see Philipsburg Manor. For the family seat, see Philipse Manor Hall.
Although an English-deeded tract, it is listed by some sources with the patroonships of New Netherland since it incorporated part of a patroonship previously owned by the colonial Dutch landowner JonkheerAdriaen van der Donck.
History
The main houseThe Upper Mills section of Phillipsburg Manor appears on this 1814 map as Philipsburg.
Philipsburg Manor dates from 1693, when wealthy Province of New York merchant Frederick Philipse was granted a royal charter for 52,000 acres (21,000ha) along the Hudson River by the British Crown.[3] For more than thirty years, Frederick and his first wife Margaret (who was a prominent merchant in her own right), and later their son Adolphus, shipped hundreds of enslaved African men, women, and children across the Atlantic.[4] By the mid-18th century, the Philipse family had one of the largest slave-holdings in the colonial North.[5]
Philipse built a facility with a stone house, a mill, and a wharf at the confluence of the Pocantico and Hudson Rivers (this part of the manor became referred to as the Upper Mills[6]) as a provisioning depot for the family's Atlantic sea trade and as headquarters for a worldwide shipping operation. The stone house, which would later become known as Philipsburg Manor House, was initially a small two-story building with a basement and two rooms on each floor, divided by a large central chimney; there was a fireplace in each room.[7]
The lands of the Upper Mills section of the manor were tenanted by farmers of various European backgrounds. The provisioning depot, anchored by the main house, was transformed into a major commercial operation by Frederick's son, Adolphus Philipse. He doubled the size of the house[7] and managed the Upper Mills for nearly 50 years. The complex then included a stone gristmill,[8] a bakehouse, workshops for blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers, and a wharf[9] for exporting grain and cornmeal internationally and for importing foreign goods.[7] It was surrounded by fields of grain, orchards, stands of timber, and stone quarries.[7]
The complex was largely operated by enslaved Africans. Slave quarters were installed by Adolphus about 90 feet from the main house.[10] By the time of his death, twenty-three enslaved men, women, and children lived and worked at the manor. They are catalogued by name (and children, also with ages) in the 1850 probate inventory of his properties. As the most valuable "chattel" (personal property), they are listed first - before cattle, furniture, and tools.[11][10]
Frederick Philipse III, who inherited the Upper Mills after Adolphus's death, had no interest in running its operations. He did not live in the Upper Mills house, focusing on enlarging and upgrading Philipse Manor Hall, located closer to New York City, in what is now Yonkers. He leased the Upper Mills, including the house,[12] to prominent Westchester landowning families; the leaseholders lived in the house. At the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, the Philipses supported the British, and all their landholdings were seized and auctioned off.[13] The Upper Mills land (about 750 acres (300ha),[14] including the house and outbuildings) was purchased in 1785 by Gerard G. Beekman Jr.,[12][15] a wealthy New York merchant and Revolutionary War veteran.
By the end of the 18th century, the gristmill was no longer in use.[7] The Hudson River Railroad, built in the 1840s, severed the Upper Mills wharf from its historic ship landings and made it obsolete.[6]
Historic site
The Beekman family, who lived in the house for several generations, enlarged it by adding a wing.[7] Broadway star Elsie Janis, who bought the house around 1915, made other alterations.[16] In 1936, she decided to sell it, stipulating that she would not sell it to anyone "except to a society or association that would maintain it as a historic museum."[17] At the same time, the Historical Society of the Tarrytowns was leading efforts to save what was left of the original house and other structures. This prompted John D. Rockefeller Jr. to purchase the site to fund its preservation.[18]
Historic site timeline:
1940: John D. Rockefeller Jr. purchased the property to preserve it. For promotional purposes, the initial restoration project was called “Philipse Castle Restoration”[19] (even though the house had never resembled a castle).
1943: The site first opened to the public as a historic site under the name Philipse Castle.[20]
1951: The property was acquired by Sleepy Hollow Restorations[7][16] (now known as Historic Hudson Valley) to begin more extensive renovations.
1957: The name was officially changed to Philipsburg Manor, Upper Millis, to better reflect the property's historical role as the industrial center of the Philipse family estate.[21]
1959-1969: Closed for a major restoration to return the site to its 1750 appearance.
Excavations at the site conducted in the 1940s and 1950s uncovered foundations and structural remains of the manor house, gristmill, wharf, outbuildings, and dam, as well as thousands of artifacts reflecting the Philipse family's wealth and global trade connections, including delftware, glassware, and the earliest Chineseporcelain found in New York state.[16] They are now part of the house museum's extensive collection. The gristmill was reconstructed between 1958 and 1960 to its current 18th-century appearance. During this restoration, the additions and alterations were removed from the manor house to return it to its colonial proportions.
Philipsburg Manor House and the Pocantico Riverfloodplain in the central part of today's Sleepy Hollow
Today, the site features a stone house, restored to its mid-18th-century appearance, filled with a collection of 17th- and 18th-century period furnishings, a working water-powered gristmill with a millpond, an 18th-century barn (moved from Hurley),[7] a slave garden,[24] a reconstructed wharf, and a reconstructed tenant farm house.[note 1] The gristmill and the wharf were recreated using traditional tools and techniques from the 17th century.[25] The long-vanished original furnishings of the house were replaced with appropriate antiques and exacting copies[16] on the basis of the 1850 probate inventory of Adolphus Philipse's estate, which had a room-by-room description.[10]
During the 1999 Hurricane Floyd, the Pocantico River was blocked by fallen trees and almost washed away the whole historic site. Some 70 employees of the parent organization, Historic Hudson Valley, assisted in its protection, along with the site's curators and security guards, and village residents.[26]
In 2016, significant restoration work sponsored by the New York State Council on the Arts was completed on the gristmill to rebuild the entire wooden waterwheel and flume.[27][28]
Enslaved Africans' heritage
Intensive archival and material research since 2000 has made it possible to assemble valuable information on the lives of enslaved men, women, and children of the Upper Mills.[4][29] This shifted the site's interpretative focus from manorial families to the enslaved community,[30] leading to the creation of exhibits detailing the lives and work of individuals such as Caesar, the master miller, and Dina, the dairymaid.[11][29] It is the only historic site in New York with a major focus on the living-history aspect of 18th-century slavery.[25]
↑Tenant farmers' houses were located on their small plots scattered across the massive estate. They paid their rent in part by the grain they produced and were bound to bring all their grain to the Upper Mills gristmill for grinding. A reconstructed tenant farmhouse was built on the Philipsburg Manor House site to help tell the story of the Upper Mills' extensive agricultural operation.
12"Philipsburg Manor". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. September 18, 2007. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011.
↑Maika, Dennis J. (2005). "Philipsburg Manor". Encyclopedia of the State of New York, First ed. (Peter Eisenstadt, ed.). Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 1199. ISBN0-8156-0808-X
↑Steiner, Henry (1998). The Place Names of Historic Sleepy Hollow & Tarrytown. Heritage Books. p.21. ISBN978-0-7884-0961-5.
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