History of an UWS Mansion, From Elmwood to Elm Park

By Pam Tice

Columbus Avenue between West 91st and 92nd streets rises up to form a very distinct hill. That is where Charles Ward Apthorp built his “country seat” in 1764 after he bought 268 acres in the Bloomingdale neighborhood.

He named his mansion Elmwood.

Apthorp was one of the prominent Royalists of New York City. Loyal to England, he served on the Royal Governor’s Council from 1763 to 1783 during the turbulent years of the American Revolution. After the war was over, he was charged and convicted of treason, but for unknown reasons, he was permitted to keep his estate in New York City though he lost other holdings in the New England states.

The New York Mercury in February 1780 described the Apthorp estate as “300 acres of choice rich land, chiefly meadow….on which there are fine orchards of the best fruit…. an exceedingly good house, elegantly furnished, commanding beautiful prospects of the East and North Rivers, on the latter of which the estate is bounded.”(The Hudson River was commonly labeled the North River.)

According to the paper, the property also included a two-story brick house for an overseer and servants, a wash house, a cider house and mill, a corn crib, a pigeon house (well-stocked), “a very large barn, and hovels for cattle, large stables and coach houses, and every other convenience.” And there were kitchen gardens and “a pleasure garden, in the English taste.” Eight enslaved people were listed as living on the property in the 1790 federal census.

The Apthorp home on the Upper West Side had played a role in the Revolution’s 1776 Battle of Harlem Heights. After the Battle of Brooklyn, won by British forces, the American Patriots retreated to the Bloomingdale neighborhood as the British troops moved into Manhattan. General George Washington took over the Apthorp estate as his headquarters before moving uptown to Colonel Roger Morris’s mansion, today called the Morris Jumel mansion.

On the evening of September 14, 1776, in the Apthorp drawing room, Washington and his men planned the operation that would send Nathan Hale to spy on the British on Long Island—which then cost him his life.

After the American patriots were pushed further north, the Apthorp home became the headquarters for various British generals until 1783, when British occupation of the city ended.

Charles Ward Apthorp died in 1797. His estate was left to family members, and in 1799, William Jauncey, a wealthy Englishman, purchased Elmwood and the remaining land. The two lanes running out from the mansion were renamed for Jauncey. One led from the mansion across what would become Central Park; the other ran downhill to the Hudson River, between what would become West 91st and West 92nd streets. The West Side Rag recently wrote about the continuing conflicts over Jauncey Lane into the early 20th century.

In 1829, the Thorne family (Jauncey’s niece and her lavish-spending husband, who went by the name Colonel Thorne) took over the Elmwood mansion, and the site came to be referred to as “Colonel Thorne’s Elm Park.” A group of wealthy men set up a private track there to race their horses. When the colonel died in 1859, much of the land was sold off to many investors in Upper West Side real estate. George Conrad, a German immigrant, now managed the mansion as “Elm Park Pleasure Grounds and Elm Park Hotel.” 

On July 12, 1870, several organizations of Protestant Irish Americans, who were part of the Loyal Order of the Orange, marched uptown to hold a celebration and picnic at Elm Park commemorating the victory of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, in which the forces of William III, the King of England and Prince of Orange, defeated James II, assuring Protestant domination over Ireland for generations. The Orangemen of New York City, like the nativist Anglo-Americans of the time, were opposed to the increasing immigration of Irish Catholics to the U.S. 

As they marched toward Elm Park, the Orangemen passed work crews of Irish laborers laying pipe and broadening the thoroughfare that would come to be known as Broadway. When they taunted the workers with slurs, the insulted Irishmen picked up clubs and followed the marching Protestants to Elm Park, where a riot ensued. Eight people were killed and many more wounded. Some blamed the violence on the New York City Police Department, whose officers withdrew, apparently deciding their duty to keep the peace ended when the parade reached Elm Park. 

The next manager of Elm Park was Louis Wendel, who also managed Lion Park further uptown near the Lion Brewery at Columbus Avenue and West 107th Street. The mansion was torn down in 1892 and the remaining lots of land sold. The New York Times commented that an old house was like an old citizen, needing an obituary. 

The Apthorp family lives on in New York City history in just a few places. Trinity Church, at Wall Street in downtown Manhattan, has a vault where Charles Ward Apthorp and other family members are interred. And every holiday season, the New York Botanical Garden’s annual train display includes the Apthorp mansion in its depictions of important New York City buildings.  

Pam Tice is a member of the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group www.upperwestsidehistory.org.

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