Glenview Mansion

1861–1876: Background and construction

Philadelphia native John Bond Trevor, son of former Pennsylvania State Treasurer John B. Trevor, came to work on Wall Street in the 1850s. His career as a banker and stockbroker went well enough for him to move to Yonkers when he married in 1861. At the time the community was becoming attractive as a residence for wealthy financiers who wanted to live on Hudson Valley estates yet remain within commuting distance of their jobs in Manhattan via rail—the beginnings of suburbanization.^[4]

Upon first moving to Northwest Yonkers, the Trevors lived at a house on the northwest corner of Glenwood and Ravine avenues, near where the Glenwood train station is today. James B. Colgate, Trevor's business partner, owned the land. There were few other neighbors, as most of the land between Warburton and North Broadway was open and undeveloped, making it attractive to Trevor and businessmen like him.^[4]

In 1867 his wife died. After remarrying, he bought the 23 acres (9.3 ha) to the north for $150,000 ($4.29 million in modern dollars^[5]) and commissioned Charles W. Clinton, an architect with offices near his in what is today Lower Manhattan, to design a house.^[4] Clinton, who had worked under Richard Upjohn earlier in his career, produced a building described even at the time as "not strictly confined to any one style." For the interior finishes he hired some of the accomplished craftsmen of the age, particularly Philadelphia cabinetmaker Daniel Pabst,^[1] whose work Trevor or Clinton may have seen at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where he won an award for a sideboard. Local builders, some of whom had also attended the exposition, where the newest construction techniques and materials had been exhibited and demonstrated,^[6] handled the framing, plumbing and painting. The carpet came from the nearby Alexander Smith Carpet Mills.^[7] The house was finished in 1877.

Before building the house, Trevor, who had acquired an interest in horticulture upon his move to Yonkers, developed greenhouses and stables. His choice of land differs from that of most estates in Yonkers at the time, such as his friends the Shonnards to the north, which were built higher up the hill with all the land straight down to the river, rather than at its edge, where the railroad cut off direct river access and passing trains occasionally spoiled the view and created a fire hazard. Trevor's theoretical second parcel just offshore could have been developed, but again the railroad's presence made that unlikely. He may have preferred to remain near his partner, the station and the facilities he had already built. Indeed, he put the property's gates on Ravine to the south, rather than Warburton, which was closest to the house but unpaved, since Ravine was a short distance from the station.^[8]

Trevor had been active in the community, serving as a presidential elector^[1] and chairing meetings of the local Republican Party.^[9] Therefore, the house attracted much notice in the local newspapers, as one of the first large houses built in the area since the Panic of 1873 had depressed the economy.^[10] It was called a "showplace" for Yonkers,^[4] incorporated as a city just five years earlier, in 1872. In 1886 it was one of 12 Yonkers homes selected for engraved illustrations in Thomas Scharf's History of Westchester County, which has since become a standard reference work for historians.^[11]

1876–1922: As residence

Throughout those years, Trevor lived the life of a gentleman farmer, commuting to Wall Street daily.^[7] The family wintered in the city, and sometimes went to the Catskills during the hot stretches of the summer.^[12] He was close friends with neighbors like Samuel J. Tilden, formerly governor of New York and Democratic candidate for president in the controversial 1876 election, lawyer William Allen Butler and rail magnate Colgate Hoyt. Guests at Glenview included Civil War generals Nelson Miles and William Tecumseh Sherman, who suggested the eventual renaming of the Trevors' former residence, Edgewater, to Seven Pines after the battle.^[13]

John B. Trevor, Sr., Trevor's youngest son, recalls the times of his childhood at Glenview as a "paradise." He and Colgate Hoyt's son Sherman, his only neighbor around his age, often played together with the Wiffler sons and his older half-brother. The nearby river played a prominent role in their play. Henry Trevor joined the Yonkers Yacht Club, where he and other members raced as far upriver as Rondout Creek, at Kingston. In the 1890s John and his sisters began to take up golf, another new pastime of the Gilded Age rich. They all took up bicycling as well, and one of the sisters, Emily, became an avid bicyclist as well, once riding as far away as Hastings-on-Hudson and Riverdale.^[14]

