895 Shore Road, Pelham Bay Park

One of the least known and accessible of New York City’s museums, the Bartow-Pell Mansion in Pelham Bay Park is well worth visiting.  The reward is a trip back in time to a gracious 19th century country mansion typical of other large estate houses once found in the Pelham Bay area.

 

The ten-room, Federal style stone mansion has a stunning mahogany spiral staircase, high double windows, iron lattices, and breathtaking views of Long Island Sound. Its interior is in the Greek Revival style and features period furnishings on loan from other city museums. The mansion is situated on land once owned by the Pell Family, to whom King Charles of England granted a charter for the Manor of Pelham in 1654.  Held through four generations of the family, the Pell’s lost the land during the American Revolution.  By the time that Robert Bartow and his wife Ann Pell purchased the property in 1836 it had been reduced to 220 acres and the original manor house was long gone.  The Bartows built the mansion that stands today and moved in with their family in 1842.   The city purchased the estate in 1888 when this and other large parcels were being taken over and converted to parkland in the Bronx.

 

A number of organizations used the mansion from 1888 to 1913 by which time it was abandoned.  Starting in 1914, the city leased the mansion and grounds to the International Garden Club that planned to use it as their clubhouse and create grand gardens on the order of the botanical gardens at Kew in England.  The Club raised the funds for Delano & Aldrich’s restoration of the mansion and the design of formal gardens. The elaborate plans for the gardens, as originally envisioned, were scaled back. Today they are even smaller than when first created.  Mayor Fiorello La Guardia used the mansion as his summer residence in 1936, and said that he “wanted to make New Yorkers realize that this is a big city, that it does not all center in Manhattan.” Since 1947 the mansion has been a public museum.

 

The Bartow-Pell Mansion has received a number of special landmark designations from: the Historic American Building Survey (1933); the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (1966; expanded to-- interior rooms 1975; carriage house, walled gardens and family plot, 1978); National Register of Historic Places (1974); and National Historic Landmark (1977).

 

Janet Butler Munch

 

 

Photographs:
Tom Stoelker and Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum