What’s in a Name? History!

Edited by Edith Litt

This piece is based on an article entitled “Phelps Place, A Historical Overview” by Richard J. Gerber and Arthur James Hoe, which appeared in the Fall 1966 edition of The Westchester Historian, the quarterly newsletter of the Westchester County Historical Society. It is used with the permission of the Society.

The land on which Phelps Hospital stands, the parcel bounded on the north by Rockwood Hall Park, on the south by Sleepy Hollow Manor, on the east by Route 9 and on the west by the river, has a long and complex history. The land was home to a branch of the Wappinger Confederacy of Native Americans; by the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D., the Wappingers numbered about 5,000. In 1609, Henry Hudson is said to have landed and met with them along this shore, near the widest part of the river. The Dutch settlers who followed Hudson called this stretch of the river Tappan Zee, or sea, for its width. According to legend, the Dutch bought this land from the local Native Americans in 1629.

An early Dutch settler, Frederick Philipse, bought a large piece of property, including the Phelps site, in 1672. His ownership was formally recognized by King William and Queen Mary of England, giving him a Royal Charter in 1672. Philipse built sawmills and gristmills and the land became an early industrial site for the production of lumber and grains. He also began the nearby Old Dutch Church. By the end of the 1600s, Philipse was the richest man on the continent.

Following the Revolutionary War, the loyalist Philipses lost their property to New York State and this parcel was sold to General Girard Beekman. His family founded North Tarrytown [now known as Sleepy Hollow] nearby.

In the nineteenth century Anson Phelps, a penniless orphan in his early teens, became a successful merchant and established the first regular shipping line out of New York City. Following this success, Phelps began investing in New York real estate, banks, insurance, lumber and other raw materials. His skills and timing were considerable factors, but Phelps’ wealth resulted from the marriage of three of his daughters to auspicious men: Daniel James, William E. Dodge, and James Stokes. Together, Phelps and his sons-in-law founded the Phelps-Dodge Partnership in 1833. The firm prospered, creating great wealth for the family. For a time, Phelps-Dodge was one of the largest firms in the country.

In the New York of the early 1800s, warm weather periodically brought epidemics of smallpox, cholera and yellow fever to the city and families of means, like the Philipses, began sailing upriver, to places like Ossining, to escape the dreaded illnesses. The first Phelps summer home was at 66 Beekman Avenue in North Tarrytown. The family enjoyed their summers so much that, in 1848, Anson Phelps, Jr. and his wife purchased 66 acres of property overlooking the Hudson from the Beekman estate. During the next few years, they supervised laying out roadways and construction of a 22-room Victorian Gothic stone building which they at first called the Manor House [now the James House]. The year 1848 was also the year that the Hudson River Railroad’s bed was cut along the river edge of the property called Phelps Place.

After a while, due to a paucity of heirs, the Phelps Place property passed briefly into the hands of the Presbyterian Board, but was repurchased by Anson, Sr.’s great grandson, Arthur Curtiss James. By the start of the twentieth century, James was one of the wealthiest men in the country, but one of its least well-known to the public. His name rarely appeared in the newspapers, his photograph almost never. He donated many millions to charity during his lifetime, but most of it was untraceable because of his strict rule that publicizing his gifts meant immediate cancellation. In fact, according to The New York Times, following World War I, Arthur Curtiss James stood to be the richest man in the country because of his enormous railroad, copper, silver and gold mine holdings.

James and his wife had several other homes, but loved their country retreat at Phelps Place. The property came to include a boat house, a 12-room superintendent’s house, a six-room bungalow, a large garage with two four-room apartments above it, and a tennis court. The Jameses restored the manor house, furnished it with valuable antiques, and renamed it James House.

While no specific clause of James’s will addresses the issue, it is possible that James had spoken to his trustees about donating Phelps Place for the establishment of a new hospital. The Westchester Historian will be used in a future issue as the source for an article on the founding of Phelps Hospital.

James House today, benignly overlooking Kendal on Hudson.