John Bond Trevor died in 1890, with John Wiffler, the gardener he had collaborated with on the property, retiring two years later to open a feed store in downtown Yonkers. The family continued to live in Glenview. Mary Trevor's wedding reception there in 1892 was widely covered by both the local and New York newspapers. A special train brought guests from the city to the ceremony at St. John's Episcopal Church downtown and back from the mansion. The flowers came from the estate's greenhouses.^[14]

Trevor's widow continued to live at Glenview with her children as they grew up. Her daughter Emily kept a diary which provides most of what is known about Glenview as the 19th century became the 20th. She attended boarding school in the city but returned for holidays and vacations. Her reminiscences are often of visiting friends or family, and trips to New York City or, as she referred to it, the village of Yonkers, then a mile (1.6 km) away. During the first decade of the new century these trips started to be taken by car instead of the train or carriage. This reflected not only the increasing use of the automobile but the New York Central Railroad's electrification project for the line, which not only disrupted service but required the building of the large power plant that, now unused, still sits on the river shoreline near the current Glenwood station, which still uses the 1911 station building.^[15]

After his wedding in 1908, John moved out while his mother and sister remained at the house. He visited frequently enough with his own children, particularly in the summertime, to be described as a resident in his mother's obituary in 1922. His son John B. Trevor, Jr., recalled in the last years of his own life that by that point, the billiards room was used primarily as the children's dining room, with the billiards table covered with a tablecloth. The parlor and library were rarely used. Emily said later that she and her aging mother "lived a very quiet life" at Glenview during the 1910s.^[16]

The neighborhood around them had changed considerably since the house was built. Back in 1875, the year before Glenview's construction began, the Shonnards had subdivided their property to the north and east of the estate. In the years since, those lots had been sold and slowly developed with houses similar to, but smaller than, Glenview. Often their proximity to the Trevors' home was used as a selling point. By the time of Emily Trevor's death, this evolution from country town to modern suburb was almost complete, and so the family decided to sell the house as none of them wanted to live there anymore due to those changes.^[17]

1922–present: As museum

The city of Yonkers bought the house and grounds from the family with the intent of using the land as a public park. Trevor Park was established soon afterwards. The house stood vacant for six years until it was opened as the Museum of Science and Art,^[1] with the collection established at Yonkers City Hall in 1919 for future historical use.^[18] In 1948 it became the Hudson River Museum,^[19] renting the house and the land from the city for $1 a year.^[18]

During these years, the exterior was altered somewhat by the removal of the porte-cochère and verandas. Inside, the mantelpieces were removed. The front door's transom was taken out so that a stuffed elephant from the Barnum & Bailey Circus could be brought in. The rooms were used as exhibit halls and their finishings neglected.^[18]

In 1967 the museum decided it needed more space and commissioned a $1.5 million ($12.5 million in modern dollars^[5]), 25,000-square-foot (2,300 m²) addition with a planetarium in the brutalist style popular at the time.^[20] It was completed two years later. In addition to being a stark contrast to the house, it enclosed it within a courtyard, restricting the view of its first story. The front entrance, with barred doors, was later compared to a prison. An elevator was installed in the mansion and its rooms were restored to focus on the house's history and how the Trevors lived.^[18]

Three decades later, in the first years of the 21st century, the museum began raising money to upgrade both of its facilities as part of a $14 million expansion. The first phases called for better integrating and connecting Glenview and the 1969 structure. A breezeway between the two was enclosed, and a 115-foot (35 m) corridor was built between the facilities to connect to a planned new elevator on the outside. The changes, the museum's director explained, were necessary to comply with federal accessibility laws yet preserve the building's historic character.^[18]